Blugirl Art

A product of a summer filled with creativity, frustration, bravery and hope, Blugirl Art, which opened its doors about a month ago, is the creation of Suzanne Meyer-Pistorius. This Springfield, Massachusetts artist is primarily a textile designer. She hand-paints fabrics, letting the type of fabric guide her as to which type of paint to use. Suzanne’s creations run the gamut from scarves and pareos, to whimsical painted chairs.

I admire her bravery in leaving a steady job to follow her dream. That takes a lot of guts. Talent helps a lot, too. Suzanne told me yesterday that in her “former life” she worked in the fashion industry, which involved a daily 6 hour commute into New York. “But,” she explained, “it was on those long train rides back and forth each day…that the idea of starting my own business was born.”

“At the beginning of June with an idea in place, I resigned and started on this new phase in my life. In just six months I went from a seed of an idea, to setting up a workshop, creating the products, and launching the site. It has been an exhilarating process ..a feat that sometimes amazes me” Me too.

Her passion is her chairs. The shape of the chair is her starting point. Then she decides which base fabric to use, cotton, silk or hemp. Color selection comes next.

“Then the really hard part starts,” says Suzanne. “I stare at the unpainted fabric and will inspiration to come to my fingertips. Sometimes I paint test pieces and lay them against the chair to get a feeling for proportion. Somehow the design just clicks in my head and I start to paint. Some of the pieces take up to 2 days to paint so it’s very labour intensive.”

I really like Suzanne’s pareos, made of silk chiffon. They’d look great at the beach, but I’d use them as a soft window treatment, or as an ornamental accent throw on a chair. Chum Bucket (my rental beach house) could use one of these.

Good luck to Suzanne and her new enterprise. You can find her work at her site, Blugirl Art, and at Vintage and Modern.

• Posted by Jennifer at 12:06 pm
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• Tagged: Accessories, Furniture, Soft Home, textiles