A Beautiful ‘Oops’: Lucy Callicott’s Life of Molding, Creating and Playing

This article is part of our Spring/Summer 2020 print issue, included in the ‘Movers, Makers, Creative Shakers’ spread. See the full, digital version of the issue here.

Lucy Callicott infuses creativity into her life in every step she takes, in every paper she writes and in every thought she has. It seems even her daily walk cannot exist apart from art. Callicott is a naturally creative woman who has turned her keen eye into a business.

Photography by Ciani Foy featuring model Lucy Callicott.

One of Callicott’s many artistic talents is using polymer clay—which is similar to the molding clay used by elementary art teachers—to design earrings for purchase. Her process includes more than just the hands-on work of cutting clay into shapes, baking it and wiring special pieces onto the clay to form earrings; she thinks critically and imagines unique designs for each pair of earrings.

Each batch of clay creates about 15 to 20 pairs of earrings and takes about three to four hours from start to finish. In Callicott’s world, however, time is irrelevant. “I just get lost in it,” she said.

Lucy Light Designs, on Instagram as @lucylightdesigns, is her handmade, polymer clay earring business. Each pair is infused with love and light and shipped from Elon University to anywhere in the country.

Callicott paints the story of how she developed into the woman, artist and entrepreneur she is today by explaining her exploration of her own passion. She said she intentionally spends time with people different from her and that her mistakes can be made into beautiful things.

Exploration, both internal and external, was key in helping Callicott discover how creativity naturally manifested in her life and how she could further engage with it. Luckily, it happened for her at a young age, when she looked beyond her comfort zone and discovered her likes and dislikes, which doesn’t happen for everyone.

According to Callicott, after exploration comes reflection, when one should spend time thinking about where creativity is at play. “If someone wanted to find that part of themselves, I would say, reflect on what you’re passionate about,” she said. Depending on your individual discipline, “reflect on the ways you have to be creative in that,” she said.

Callicott said she celebrates the fact that everyone has a gift that requires creativity, whether it be in visual arts, performing arts, culinary arts or not in an artistic discipline at all.

Another integral part of her artistic development resulted from intentionally spending time with people completely different from her. “That’s when you find out who you are and what you like to do,” she said.

Mistakes will happen, Callicott said, and unexpected circumstances will exist, but they are what you make them. “My life is a beautiful ‘oops,’” she said.

“It may seem elementary,” she said, “but in any age of life, you can be finding the inner child who is creative.” And that is exactly what Lucy intends to cultivate in herself and in others—the ability to take the ordinary and make it a little more creative.