Vineyard artists don't just confine their work to paintings that hang on a wall. Some put their imaginations to work turning tables, chairs, beds, and other furniture into practical pieces of art. Six such artists are Edgartown's Margot Datz, West Tisbury's Laura Silber, Jeff Entner and Terry Crimmen, and Ted Box and Edward Hewett of Vineyard Haven.
You might think you're seeing a lace-topped table, but it's really faux lace on wood, painted by artist Margot Datz with folds carved by Ivory Littlefield. Photos courtesy of Margot Datz
Furniture painting often includes collaboration with woodworkers. Ms. Datz depends on West Tisbury cabinetmaker Ivory Littlefield, working from her sketches to produce cabinets and settees that she paints to take on the appearance of other objects - lace clothes or whatever else catches her fancy - with trompe-de-l'oeil surfaces.
Ms. Datz, who usually works on commission, also designed and painted a Bavarian-style, built-in box bed in bright shades of red, green, and white. For the lace-covered table she designed, Mr. Littlefield carved folds of fabric that a viewer may need to touch to determine whether it's wood or lace hanging down from the edge of the table.
"I'm an octopus," Ms. Datz says. "I can paint in any style, any period, or combine painting with sculpture." She has painted murals for 30 years (Vineyard Haven Steamship terminal, Oak Bluffs children's library), illustrated children's books, and wrote and illustrated "A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids" for Simon & Schuster. Her most recent project is creating mini-mosaics of virtues like ingenuity, humor, and flexibility on the staircase risers for the Decorator Show House and Gardens, a benefit for Habitat for Humanity of Martha's Vineyard.
An ornate Bavarian bed designed and painted by Margot Datz.
Reclaimed Island wood provides the inspiration for the furniture Laura Silber makes, paints, and turns into unique works of folk art. Each piece of furniture and cabinetry is unique, evolving out of the materials Ms. Silber makes and finds, leaving their original patinas and textures intact.
She collects scrap wood from demolition projects, felled trees, and even shipping pallets. Her mix and match hardware is all salvaged, and she sells virtually every piece she builds, either by word of mouth or at the Memorial Day and Labor Day Artisan's Festivals.
"It's a very Vineyardy look," Ms. Silber says of her pieces. A chef by training who once worked as the head pastry chef at l'etoile in Edgartown, she started making furniture out of the scraps of lumber left over from the house off Lambert's Cove Road she built herself, with help from Ralph Braun. Friends began buying her work, and by 1999, her business, Demolition Revival Furniture, came into being.
Environmentally friendly finishing products are important to Ms. Silber as well as recycling. She uses lavender oil -- known by Victorians for its antiseptic qualities -- mixed with beeswax to seal and protect and add a warm luster to the furniture.
Laura Silber designs, makes, and paints folk art furniture from reclaimed wood. Photos by Ralph Stewart
Jeff Entner built his reputation for house painting over 20 years, but he and Terry Crimmen also do decorative painting on furniture for their customers as well, adding folk art patterns, borders to floors and antiquing cabinets.
Mr. Entner sometimes draws his color combinations from nature. He often relies on customers for suggestions from pictures in magazines or photographs.
Vineyard Haven's Ted Box gathers driftwood from Island beaches, and creates furniture described as something a wizard might own. A master boatbuilder and carpenter as well as driftwood furniture maker, Mr. Box uses his love of the ocean for inspiration. His furniture incorporates the sculptural twists and turns of wood that has been exposed to weather and water. A table may reflect ocean currents, with side panels shaped like waves and painted blue, and the artist sometimes embeds water-washed stones along the legs of a piece.
"Nature is never monolithic," Mr. Box says. "It's always playing with colors and shades of colors." Although he follows the Mies van der Rohe dictum, "less is more," he always employs different combinations of color; he'll add a little yellow to green, often working with two or three brushes and applying color like a blush.
Ted Box with one of his driftwood pieces, a roll top desk, in a design inspired by ocean currents.
"The reason driftwood delights the eye is a combination of texture and color," he explains. "They allow the light to invade all the little spaces, giving the illusion color is floating just about the wood itself."
Fascinated as a kid by the View-Master, a device for creating 3-D images, Mr. Box tries not to let a piece leave his hands until it passes his View-Master test.
Edward Hewett uses wooden boxes made by Vineyard Haven cabinetmaker Carlton Sprague as his canvases. Illustrations of children's stories are a popular theme, as are marine subjects like the Island's ferries, house portraits, and decorative motifs.
After many years teaching painting at Ohio State University, Mr. Hewett moved to the Island in 1972, and joined the faculty of Martha's Vineyard Regional High School, building the art department.
Mr. Hewett used to comb through antique shops and yard sales to find old boxes he could paint. But after painting 200 of them, he returned to his first love, abstract painting, exhibiting at the Field Gallery and the Dragonfly.
More recently, Mr. Hewett has returned to painting boxes made by Mr. Sprague, and has produced seven or eight since last year. The boxes are made of poplar, which he says is the classic choice of wood since it doesn't have grain or knotholes. He uses artist's oil paint sealed with spray-on polyurethane varnish. They are sold at the Granary Gallery.
