DESIGN: Minimalist to the Max

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Karen Skelton is a pack rat with the heart of a minimalist. ?I really like the modern look, but I have too many things to be as sparse as I?d like to be, so I try to cluster things so there?s space for the eye to rest,? says the artist and designer, whose home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, unites original art, eclectic collections, and clean lines with maximum charm.

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Consider the dining table, of her own design, at which Skelton is sitting on this sparkling February afternoon, her light hair and earth-toned clothing perfectly complementing the blond wood and other natural hues around her. Made of bamboo plywood?a sustainable, inexpensive, and beautiful material she discovered on the Internet?the elliptical table, resting on a tubular base, has the simple, elegant look of Danish Modern furniture. It?s definitely minimalist?but over it Skelton has hung a whimsical floral waterfall of a chandelier by the Dutch designer Tord Boontje, which cascades toward a centerpiece of surprisingly lovely plaster cauliflower florets, of all things.

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Only someone with such a sure eye for color and aesthetic connections could get away with the fabulous juxtapositions that Skelton has created throughout her turn-of-the-century Sears house in this neighborhood of historic homes known as ?The Hill.? (She discovered it was a ready-to-assemble Sears Catalog Home when a carpenter found a numbered board during renovations.)

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In the living room, designer chairs by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Harry Bertoia keep company with two end tables Skelton found abandoned at the curb and then repainted. In the kitchen, brushed-steel appliances peacefully coexist with open shelves; homey, yet sophisticated, plywood cupboards; and a Masonite-topped table salvaged from an old textile mill in Brimfield, Massachusetts.

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?Her house is an ever-changing wonder for me,? says Gaye Parise, a longtime friend and former retailer. ?She?ll go to a tag sale and find the perfect thing that fits with all her other things. It?s like a little museum.?

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?Her sense of color shows through in everything she does,? says Alan Clark of Clark & Green Architecture + Design in Great Barrington, for whom Skelton has designed stationery, graphics, and a brochure. ?I was really struck by her arrangement of things [in her home], using offbeat materials and objects in really interesting ways.?

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Among those intriguing objects: half a dozen vintage flashlights above the living room fireplace; delicate Asian parasols with checkerboard edges clustered below a window; a series of mushroom prints in the diminutive downstairs bathroom; and, of course, pottery in all shapes and colors from Skelton?s ceramics business, Potluck Studios (more on that later), which she ran for eleven years.

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There are paintings throughout the house: Skelton?s own loose, vivid still lifes of asparagus, onions, and lemons in the kitchen; prints by the graphic designer Milton Glaser, whom Skelton studied with and worked for; bold abstract canvases by her late husband, Richard Siegel, filling entire walls; and, on the second floor, framed landscapes and sea scenes from the couple?s collection of paintings bought for less than a hundred dollars, as well as a portrait of the house they owned together in Amagansett, New York. In a small anteroom attached to the master bedroom, Skelton has grouped a series of platinum prints by the photographer John Gruen with her own gray-toned, atmospheric shots of water and sky.

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Born in Flint, Michigan; raised in ?many states? including Michigan, Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin; and educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned a degree in art, Skelton arrived in New York City in 1972 and set out to become a professional photographer. She worked eight hours a day in a photography studio and waited tables at night, somehow managing to fit in classes at the School of Visual Arts with Glaser, including his sought-after Design and Personality course. That led to five years of working with Glaser in his graphic arts studio. His artistic versatility?and the fact that he actually made real money by designing?inspired her.

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Skelton took pottery classes, too, learning to throw, hand-build, and glaze in the Japanese raku style. When her teacher told her she didn?t have to stop with one layer of glaze, that she could re-glaze a piece and then fire it again, ?it opened up a whole world of possibilities,? Skelton recalls. ?I didn?t have to stop. I could just keep working at it.?

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In 1992, she was unexpectedly offered a booth in the new gardening section of the New York International Gift Fair by Bobbie Lefenfeld, whom she met at a pottery class in Manhattan. Working under pressure, she sold five thousand tiny flowerpots glazed and fired in the raku style.

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?I went for organic and authentic,? she says, showing some samples of these first miniature pots, glazed in burnished gold, copper, moss, and turquoise, some aged and oxidized-looking, others marbled with layers of swirling greens and browns.

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Customers loved them??Gardening was just becoming hot, and I hit something at the right time,? Skelton says?leading her into the next phase of her artistic life, as owner and operator of Potluck Studios, which at its height employed two production throwers and half a dozen glazers. (She sold the business to Annie Selke of Pine Cone Hill in 2003.)

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Gaye Parise met Skelton at a trade show in Manhattan and remembers that ?she had by far the best presentation, the best product, the best eye.? She put Skelton in touch with an editor at Victoria magazine who gave Potluck Studios a six-page spread, that along with press from other high visibility magazines such as Country Home, Country Living and New York, among others, brought in orders from across the country. Later, when Parise started her retail store in New Milford, Connecticut, the Church Street Trading Company (she also helped create the Great Barrington store of the same name), she stocked Skelton?s ceramics and remembers them flying off the shelf.

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The glass-fronted cabinets in the narrow pantry between Skelton?s kitchen and dining room are filled with dinnerware and vessels created during her years designing for Potluck. Crusty raku bowls look as if they were just recovered in an archeological dig in Asia or Egypt. Romantic ruffle-edged bowls, plates, and even a cake stand, in cream and pale green, were influenced by French pottery.

