Meet Your Makers

From deep-forest linocuts in rural Alabama to gleaming mahogany boats along the Gulf Coast, these makers are united by a devotion to craft, place, and process. In this edition of Meet Your Makers, we travel to mountain towns, barrier islands, coastal workshops, and the wide-open West to spotlight artists and builders whose work is shaped by where they live—and how they choose to live.

Whether carving prints by hand, welding whimsical sea creatures, restoring classic boats, or reimagining Western adornment with fine metals and stones, each maker tells a story of patience, heritage, and creative conviction. These are objects made slowly, thoughtfully, and with soul—meant not just to be seen, but to be lived with and passed on.

Meg T. Justice, Art

Founder: Meg T Justice

Location: Mentone, Alabama

In her linocut prints, Meg Justice captures the woodland flora and fauna thriving in the tiny mountain town of Mentone, Alabama’s deep forests, bubbling streams and wildflower-flocked fields. “The surrounding plants and animals shape all my work,” she says. “This place is an endless source of inspiration.” Always an artist but mostly a painter, Justice turned to linocut in 2017 and hasn’t stopped since. “I keep a sketch book and draw ideas from my memory or from the present, scenes that unfold during a walk around my garden or among the trees,” she says. 

Once back in her home studio, Justice transforms the ideas into detailed line-drawings on tissue paper. She flips them over on a block of rubber-like material and rubs, transferring the drawing so she can hand-carve it into the block, which can take days to finish. Next, she rolls on oil-based ink before using a press to print the block’s image on absorbent cotton paper. The final step is line-drying, which also takes days. Color prints take even longer, requiring Justice to separately carve every hue. “The entire process is by hand, and very tactile, from drawing to carving to inking and printing, and really appeals to me,” she says. It also allows her to take a single drawing — an otter splashing, a heron dipping below the water’s surface in search of dinner or a hummingbird buzzing — and share it widely. 

But she gives viewers more than a pretty picture. “I might see a little salamander and sketch him, and it gets me thinking about how they live. I watch animals, research what they do and eat and often incorporate that into their drawing,” she says. “So, every work tells a story, a record of a lily or minnow or whatever it is I’ve seen and how I felt about it.”

CAB Yachts

Founder: Charles Bodree Jr

Location: Pensacola, Florida

A lifetime of loving the sleek design, quality materials and skilled craftsmanship inherent in the building of classic wooden boats — and the resulting watercraft — steered Charles A. Bodree Jr. to found CAB Yachts in 2011, his boat-making and boat-restoration business, after 25 years as an architect. “Growing up, my family owned four different classic boats; I spent summers on the waters of Perdido Beach, Alabama, and learned to water ski behind a 36-foot, 1958 Chris-Craft Constellation.” 

He enjoyed the ride in (and behind) these boats but was equally fond of working on them and maintaining them. As an adult, he continued to frequent wooden boat shows and read vintage boat books. When he had the opportunity to learn from a renowned boat restorer in Michigan, he dove in, and there, charted a course for his current career.

“That experience gave me the insight I needed pursue this and helped me see how I could use my architectural and building-science skills with boats,” Bodree says. Today, the semi-custom mahogany skiffs sailing out of in CAB Yacht’s Pensacola workshop are eye-pleasing proof of a successful collaboration between time-honored techniques and the latest technology. 

Floating on the backwaters and bays of the Gulf, their gleaming hulls reflect twinkles of sunshine bouncing on the current. Each craft holds echoes of the classics inspiring Bodree and is created to last for generations and become a classic itself. And Bodree also keeps antique boats humming along and looking good doing it, using his and the CAB team’s expertise for classic boat refurbishment and preservation.

The Iron Fish 

Founder: Chase Allen

Location: Daufuskie Island, SC 

After giving up unfulfilling work in real estate to pursue a simpler life amid the swaying marsh grasses and solid old oaks of South Carolina’s Daufuskie Island, Chase Allen began his second career as an artist. That was 25 years ago. After 20 years on the small, sparsely populated island, Allen moved to nearby Savannah. But he still boats to his island studio, tucked away on a winding dirt road, several days a week, where he welds and bends metal to create sea creature sculptures like colorful, fanciful mermaids, stingrays and massive, multi-piece, stylized fish skeletons. 

Though he has no formal artistic training, his coastal environs continually stoke his creativity. And while life beneath the waves still influences his work, today’s pieces reflect the shifting sands of his style. “In the last few years, I’ve introduced some more contemporary concepts with more muted hues,” he says.

