Meet Me Monday: Snow Hill's Ashley Ward

Ashley Ward, crafter and owner of Cultivated Unity, cuts round pieces off an American sweet gum to make natural products. Her stepfather, Bobby Supel Jr., taught her more than how to use a power saw. Working together deepened their relationship and gave her the confidence to start her own business.

SNOW HILL — Ashley Ward, 25, moved around quite a bit on the East Coast while her father was in the U.S. Navy.

She came to Snow Hill with her mother Keisha and stepfather Bobby Supel Jr. in 2004, starting her junior year at Greene Central, where she graduated in 2006.

The acclimation from places like Virginia Beach, Va., and Key West, Fla., was difficult. She became “rebellious” after her parents’ divorce, her mother’s remarriage and having to leave the beach.

But nature had always enthralled Ward, and creativity was in her blood.

“I appreciated the beauty,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed nature.”

As a young girl, Ward would bring geckos, tiny snails, coconuts and other natural wonders into the house, much to her mother’s dismay. She also brought in tropical leaves and flowers and would make things with them.

“One day, she found I had made a beautiful corsage,” Ward said, adding she was 5 at the time.

That’s when her mother saw she had talent. Ward began making books. The pages turned backwards because she is left-handed.

When she came to Greene County, she made a few friends, but was lacking self-esteem. Then something happened that allowed her to bond with her stepfather and start her own business.

Supel, who has relatives in the Jason area, began clearing out some trees. When a round slice of a small tree went rolling down a hill, Ward picked it up and looked at it. Like so many other natural items she had collected and turned into art, she saw something special about that little disk. She asked him to cut more of them.

He cut more than 40 tree slices for her. A couple of weeks later, she began to draw on them, not realizing she needed to let them dry and then sand them first. But she learned from Supel.

“He began teaching me how to use the power tools,” she said. “I had this preconceived notion that girls don’t use power tools, and I had to get over it.”

Supel taught her to make precision cuts. Ward began painting designs on them, coating them with polyurethane and turning them into coasters, magnets, key chains, plaques, and hooks for coats, scarves and keys.

“That’s when I bonded with my dad,” she said.

The name of her business — Cultivated Unity — grew out of the bonding between Ward and her stepfather.

“Cultivated Unity is what caused us to gel,” she said.

The cultivated part came in because she noticed how relationships have to be cultivated and nurtured. She had come from larger cities where people of different cultural tastes and backgrounds melded together easier than in rural Eastern North Carolina where she didn’t feel like she fit in.

“Life is nothing without relationships,” she said. “You don’t burn a bridge while you’re standing on it.”

Bonding with Supel and starting a business changed Ward’s life and gave her confidence.

“It allowed me to have a new appreciation for nature,” she said.

It also broke a dozen-year or so smoking habit.

Ward views her products as a reflection of herself.

“It definitely allowed me to blossom,” she said.

Ward sometimes uses oak, but prefers American sweet gum.

“I like the wood,” she said. “American sweet gum wood is just a hearty wood. It’s strong. It’s not sappy like pine. It smells good. It grows tall. They have a strong bark. It’s a representation of God’s design.”

Her products can be purchased at Little Shoppe of Flowers, 207 N. Greene St. in Snow Hill, and viewed at cultivatedunity.blogspot.com. For information, call 757-383-2174.

Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.