REstartistry
OUR STORY
Hi, I'm Lori Sohl Sammartino, the founder of REstartistry.
I'm so glad you found your way to this page, and I'm thrilled to tell you about our products and how your purchases from REstartistry can help ignite contagious hope for transformed living in women and girls throughout the world.
The Need
As a previous Kindergarten teacher and someone who has spent a lot of time engaging with children and single moms, it became all too clear how media was becoming a driving source of their influence, especially when it came to defining beauty and success in our culture. While our modern-day concept of beauty was becoming entirely determined by what would produce a profit, the children around me were craving all the more affirmation and a desire to know that they were indeed beautiful. They were crying out to know whether or not they mattered, or if anyone really cared about what they had to say. What they ultimately desired was love and acceptance, and unfortunately, the more they looked to the media for their answers, the more "lost" they stood the chance to become.
The Message
Sadly, the media wasn't giving our children the message that they needed to hear, i.e. that they have value and worth because they are each made uniquely different, and that that in itself is something worth celebrating; thus, the birth of REstartistry, and the intention behind our products and programs. We want to help girls, young adult females, and women to find their voice and to understand the truth of who they are and where their value comes from.
Our Vision
Our vision is for all women and girls to discover through "repurposing" and expressive arts that they have value, worth and an everlasting beauty that is innately within them from birth, and therefore is something that cannot be taken away.
Our Methodology
In our workshops, we use expressive arts as the vehicle for women and girls, helping them to repurpose, remake, or recreate by taking discarded or surplus items, and transforming them into entirely new creations with a new function and a new purpose. These newly created objects then serve to represent items of hope, redemption, and a second chance doubling as strong visual reminders that we too can be freed to move forward beyond our current situations, to pursue our limitless capacities to grow, love, learn, and live in wholeness giving thanks to our heavenly Creator who is able to restore, remake, and repurpose our own lives as a display of His handiwork, for His splendor and His glory. What once may have been something cast off, tossed to the curb, or destined for demolition, has now overcome the obstacles of the past and risen above its many challenges, having been transformed into a completely new creation to ignite the spark for contagious hope!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2Corinthians 5:17, NIV)
