Martha Stewart Living Feature

In September 2016, Martha Stewart Living magazine published a feature story about Cedar & Moss’s origin story and the Eichler-style house where I started the company. Having grown up with Martha Stewart’s books and the magazine, the article was a tremendous honor and incredible exposure for my new studio. After watching the new documentary Martha on Netflix last week, I realized there was probably more to the 2016 magazine feature than I had appreciated at the time. In retrospect, it probably was not a coincidence that my story of rebuilding my life after a divorce, and rebounding after a professional setback was selected by Martha’s editorial team.

The new documentary about Martha reminds us of her vision, creativity, authenticity, and resilience. Her ability to trailblaze, redesign, and rebuild— time and time again. Her kindred love of learning, teaching, travel, culture, beauty, excellence, efficiency, and always leaving things better than she found them. Most importantly, Martha inspires with her relentless tenacity and strength. Both inspired and comforted, we are reminded how resilient women can be. After watching the documentary, I am more grateful than ever to have been featured in Martha Stewart Living magazine. I continue to look up to Martha, especially as a mother, gardener, world traveler, and entrepreneur living her life to the fullest. Martha is, indeed, a very good thing. What an honor it was to be featured in her magazine. Also a big thank you to Home Editor Lorna Aragon for reaching out to me, spending a few days shooting in Portland, and for overseeing the feature.

You can read the original article below.

Lighting The Way

Photography by Jake Stangel | Text by Jennifer Tung | Home Editor Lorna Aragon

When Michelle Aaro (FKA Steinback) started her lighting company three years ago, she drafted a personal mission statement and pinned it to her studio wall. "I have always been unswervingly true to myself," a part of it read. "Keep doing that; just don't be insensitive to others along the way." Those words propelled Aaro as she built her collection of stylish and extremely popular sconces, pendants, and lamps. They also speak to the rebirth, both personal and professional, that she experienced along the way.

Aaro, 40, has design sense in her DNA. "My great-grand mother was a painter, and my grandfather was an inventor," she says. "My dad was a musician and small-business owner. My mom was a fabric buyer, and we had a dedicated crafts room." The first in her family to go to college, Aaro majored in art history at Whittier College in California, which led to a year abroad in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Copenhagen, Denmark-two places that enormously influenced her aesthetic. "The idea of reacting against ornamentation spoke to me," she explains. "So did the Bauhaus mission of designing for everyday people."

After college, Aaro earned a master's degree in landscape architecture and got a job at an urban-planning firm back in Portland. She eventually moved to a local home goods company, where she spent 10 years, rising to the position of vice president and director of lighting and marketing. While there, she married her college boyfriend and had three children. In December 2012, desperate for more space, she and her husband looked at a dilapidated midcentury house in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego that a wealthy Manhattanite had left abandoned for 20 years. "It was a wreck," Aaro says. "It smelled like mold and mice. But it backed up to the Tryon Creek State park, and the back of the house was all glass."

Soon after they purchased the home, Aaro’s world imploded. In January 2013, the day after the closing, she got laid off. Two months later, during the demolition stage of her renovation and with a nursing baby and two little boys underfoot, her marriage fell apart. Strapped for cash and reeling from stress, she continued the work, which included ordering 35 European sconces on eBay to light her basement. When they didn't fit properly, Aaro had an epiphany: "I realized I knew how to make my own, and I could sell them," she says. With the money reserved for her kitchen renovation, she started making lamps at night while her kids slept. She named her fledgling company Cedar & Moss, after the foliage in her lush backyard.

When Aaro launched in November of that year, her line instantly took off. Since then, she's grown her staff to 11 ("I hired all women at first, because they worked in my home and I wanted to feel comfortable," she says”), partnered with the Williams- Sonoma-owned company Rejuvenation, and bought a separate workspace. Today, she's less concerned about survival- her clients include restaurants and boutique hotels around the world-and more focused on paying her good fortune forward. "I was so shattered, and the universe was there for me," she says of her amazing rebound. "Sometimes the bad things that happen to you turn out to be the best things. Now I want to nurture and empower others."