Interview with a dreamcatcher maker

Before heading out of O.B. to a gem show in Arizona, Christian Fischer explained how he became a fabricator of dreamcatchers.

“I moved out here from Wisconsin and there was a point where I felt trapped. Every time I worked a job I was, like, What am I working for? Just to pay the bills?… So I started going to farmers' markets and that’s where I met Kate and Damien; they make all these beautiful crystal and leather pieces and I just fell in love and I would hear their stories about going to festivals and creating experiences, and their life was an adventure. And I would go to my stupid bar job and was, like, I need to figure out how to eliminate bills and what to do to be on my own.

“So I was taking three buses from North Park to Ocean Beach to be at Sunset Cliffs and I kept finding shells and loving watching the surfers. These surfers are not out there in the water to have a conversation; they are out there to ride that Earth energy one more time, and I thought, Somehow I have to make abundance at the beach.

"I love being here. I love it so much — the pelicans, when the anchovies are here and the pelicans are diving in the water. When they hit the water their feathers come out, so I’m out there in the water collecting feathers…and there’d be all these shells at low tide, and so just connecting with all the creatures….

"For me it's not that I’d want to go to the beach to ‘rape’ the beach of its shells; it started off as making a gift for someone who needed healing…. If you look at the energy shells have and that crystals have in them for healing humans, it's intense. And the ocean is a healing vessel that carries into the depths of the universe and that spiraling goes through us and gives us a direct connection to the Earth and the universe....

“Anyway, one night I had a nightmare and went to the farmers' market to get a dreamcatcher and they all had plastic beads and were made in Mexico — there was no intention behind them. They were all the same but different colors, so I just decided to make my own dreamcatcher with the shells. And in the center of the dreamcatcher I put a crystal, which you generally leave the center open in all native traditions — that’s where the dreams come through to the dreamer. By putting a crystal there I feel like that amplifies the energy of the crystal and the dream going to the person.

"And also I realized that you can't guarantee a dreamcatcher is going to control your dream world, so a lot of the intentional work I do with them is putting the positivity into it for where the dreamer can go in the future, to believe in the impossible stuff — you can manifest things. I have my 21-foot motorhome that I manifested, the money I needed to buy it I manifested…these things all fell into order. So now I have my home that goes everywhere. It’s my art studio, massage studio, and I get to go teach others about sustainable living....

“Every time I was at Sunset Cliffs I never wanted to leave, and there was this wildness that started coming out in me and I realized it had been tampered by society and working a job. So this frees me so when I want more feathers I can go to a farm up in Oregon; if I want to go mining for my own rocks — every time I go on these adventures, my bed, my home, my supplies, everything is there. If I end up out of gas, I pull into a station and display my art, and all of a sudden the money comes in; it's all about trusting the universe — she’s got this, but that trust takes a while....

“When I get the pieces I use to work with, they all get cleansed in the ocean, saged, then charged under a full moon. After that is when I’m about to work with them and start putting them on strings. When they’re done and the piece is completed, it goes under another full moon again to cleanse itself before it's able to go out to people; I want that purity of energy to be real and let it find its person….

"A lot of galleries want my work, but honestly, walking with my art on my shoulder, it catches people when it catches people in random and unique ways that causes an experience for me that I don’t get if my art is just creating ambiance in a coffee shop or gallery....

“When people are paying a hundred to five hundred dollars for a dreamcatcher, it's because they are connected enough to all the elements and they see the numerology built in the colors of stones; they see things that I don’t expect anyone else to see — the average ‘How much are your dreamcatchers?’ person never buys because they don’t actually care about the details; a connected festival-goer, the person who knows rocks, the reiki master, the yogi, they already know and they have to have those pieces because they are going for the direct intentions.

“My heritage is Cherokee; my great grandmother and my grandfather were both Cherokee…. I was adopted when I was a baby and I opened my adoption [case details] when I was 18 and had no idea about my heritage, but my great grandfather was Native American and his wish was to talk to me and meet me, so we met and talked for six hours, and the next day he passed away.”

Fischer also belongs to a group called Fierce Intentions, which performs at festivals around the country — this is most often where you will find him dressed as his alter-ego, "Diamond Sin-Sation."

Fischer says he can be found at the O.B. Farmers' Market on most Wednesdays, selling his dreamcatchers and other creations.