Stop in LR casts writer as jeweler
Daniel Seddiqui has been busy making stuff. The 39-year-old San Francisco native recently brewed a craft beer in Portland, Maine, cooked on an Italian cooking show in Staten Island, made a Terrible Towel in Pittsburgh and vinyl records in Cleveland.
This week, he will be making jewelry in Little Rock.
It’s all part of A Piece of Your City, which has the perpetually curious traveler and author hitting 65 major cities to craft a memento from each that characterizes the city’s culture and industry.
He hits Little Rock on Monday and will spend Tuesday crafting a necklace at Bella Vita Jewelry & Gifts. Seddiqui is using the tour to highlight local creativity and craftsmanship.
“We need to find connections with other people,” he says from Milwaukee last week, where he made a Green Bay Packers cheesehead and took a polka lesson. “I’m focusing on crafting and building things. That’s what we’re known for in this country, whether it’s a cheesehead in Milwaukee or a skyscraper in Chicago.”
For his Little Rock stop, the 21st on his itinerary, Seddiqui, who lives in Bend, Ore., worked with the Little Rock Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to find a local business that would let him craft something emblematic of his stay here.
“It was a hard one,” he says. “Little Rock is known for civil rights history, the Arkansas River, and outdoors stuff.”
He was thinking about clothing and fashion in the South, and the idea to craft a piece of jewelry came up, which is how he connected with Bella Vita.
This kind of thing is familiar territory for Seddiqui, who traveled the country in 2008 working 50 jobs — rodeo announcer, surfing instructor, coal miner, etc. — in all 50 states. For his Arkansas gig, he lived in Fayetteville and worked as an archaeologist.
In 2018, he set out to have a cultural experience in each state, which is how he ended up on a duckhunting trip in Stuttgart.
He blogs about his experiences at livingthemap.com, and is the author of two books, “50 Jobs in 50 States: One Man’s Journey of Discovery Across America” and “Going the Extra Mile: One Man’s Curiosity Through America Leads to Compassion.”
The book from this experience, due in March, will likely be called “Piecing Together America,” he says.
Before visiting Little Rock, Seddiqui will create a musical note out of metal at the Metal Museum in Memphis. He will leave here for Tulsa to make American Indian-inspired leather arts at the ahha Museum.
“What better way to connect and learn about cities than by being with locals and crafting something,” he says. “And I get to take a piece of Little Rock with me. I’ll give it to my wife, and every time I see her wearing it I’ll remember my connection to Little Rock.”