Strauss Studios features custom, art-infused furniture and home decor
CANTON — A vibrant, total-wall mural greets visitors to Strauss Studios as soon as they enter the brick, character-endowed building on Walnut Avenue NE in downtown Canton.
The imaginative aquatic scene is a precursor to a furniture boutique and artwork gallery combo that is anything but normal.
Open at 236 Walnut Ave. NE for about 10 decades, the former John Strauss Furniture recently changed its name to Strauss Studios to better replicate its artistic id and concentration.
When Strauss specializes in creating and creating household furniture, business enterprise partner Carisa Marie Bell focuses on inside design and style.
Strauss and Bell began performing jointly professionally in 2012 they are receiving married in June. Initially from the West Coast, Bell co-owns Strauss Studios.
Art exhibitions
Strauss Studios also has a entire slate of public art displays scheduled for its upstairs gallery, which features exposed brick relationship to the building’s construction in the early 1900s.
Previously this thirty day period, local artist Steve Ehret opened an exhibit titled, “Preserve Watering the Vegetation.” He also painted the mural inside of the entrance of Strauss Studios.
His other operates will be on display through Nov. 12, followed by artist Morgan Spangle’s exhibition from Nov. 19 as a result of Dec. 17. The artwork of David Kuntzman was showcased earlier this calendar year.
Applying a type that is very imaginative and typically vibrant, Ehret mentioned he is “pulled inspiration from ‘The Maxx’, 90s cartoons such as ‘Ren & Stimpy,’ and rolling landscapes from path managing.”
Spangle, of Larchmont, New York, studied studio art and art background at Brown University before painting at The Art Institute of Chicago.
Spangle, former director of the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, stated some of her paintings are loosely primarily based on images, both taken by her while traveling or pulled from other sources on the World-wide-web or in newspapers and publications.
“It’s now the artistic hothouse that we envisioned, that we view ourselves and this put as being,” Strauss, a educated sculptor, reported of the home furniture company.
“We like to share (the gallery art) with any one who will come in (to store for furnishings),” he explained. Artwork also can be seen on the net at http://www.straussfurniture.com/
Track record in sculpture
A Chicago indigenous, Strauss graduated from Brown University in 1982 with an art-similar degree in advance of completing the Independent Review Software of the Whitney Museum of American Artwork. He also gained his master’s degree in wonderful arts at The Town College of New York.
With extra than 30 decades of experience in creating and production furnishings, Strauss works with designers from throughout the country to fabricate their custom types. He explained he attracts inspiration from mid-century and artwork deco stylings.
The business tagline is “inventive objects for significant areas,” Strauss claimed.
“We want men and women to fully grasp the objects that they are putting in their residences,” he said. “Not just a little something which is heading to sit in their home for five to 6 many years and then be in a landfill.”
‘Statement pieces’
Artwork, photographs and other flourishes are incorporated into lots of of the furniture pieces.
“We like to uncover artists that inspire us and who we can perform alongside with,” Bell said.
Collaborating artists are from Ohio and outside the point out. Acrylic paintings and other imagery mesh with wood and metal to create unforgettable furnishings. Sculptural equipment also are built and offered, as perfectly as upholstered household furniture.
Strauss reported a lot more retail presents and smaller products have been additional to the retail store further than exceptional home furnishings.
“We are actually wanting for the statement parts that transform a home to a house,” explained Bell, who has additional than 20 many years of working experience in interior design.
“These are matters that no one else is undertaking,” she included.
Charges variety from “medium to higher-conclude,” Bell said.
The duo’s function also has been featured at the High Stage Household furniture Sector in North Carolina, which is the premier furnishing industry trade clearly show in the entire world, in accordance to its website.
‘A condition that will make art’
Natural and organic resources are important, Strauss said, noting he takes advantage of lumber from an Amish corporation and certified sustainable forest.
“We’re extremely a great deal about … maintaining eco-friendly,” he reported.
Household furniture is built onsite, but “we work with the Amish group for components and items,” Strauss said.
“We can’t do every little thing,” explained Strauss, whose great aunt was Mabel Schamberg, the inside designer of the “Household of Tomorrow” at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
His father owned a higher-conclude furniture showroom in downtown Chicago and his mom was an interior designer.
Ohio is plentiful with welders, metal polishers, glassblowers and artists, Strauss noted.
“There are resources for pretty much everything we need to have to have designed,” he said. “We enjoy that about Ohio — it is practically a condition that can make artwork. There is so considerably creativity and producing. This won’t exist everywhere in the nation.”
Get to Ed at 330-580-8315 and [email protected]
On Twitter @ebalintREP
