After Grace graduated from high school, I decided to move from Atlanta to San Francisco. When I was working on the interior design for my new place, I was working with a designer to design a wall in the living room that would be a focal point.

As we were discussing the design elements of this wall, we considered adding a shelf running along the wall, and I wanted the shelf to be symmetrical on the wall. The designer said, “No, you should make it asymmetrical.” Well, for those of you who don’t know me… I am not really an asymmetrical type of girl, so I pushed back on this idea and said, “What am I going to do with that part of the shelf that is sticking out to the right?” The designer said, ‘You can put a sculpture there.”

I laughed and said with all that I had going on in terms of Grace graduating from high school, selling my house in Atlanta, moving my life across the country and buying/renovating/decorating this new place, and working full time, I really did not have time to figure out what type of sculpture would sit on this part of the shelf. This year was truly the biggest juggling act of my life.

So, over the months I started looking for sculptures online and could not find anything I liked. One day I had a moment of inspiration and asked the woman I was working with to source art for my new place if she knew a metal sculptor. She said she knew one guy, but he would not be open to working with my ideas. Then she said, “I think I actually know a sculptor in Malibu… and I think he would be willing to work with you.”

So, she connected me with Jon Krawczyk. During my first discussion with Jon, he said, “Sarah, I do not have an ego, so you can tell me exactly what you want to create in this sculpture.”

I told Jon that this was good to hear because I had a very clear idea of what I wanted this sculpture to look like, and I wanted it to be on the front cover of the next book I was planning to finish writing in my new place. We collaborated over a couple of months and worked through the details together (from a distance). The result of our collaboration is the sculpture that you see on the front of this book.

This sculpture reflects the Juggling Act quote that I shared on the homepage of this website… and the five balls we juggle in life… work, family, friends, health, and spirit. When I moved to San Francisco, I was planning on finishing this book (which I had started on years before) once I was settled into my new place in San Francisco.

The sculpture now lives in my living room (and sits on the asymmetrical shelf). It was inspiration, as I wrote this book in my living room… and it makes me smile each time that I look at it.