About
It's Just the Beginning...
My name is Marc-Ross Michaud. For over a decade I've worked as a concept artist in the AAA video game industry, building worlds that exist in pixels and imagination. About two years ago, the systems I'd built to hold my life together, began to fall apart. What followed, was what St. John of the Cross deemed, the "dark night of the soul." And, in that dark night, love began to whisper "What's inside you will save you..."
"What's inside you will save you..."
- Love
"...I wanted to see who I would become on the other side. "
ON THE ORIGIN
In that darkness, I found Jungian active imagination: the practice of turning inward and letting the unconscious speak in images, and symbols like a waking dream; and for the first time in a long time, I began to create...Creativity that had been kept locked within, began to slip through the cracks, and my soul began creating the world it needed. I didn't quite know what was happening, but I knew I wanted to see who I was on the other side of these experiences. I believe my soul was learning "What you create, creates you too."
"A Sacred Hollow, where the soul can grow, wild and free, sacred and safe."
THE MEANING OF ARC-HALIO
These pieces are designed in the spirit of older design languages: medieval illumination, Victorian gothic architecture, and Art Nouveau. Styles which entertained the mind and spoke to the soul, in a time before screens, before electric light, people found their entertainment in the way firelight moved across physical objects.
These pins are made to live in that same conversation with light; small sacred objects that can take us to a different place, if only for a moment.
Each of these creatures carries a meaning that is deeply personal to me, a piece of the inner world I found when I needed it most. But symbols are living things. They don't belong to the one who made them. I am excited to see what these magical little creatures awaken in you. And remember...
