Why I Started Inventus Art
My name is Colleen Schwebach (“Sh-way-balk”), and I am the owner of Inventus (“In-ven-toos”) Art LLC. I am so happy to be able to get to know you better and to share my work with you here!
I’m an artist and a stay-at-home, Catholic mother living with my husband and three young children in Fennimore, Wisconsin. Before getting married I worked seasonal jobs in outdoor education, leading everything from children’s wilderness canoe expeditions and field trips to retreats and organic farm day camps. Faith, nature, and family are some of the the biggest influences in my artwork. I love to hike, climb, garden, quilt, sew, and draw, of course! I am told I have been making art since my infancy, but I’m just beginning to take my art beyond my own sketchbook to a real profession. Where did it all start?
As the oldest child of two art students, my parents would prop me up at the table and hand me a paintbrush full of watercolor paint to see what I would do. They cherished the marks I produced so much that they printed one of my paintings on a Christmas card for our family. I learned all about creativity from my parents while getting help with school projects, making crafts, and exploring art supplies. I continued making art throughout high school and college but set my own art hobby aside after having kids and beginning mom-life. How did I rekindle my practice of art-making and turn it into a business?
It all started with The Ox Cart Man. Wait, what does a vintage picture book about colonial farming have to do with art? Well you see, my husband and I chose to homeschool our kids. As a homeschooling mom, fostering my kids’ artistic abilities worked itself into every subject and every day. That’s where The Ox Cart Man came in. The story followed a colonial farmer and his family through a year of making handmade products to sell at market at the end of the year. After hearing the story in the fall of 2023, my oldest son longed for our family to make things to sell at our local holiday craft fair. Being homeschoolers, we naturally forgot about everything else and diligently brainstormed things we could make to sell.
We found that our skill set most naturally lent itself to creating artwork and fabric crafts, more specifically watercolor-pencil paintings and small hand-sewn/quilted items. My son, the aspiring “boss” of this business endeavor, set to work making watercolor paintings and tasked me with making potholders that he had designed. He came up with some fabulous pieces, and it was a lot of fun even if we did not end up selling anything. If nothing else, the experience put the idea of “art business” on my radar.
Earlier that summer, we had also formed the habit of drawing for nature study at local parks with another homeschooling family. This forced me to face the skills I had abandoned and initiated the persistent thought that, “Maybe, I’ve been wasting a gift from God in drawing nothing for the past eight years”. I know that all of the tasks of raising my young kids were precious, but I wondered if I was being called to add the habit of drawing back in. Hearing the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) and the lamp under the bushel basket (Mark 4:21) at Mass and Bible studies left me a bit uncomfortable, but I had no idea what God might want me to use my resurrected drawing abilities for.
Fast forward to April of 2024. I came across an ad for a free course called the Artist’s Side Hustle by Stacie Bloomfield. I was used to seeing online ads for “get-rich-quick schemes", but this seemed different. The testimonials were super relevant, and Stacie seemed to be speaking directly to me and my state in life. After completing the course and a design challenge in a week’s time, I was hooked on the concept of creating artwork in marketable collections for practical purposes. It seems like something I’d like to be able to teach my kids in the future and that could help make our craft market dreams come true. After discerning with my husband about taking Stacie Bloomfield’s 8-week Leverage Your Art course, and being pleasantly surprised (or shocked, really) at his enthusiastic support, I took the plunge, and I am very happy that I did.
I knew that with faith in God I could move mountains, but lifting a 30-year-old bushel basket off of my artistic abilities was not an easy feat. Like many artists beginning to share their work for the first time, I was very nervous and self-conscious about whether my art was any good at all. I questioned whether I was “a real artist”. Our family’s weekly hour at the Perpetual Adoration Chapel was and continues to be where I receive the most guidance and consolation. The Leverage course was a lot of hard work, but through it I found my style, created my brand, and began to see all of the possibilities for putting my art to practical use. I am very grateful that God put it in my path and has led me on this new adventure that I would never have otherwise imagined or thought possible.
In Latin, Inventus means “to be discovered.” I chose the name of my business, Inventus Art, to pay tribute to all of the inventors and artists among my family members who focused their lives on discovery, and more importantly to recognize God as the source of all creativity. We are all under God’s copyright. Our ideas and abilities do not come from us, but are planted by God in our souls to be “discovered”, cultivated, and put to good use in building up His Kingdom. I entrust Inventus Art entirely to the protection of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Heaven only knows the wonderful craft projects that must have occurred in Jesus’s home with Joseph being a carpenter! My business motto is, “Seek Truth, Live Virtue, Discover Beauty,” because I hope that my artwork will inspire others to recognize God’s hand and “to discover the truth of the mystery of faith” (Invenire Veritas Mysterium Fidei). Whatever your background, I hope that my art and products get you excited about the majesty of God and the beauty of His creation.
Thanks for joining me on this journey to see all that there is to be discovered! I pray that everyone visiting this site is wrapped in spiritual protection and showered with manifold blessings. I hope that you will connect with me via my newsletter. I want to meet your needs, so please let me know what products you wish to see me offer next. God Bless You and Your Family!
+JMJ+