Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 23/99) - Anna Tesar says she was right at home selling her wares outside the Gallery Pub during Friday's Raven Mad Daze.

"I'm an outdoor-festival kind of girl," Tesar said, "and usually just sit down on my blanket in a market and start making and selling things."

A self-described world traveller, Tesar was born in Yellowknife but has spent most of her life in England and exotic locales like India and South America.

Tesar's Raven Mad offerings reflected that varied background -- and included both clothing and jewelry like African love beads, glow necklaces and Guatemalan hackysacks -- while burning incense helped lend her stall a certain, foreign atmosphere.

"I have travelled part of my life -- and worked and travelled and worked and travelled," she said, "and support myself through jewelry-making and will soon be silver smithing."

Tesar said she and her sister, Lisa, who manages the Gallery, have even bigger ambitions -- ambitions that may see all of Yellowknife taking on a more exotic air.

Tesar said that besides hawking her imports at other festivals -- like Folk on the Rocks -- she and Lisa will try expanding their Bottum Line business and begin selling on the street on a daily basis and hopefully open a retail outlet in autumn.

"I've always been fashion conscious, and my sister is a designer -- so it's just a question of getting it out," said Tesar. "There's a large arts community in Yellowknife and people are screaming for it."

Tesar said that "it" means alternative fashions that she describes as "divine decadence," "sanctuary" and "gothic" as well as vintage clothing, jewelry and items for those who dabble in witchcraft and wicca -- all guaranteed to make Yellowknife that much more "outrageous, fun and extreme."

Another proposed innovation involves size, and Lisa said the pair will also sell goods under the line, Phat Bottum Girls.

"There's no clothing in town for bigger men or women," said Tesar. "Not humongous people, but even just those who are slightly over-sized."

Tesar said the business venture represents a major change in her own life. She said that in the past she would simply pick up and settle down somewhere and live the life of a late-century hippy at somewhere like the Reading Festival.

"It was a time when I didn't want the responsibility of running a business -- and I was literally crashing at different people's places and getting enough money just to party or get a bus ticket to the next destination," she said. "But I've thought about importing and exporting for years and because my sister is good at organizing and getting together the business end of things, I'll be free to travel and do the purchasing -- and have money, too."

Tesar said she's already thinking about making a buying-trip that should take her to Mexico and India -- and bring Mexico and India back to Yellowknife.