In December 2020, Michael Fambro walked out of the hospital for the first time in three days to find her car buried in snow. After she cleared it off, she climbed inside and sat in a daze. Her beloved father, world-renowned musician Miché Fambro, had just died. The only thing Fambro could think to do was to turn on Steel Pulse, a band she and her father loved. That night, she said, Steel Pulse “took her home.” Growing up, Fambro was surrounded by music. As a teenager, she worked on shows with her father’s reggae band and joined him on the road touring across the United States.  After his death, Fambro inherited $500 and his extensive record collection. In the weeks following, she searched for a hobby in the midst of the pandemic as her theater job was put on hold. Crocheting made her mad and puzzles made her cuss. Eventually, Fambro saw someone making earrings and thought, “Maybe I could do that.” Fambro had no prior experience with clay, so she experimented while listening to some of the vinyls she inherited. She was excited to fail, try again and get better at the craft.  “If I’m looking to create a set of earrings and I have no ideas, usually my hands just do the work,” she said. “So you throw on some music, you catch a vibe and you’re like ‘OK, alright, this is what we’re going to do.’” The grief only got harder to cope with, even almost two years after her father’s death. Fambro said it felt like her father was “out on tour” and he’d be back in a few days.  “I needed to grieve through something and put my feelings somewhere,”she said. “So that’s what I did with the earrings.”  Fambro spent months in her Livingston County home surrounded by sets of earrings she made as jazz music blared around her. In July 2021, she took the earrings out for the first time, to a small festival. Fambro was in disbelief as people began buying up the earrings and she soon established Jazz House Designs, a small business to commemorate her and her father’s love for jazz music.  “I’m not good at keeping art private,” Fambro said. “It feels like a natural thing for me to do. I make stuff and I share it.”  Since that first fest in 2021, Fambro has sold more than 5,000 earrings. Her friend and avid customer Joanna Walters met her at the Geneseo Summer Festival, when Fambro noticed her earrings and called her over to her stand. The two clicked and soon became fast friends (since that meeting, Walters owns 10 pairs of Fambro’s earrings).  “I’m a big believer in taking your heartbreak and making it into art,” Walters said. “You can  channel hard stuff in life into new creation, and hers is a perfect example of that.” Fambro also relied heavily on her husband of 16 years, Gerald Swanson. In the beginning, Swanson said he wasn’t sure how Fambro was going to sell anything — then he saw how she introduced her earrings at festivals.  “She has a lot of passions and interests, but I’ve never really known any that were business-related,” Swanson said. “It’s really remarkable to see her not only start a business, but develop the business and become very successful over time.”  Fambro’s mother once asked if she would’ve created Jazz House had her father not died, and  Fambro said she didn’t know the answer, but knew that he was alongside her, cheering on the process.  One of Fambro’s favorite pieces is a pair of black and white earrings decorated with sparrows and music notes, inspired by her father, who would sing “Lullaby of Birdland” for her while performing sets.  “He would’ve been so thrilled about Jazz House,” she said. “I know for a fact my father would’ve been so proud.” jazzhousedesigns.com The post Michael Fambro turns to grief to art as a tribute to her beloved father appeared first on CITY Magazine. Arts. Music. Culture.. ...read more read less