The alfresco gallery fronting his studio is always open and welcomes guests to take a look whether he’s on the island or not. If a piece catches your eye, you can even take it home. The items are all available for purchase via an honor system. “My gallery can’t be locked, so I have to trust people, and it has worked out,” he says. “I feel like it helps me share the good will and faith I have in people.”

Rose Rust Jewelry

Founder: Cristine Magerowski

Location: Arvada, Colorado

A stop in a country-Western shop inspired Rose Rust’s chic hat bands, which designer and maker Cristine Magerowski calls hat “jewelry.” Inspired by the scenic splendor of her Colorado home and fashioned from brass, 24-karat gold and gemstones, the accessories allow wearers of Western-style hats to crown their caps with additional personal expression and represent a natural evolution of Magerowski’s creative spirit.

“I grew up in New Jersey, so Western culture was not a thing for me, but making things with my hands always was,” she says. “As a kid, I had a roll-top desk filled with art supplies, and tons of glitter; it was my favorite thing and got everywhere, freaking my mom out.”

Her fascination with sparkle and shine led to making necklaces, earrings and bracelets featuring freshwater pearls, quartz, moonstone and more. 

Once in Colorado, she went looking for her first Western hat with a friend, and as they perused the hat bands on offer at the time, the duo quickly decided she should throw her talent into the ring. “They are essentially big necklaces, and when I made the first one, a cuff of brass I hammered, I found there was nothing else like it out there, so I went for it,” she says. That was 2022; today, Rose Rust hat bands sell in 21 locations across the country including the exclusive Yellowstone Club in Montana. 

While she’s been making them now for four years, Magerowski’s aesthetic continues to change, though nature remains her primary muse. “The colors for the bands might be muted or vibrant, but they’re all organic,” she says. Materials, sourced from small vendors, also drive her designs. And she loves layering her metal cuff bands with jeweled ones to add a little glitter to any occasion. “I like throwing on a tank top and a flannel and then a hat with a 24-karat-gold and diamond band on it,” she says. “I love combining rustic and luxury.”

Western Heritage

Founder: Pat Lynch

Location: Loveland, Colorado

A thoughtful gift idea forged the foundation of Western Heritage, which celebrates 50 years in 2026. In Wyoming in the 1970s, U.S. Forest Service Ranger Pat Lynch took busted pad locks—cut from Forest Service gates by hunters trying to reach their kills—and transformed them into key chains to give his ranger buddies. “There was a piece of each lock with the Forest Service logo, and he used that,” says Mike Lynch, Pat’s son, who’s continuing in his father’s footsteps and now running Western Heritage. “He didn’t know anything about metal working at that time, but it grew into a hobby, and then a business.” 

Lynch’s previous employer became Western Heritage’s original and major client—the company made and still makes the official U.S. Forest Service uniform belt buckle. It also makes logo buckles for other U.S. agencies, mostly those dealing with our country’s natural resources, but it also creates custom buckles for a wide range of clients, with every step of production done in-house.

“My designer has been with me for 19 years and is so talented,” Lynch says. “She can take a rough idea sketched on a cocktail napkin and turn out multiple detailed designs for a client to choose from.” Next, Western Heritage’s artisans use the lost-wax method to cast the design (using a casting machine acquired from NASA) in either bronze or a silver alloy. Each year, the company turns out approximately 8,000 to 10,000 pieces. While the majority of Western Heritage’s work is custom, through the years, Lynch has commissioned his own designs. 

In honor of his company’s 50^th anniversary, Western Heritage plans to fashion more of these mostly unseen buckles and sell them retail. “This will be a brand new venture for us, even though we’ve been at this for five decades,” Lynch says. And in all those years, the thousands of designs dreamed up and cast into wearable sculptures share the same story. “The feeling of freedom and ability to create your own destiny is strong out here, and that’s why we love custom work; serving our customers is the spirit that moves throughout our company.”

***

About the Author

Jennifer Stewart Kornegay is an award-winning freelance writer and editor based in Montgomery, Alabama. Her articles cover a variety of lifestyle topics, including food and food culture, makers and travel, but the throughline is an emphasis on telling the stories of the interesting people behind them all. She’s been published in Garden & Gun, Southern Living, The Bitter Southerner, Conde Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, Wildsam, The Local Palate, thekitchn.com and Modern Farmer, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, among other publications.