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Artist/designer Susan LeVine named her company Uccellino (which means "dear little bird" in Italian) hoping to inspire others the way birds have inspired her. LeVine believes, as do some Native Americans, that birds are the messengers between heaven and earth. Born and raised in Chattanooga, TN. near the Smoky Mountains, she learned her respect for the healing force and teaching power of nature. "The metaphors of nature are some of the most beautiful and profound gifts that we have to learn from."

After graduating from the University of Colorado, Ms. LeVine had a business designing windows and in-store displays for Denver area boutiques. However, a passion for art led her on a different course. This journey began with a year of study in Italy where she was immersed in the beauty of artistic expression and the romance of the Italian culture. She returned to the states and completed her master's at the University of Chicago. Though she had an internship at the Chicago Art Institute, worked for a brief time at an auction house, and taught art appreciation to elementary school children, her greatest use of her masters was to awaken her own sensibility as an artist. The artists that she studied while obtaining her masters, became her greatest teachers as she developed her own expression. Ms. LeVine is a self - taught painter, and although she received praise and awards for her creativity since she was a child, she never took her talent seriously. It was not until she painted detailed portraits of homes for Chicago Realtors that she developed her skills and found a purpose for her expression. Along with this commercial success, Ms. LeVine's paintings of cityscapes and ethereal dreamscapes were exhibited in several Chicago galleries.

Her creations through Uccellino came about several years ago when she made hand painted boxes for two friends' special birthdays. The boxes were her way of expressing all of the personal wishes she had for them. These simple gifts of love were the seeds for Uccellino.

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