Ten­nille Al­leyne

At 44, work­ing moth­er Lisa Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les is the hap­pi­est she's ever been.

Thus far, Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les has rel­ished a flour­ish­ing dual ca­reer that speaks to both her in­ter­ests. I asked the hap­pi­ly mar­ried moth­er of one ex­act­ly how she man­ages all her du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

"I work the hours that my daugh­ter is in school and my week­ends are ded­i­cat­ed to my art. My hus­band is a huge sup­port and re­al­ly un­der­stands me and it re­flects in my work," she re­vealed. "My daugh­ter Amaya is my lit­tle light and part­ner who paints with me some­times."

Ca­reer wise, she's one part ra­dio talk show host, giv­ing her in­ci­sive opin­ions on Take Two, along­side ei­ther co-host Wayne Chance or John Benoit on the mid morn­ing shift on I 95.5 FM. Her fa­mil­iar voice and on-air charm has earned her many a loy­al lis­ten­er over the years. But what many per­sons do not know is that Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les is al­so a tex­tile de­sign­er who runs a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. The jour­ney of this dual-ca­reer-mom is one that in­spires oth­ers to be­lieve in their dreams and al­so chal­lenges us to be un­afraid of ex­plor­ing our hid­den tal­ents.

Her in­ter­est in ra­dio start­ed about two decades ago when she was ap­proached by me­dia vet­er­an Tony Lee while she worked at a bank.

"It was noth­ing planned. Tony liked my voice and asked me if I would be in­ter­est­ed in do­ing ra­dio," said Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les. The im­pe­tus to leave the bank­ing sec­tor came when she was re­quired to stay long hours one par­tic­u­lar night to en­sure that her ac­count bal­anced. "I just de­cid­ed that it was time for a change. I took up the of­fer and start­ed read­ing the news at 98.9FM and al­so worked as a pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant with Al­li­son Hen­nessy's Com­mu­ni­ty Date­line," she said.

Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les soon be­gan co-host­ing an ear­ly morn­ing mu­sic pro­gram at the same sta­tion.

She then host­ed a pro­gram which dealt specif­i­cal­ly with women's is­sues. "It was re­al­ly lib­er­at­ing and fun. I think the sta­tion had im­me­di­ate suc­cess. At times, we were the num­ber one mid-morn­ing show. The show even­tu­al­ly tran­si­tioned where I would have a co-host," she said proud­ly. Af­ter mov­ing to I 95.5 FM, Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les delved in­to more po­lit­i­cal is­sues along with oth­er top­i­cal is­sues of the day. And for the past three years she has been the con­trast­ing co-host on Take Two.

"We are very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties but it's re­al­ly en­joy­able. I've al­so start­ed co-host­ing on a Thurs­day with Ralph Ma­haraj who is a mix of pol­i­tics and the­atre." she quipped.

Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les has en­joyed a long, fruit­ful ca­reer in me­dia thus far, but re­veals that her cre­ative, artis­tic side is the "core" of who she is. Com­ing from a sol­id artis­tic back­ground (her dad is an ar­chi­tect/artist), Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les seems like she was ge­net­i­cal­ly pre­dis­posed to fol­low­ing a cre­ative ca­reer. "I've al­ways loved art and I had an amaz­ing Art teacher (Mrs. Mary Gill) at St. Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege," Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les re­vealed. Af­ter leav­ing her al­ma mater, she con­tin­ued to have great men­tors who helped her tech­ni­cal­ly per­fect the art of batik (it's a cloth that is tra­di­tion­al­ly made us­ing a man­u­al wax-re­sist dye­ing tech­nique) but she soon moved on to cre­at­ing her own sig­na­ture style.

"I make dye in­to paint and then paint on fab­ric. I can paint on any nat­ur­al fab­ric but I spe­cial­ize in silk. It's wear­able art ba­si­cal­ly," she re­vealed.

Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les ded­i­cates her week­ends to her art and re­veals that the qui­etude of the ear­ly morn­ing at her Diego Mar­tin home helps to get her in­to "the zone".

"I start with white fab­ric and I pick a colour and I start paint­ing. Then I de­cide whether I want to blend or con­trast. I love work­ing with bright, live­ly colours."

The fab­ric goes through a prepa­ra­tion be­fore paint­ing and a chem­i­cal process which en­sures that the paint stays on. This takes up to three days. "I just re­al­ly love work­ing with fab­ric and un­der­stand­ing how the dif­fer­ent grades of fab­ric re­spond to colour. I hon­est­ly can­not say that I have seen oth­er peo­ple do what I do," she said.

Her first tex­tile ex­hi­bi­tion was done at age 21 and a few oth­ers there­after. Ad­mit­ted­ly, Sar­jeant-Gon­za­les has not host­ed one in over a decade be­cause her work is al­ways in de­mand.

Through word of mouth her niche mar­ket grew and to­day she even sup­plies to renowned fash­ion de­sign­er Meil­ing and al­so ex­ports. Her fab­rics are made in­to uni­forms, scarves, couch­es, cur­tains and reg­u­lar cloth­ing.

Just like her par­ents have al­ways sup­port­ed her pas­sion, she en­cour­ages oth­ers to fol­low their hearts.

"In life, just fol­low your dreams. My sis­ter al­ways loved med­i­cine and to­day she is a doc­tor. I've al­ways loved art and I am artist be­cause I was en­cour­aged to be who I am," said Sar­jeant- Gon­za­les. "It takes a lot of pa­tience and hard work, but do what you love. I'm very pas­sion­ate about art and it's ther­a­peu­tic to me. I al­so love ra­dio and I have a close bond with peo­ple who have been with me from day one. The lis­ten­ers be­come part of you. I'm in the hap­pi­est place ever."

For those in­ter­est­ed in Lisa's de­signs, you can check out her face­book page or call her at 758-4208.