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Columnar vases in peach and olive resemble the torsos of Greek sculptures wrapped in drapery. All of it looks classic and homegrown at once, eminently user-friendly yet completely distinctive. ?There?s nothing pretentious or fancy about me,? Skelton says. ?My domestic life is really the center of my life. My inspiration comes from the home.?

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That?s evident in her stylish but comfortable kitchen, all of her own design, which she built in the space once occupied by a back porch. (?I never sit down anyway,? she says.) She has mixed unusual pieces such as the table and a set of square-seated stools acquired from the same mill, all painted a rich shade called manganese brown, with a gleaming Bosch dishwasher and Wolf convection-microwave oven. (Skelton loves to cook.) To preserve the century-old look of the rest of the house, she?s added wainscoting, which lends an old-fashioned air, ?to feel like it had [always] been here.?

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The fronts of the long limestone-topped counters and drawers on the west-facing wall are cut from a single sheet of four-by-eight-foot plywood so that the grain lines up perfectly, explains carpenter Andrew Brazie. Open metal shelves hold colorful boxes and tins of herbal tea. The floor is of Skelton?s new favorite material, bamboo plywood, and the built-in drawers and cupboards, constructed by Brazie and carpenter and contractor Evan Hardcastle, are of birch plywood.

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?It?s unique,? Brazie says of Skelton?s frequent use of plywood, typically considered a rough, temporary material. ?Everybody wants to cover it up, but if it?s done right, it looks great.?

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Throughout the rest of the first floor, the original maple floors have been refinished, and Skelton has kept most of the walls white to provide a clean backdrop?though she couldn?t resist painting one wall in the living room, opposite the south-facing windows, a deep pomegranate red.

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Against this wall is a bookcase Skelton bought for seventy-five dollars; she added sliding doors and painted it a 1950s shade of avocado. Made-to-order birch plywood shelves, rough ends exposed, surround two sides of the room, holding CDs, books, pottery, and curios; a sliding door in one unit hides a teeny-tiny television. Brazie also built a plywood computer table to Skelton?s specifications.

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Grouped near the fireplace are a rattan chair by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, chrome chairs by the Italian designer Harry Bertoia, each shaped like a pair of generous lips, and small, round wooden tables by the Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto, which inspired Skelton?s bamboo table. Finishing touches include a giant wood bowl, a vase of applewood branches, and a large rectangular rug in browns and beiges.

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More unusual pieces are found upstairs in the anteroom to the master bedroom, including a Wassily leather chair, originally designed by Marcel Breuer in the 1920s. Nearby are a cylindrical tapered floor lamp from the 1950s and a mill table inset with Portuguese numbered tiles. The mantel of a second, smaller fireplace is lined with shells and rocks. In the bedroom, a simple Crate & Barrel bedstead in light wood makes perfect sense with a Paul McCobb dresser and side tables.

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A Glaser print of a few bears takes up one wall, and the warm reds and browns of the bedspread give a glow to the room. A pocket door leads to a renovated bathroom with a bamboo floor, an extra-deep tub, and a shower lined with tiles Skelton glazed herself. The walls are painted a luscious yellowy orange.

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?It?s like sitting in a pumpkin when you?re in the bathtub,? Skelton says. A plywood stand surrounding and supporting the sink includes built-in shelves, one of which holds a row of alphabet blocks made out of wood. ?There?s a lot of kid-like stuff here,? Skelton says. Though she and Siegel never had children, Skelton takes an exuberant joy in her design and art, like a kid playing with fingerpaints.

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Down the hall are two guest bedrooms and another redone bathroom, this one all in white. Skelton?s minimalist side wins out here; a half-wall replaces shower curtains and open shelves for linens substitute for towel bars. White subway tiles on the walls, Carrara marble tiles on the floor, and white wainscoting complete the clean look. The hall itself will soon hold rows of CD shelving to accommodate the collections of Skelton?s boyfriend, Phil Johnson, a writer/editor and jazz lover who has an eclectic music show on Great Barrington?s community radio station, WBCR-LP, 97.7 FM.

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Upstairs beneath the eaves is Skelton?s office, lined with a long table of (what else?) plywood, where she does her graphic design work and develops projects, including her new collection of playful, inexpensive shades cut from tough, nonflammable paper, designed to be mailed flat and then assembled around hanging bulbs.

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Adjacent to the office is Skelton?s studio, where she has been at work recently on a stunning series of monoprints using pieces from old garden chandeliers as stencils. (Three are on view at Lauren Clark Fine Art in Housatonic, Massachusetts.) The organic, abstract shapes sometimes suggest tulips or ferns, other times classical architecture or religious symbols and textured layers of paint, in vivid greens and yellows and lava-like reds and oranges, almost seem to emit light.

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?It?s completely subconscious,? Skelton says. ?I start with a few of the stencils and then the color, and it just goes.? Like her home, her art is instinctive, inventive, and bursting with life. BL
A frequent contributor to Berkshire Living, Tresca Weinstein also writes about art, architecture, yoga, and dance for national and regional publications. [JUNE 2009]

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A frequent contributor to Berkshire Living, Tresca Weinstein also writes about art, artchitecture, yoga, and dance for national and regional publications.

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THE?GOODS

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Karen Skelton Design

8 Oak St.

Great Barrington, Mass.

www.karenskeltondesign.com

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