About me, Shari Elf.

Shari Elf is a singer-songwriter, fashion designer, raw food chef, life coach (with training from Dr. Pat Allen's WANT Institute in Newport Beach, CA) and maker of art from trash. Harvested from her travels or mailed from patrons, trash is transformed into magic, with poignant and exuberant slogans framing creatures, landscapes, and scenes from dreams we all wish we had every night.

Shari has created her own way around the commercial art
world, selling works reasonably and directly to regular folks and movie
stars alike, all over the world. Once or twice a month she posts new work
on her web site, sends a charming little note, often with an amusing story, and often they are purchased by sundown that same day from the good and sturdy folks on her art email list.

Shari Elf received a BFA from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington in 1983. She also received a degree in Fashion Technology from Maui Community College. She created her own clothing line and ran her “Elf Wear” brand for several years, sewing one-of-a-kind hand painted knitwear to the better boutiques on Maui and Oahu.

Shari has a penchant for awaking the sleeping artist in all people, and when you meet her she will probably get you singing, drawing, dancing, or at least playing your kazoo or accordion.

Shari currently lives in her cabin near Joshua Tree, California. Before that she enjoyed living in Kansas City and before that she lived in Los Angeles. Note from Shari : "Before all that, I grew up on Maui, Hawaii from age 10, and before that, I was in Seattle, born to parents Roy and Pat Elf.

Recent accomplishments include 10 years ago founding the “World Famous Crochet Museum” and co-founding Art Queen gallery (with Randy Polumbo) both in Joshua Tree, California. Shari does not crochet items, but collects them joyfully for the museum. What started as a collection of bottle and toilet paper cover poodles in her bathroom has grown into a world class array of gems that delight visitors daily to the museum. Since the museum opened 10 years ago in an old Fotomat building it has been featured on the web, in numerous newspapers and magazines and an Ovation TV special recently, "The Scenic Route" with David Keeps. Donations are streaming in to the museum, giving the collection more depth and character than ever.

Shari performed at the 2003 TED Conference, singing songs from her 2001 debut album "I'm Forcing Goodness Upon You." It was really exciting for her to meet Matt Groening at the TED Conference and learn that he had bought a bunch of her CDs for his friends. Shari is happy and proud that everyone who attended TED in 2003 got one of her CDs and she got, and still gets, lots of compliments for it.
Irwin Chusid of "Incorrect Music" is a big fan of Shari's CD and played it on his show at WFMU in New Jersey before it was even released.

Shari started a line of t-shirts for the Santa Monica Museum of Art for their holiday boutique in 2010 (where she was the gift artist) and sold over 100 pieces of her Good and Sturdy Art to museum holiday shoppers. Her "What Would Cher Do?" T-shirts were a big hit. Less than a year later, Cher's friend Ron showed up at Cher's house wearing one of the shirts he got from Kyleigh, friend of both Ron and Shari's. Cher laughed and took a picture and sent it to her Twitter followers. Shari sold a bunch of the silk screened shirts printed on thrift store clothing (underwear, jackets, t-shirts, sweaters and dresses) to Cher's twitter fans.

Note from Shari "Cher has such lovely fans!"

thanks for reading this! something good is gonna happen to you today! : )

I LIKE MYSELF

I often mention The Ringing Cedars of Russia and I am building my "Space of Love" on my "Kin Domain" in the Joshua Tree area of California. Many intentional communities have formed around the concepts in these magical books. Here are links to pdfs of the first 3 books, posted by one such community, Rivendell Village

Book 1. Anastasia, pdf

Book 2. The Ringing Cedars of Russia pdf

Book 3. The Space of Love pdf

There are 10 books in the series, you can also purchase them from the Ringing Cedars of Russia website or on ebay or amazon.