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 y day, Ali Launer cares for her young son. But when he’s sleeping, she goes into her studio, with its stunning view of the Sandias, and uses semi-precious stones, beads, leather, and jewelry findings to create elaborately decorated animal skulls. She is, she says, living her dream life. “It can be hard to make a living as an artist,” she says. “I’m so grateful that I found this quirky little niche. And I get to be home with my kid.”
Her passion for beading began when she was just a kid, herself. “My mom bought me one of the little looms that every little girl gets,” she says. With that seemingly innocuous gift, Launer was hooked. Launer says that the thrill of beading stayed with her from then on, no matter what her “day job” was. Whether she was running a photography lab in Barbados or working with clay in Virginia, she always found time to bead. |
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 “It was just sort of always with me,” she says. Launer focused whole-heartedly on her first love when she started stringing beads for an international jewelry company. She was quickly promoted to designer and her creations were sold at The Limited, Nordstrom, and The Nature Store. When she started her own business in 1999, her designs were featured in style tomes such as Vogue and InStyle, and even landed on The Early Show.
She’s the first to admit that the years of establishing herself were challenging. Her decision to work so hard in her earlier days as an artist was deliberate.
“I always knew I wanted to be at home with a kid,” she says, “I struggled for a long time with freelance work so that when it was time, I could be done with it. I didn’t want my baby to have to struggle with me.”
Now, she says, she has found the perfect balance between family life and working life. Her son even “helps” her with her creations.
“My kid comes out here a lot,” she says, standing in her sunlit studio. “He tries to help. I just make sure to keep the glue away from him!” Her husband helps, too; he locates the skulls that she uses in her work, contacting suppliers who share the couple’s respect for the animals that the skulls come from.
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 “In my mind it’s recycling,” Launer says. “[The farms] use all of the parts of the animal.” Her studio is lined with the skulls of aurochs, impalas, and buffalo, all in various stages of decoration. The first skull she ever embellished—a bull—hangs in a place of honor, next to a window looking out toward the Sandias. “I always wanted to do a skull,” she says, “and I found him at a flea market in Santa Fe.”
Launer’s work is included in the Kessler Collection, a group of hotels and resorts with grand art galleries. Vanessa Hall, Kessler’s art director, first asked Launer if she would do an alligator skull. “I had a client who wanted one,” Hall says. “And I wasn’t sure how Ali would respond. Here I was, asking this artist if she would decorate an alligator skull! But she was so excited—she said she had always wanted to do one. She’s passionate about what she does.”
Launer is one of the top-selling artists at Nussbaumer Fine Art in Santa Fe. Julia Chacon Nussbaumer, the gallery’s art director, sees firsthand how Launer’s work affects the clients who come in. “People are completely absorbed by it. Every person is drawn closer and drawn in to admire the pieces,” she says.
Launer says that she has no particular influence in mind when she creates her powerful, intricate designs. “I don’t plan the design; I just let it go and it flows,” she says. She credits her strong design background with making that flow possible.
 “Going to school for interior design affected me more than everything,” she says. “Color and the flow of angles make a huge difference for where I am now.”
And where she is now, she says, is exactly where she always wanted to be–with both her work and her family. She and her husband built their home in Corrales with an eye towards the family they plan to raise there. Her detached studio allows her work to take place in the home but gives both parts of her life their own space. That space seems to be key to the success of each.
“Sometimes I get stuck,” she says. “Once in a while, it’s almost like a writer’s block and I go play with my kid and have dinner with my family.” |
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