Strauss Studios features custom, art-infused furniture and home decor
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CANTON — A vivid, complete-wall mural greets website 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 at all but standard.
Open at 236 Walnut Ave. NE for about 10 several years, the previous John Strauss Furniture recently improved its name to Strauss Studios to superior replicate its artistic id and focus.
Even though Strauss specializes in planning and making furnishings, business enterprise partner Carisa Marie Bell focuses on interior style and design.
Strauss and Bell began working jointly professionally in 2012 they are acquiring married in June. Originally from the West Coast, Bell co-owns Strauss Studios.
Artwork exhibitions
Strauss Studios also has a whole slate of public art exhibits scheduled for its upstairs gallery, which features exposed brick relationship to the building’s development in the early 1900s.
Before this month, local artist Steve Ehret opened an show titled, “Preserve Watering the Crops.” He also painted the mural inside the entrance of Strauss Studios.
His other will work will be on display through Nov. 12, adopted by artist Morgan Spangle’s exhibition from Nov. 19 through Dec. 17. The artwork of David Kuntzman was showcased earlier this yr.
Utilizing a design that is hugely imaginative and often colorful, Ehret explained he is “pulled inspiration from ‘The Maxx’, 90s cartoons these types of as ‘Ren & Stimpy,’ and rolling landscapes from path jogging.”
Spangle, of Larchmont, New York, studied studio art and artwork record at Brown College 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 based on images, possibly taken by her while traveling or pulled from other sources on the Web or in newspapers and journals.
“It truly is now the creative hothouse that we envisioned, that we view ourselves and this location as being,” Strauss, a educated sculptor, explained of the home furnishings business enterprise.
“We like to share (the gallery artwork) with everyone who comes in (to store for home furnishings),” he claimed. Artwork also can be seen on the net at http://www.straussfurniture.com/
Background in sculpture
A Chicago indigenous, Strauss graduated from Brown College in 1982 with an artwork-related diploma ahead of completing the Unbiased Examine Plan of the Whitney Museum of American Artwork. He also acquired his master’s degree in fantastic arts at The Town College of New York.
With additional than 30 a long time of experience in generating and manufacturing furnishings, Strauss works with designers from throughout the country to fabricate their tailor made models. He explained he attracts inspiration from mid-century and art deco stylings.
The enterprise tagline is “inventive objects for significant areas,” Strauss claimed.
“We want persons to understand the objects that they’re placing in their houses,” he said. “Not just anything that is likely to sit in their household for 5 to 6 yrs and then be in a landfill.”
‘Statement pieces’
Artwork, photographs and other flourishes are incorporated into lots of of the household furniture pieces.
“We adore to locate artists that inspire us and who we can get the job done along with,” Bell said.
Collaborating artists are from Ohio and outside the point out. Acrylic paintings and other imagery mesh with wood and metallic to make memorable furnishings. Sculptural accessories also are created and offered, as nicely as upholstered furniture.
Strauss explained far more retail items and more compact goods have been extra to the shop further than exceptional furniture.
“We’re really searching for the assertion items that change a home to a household,” explained Bell, who has much more than 20 several years of working experience in interior structure.
“These are points that no person else is doing,” she added.
Selling prices selection from “medium to better-stop,” Bell explained.
The duo’s perform also has been featured at the High Stage Household furniture Sector in North Carolina, which is the biggest furnishing market trade display in the environment, in accordance to its website.
‘A state that tends to make art’
Organic and natural resources are crucial, Strauss reported, noting he makes use of lumber from an Amish company and certified sustainable forest.
“We are incredibly a lot about … maintaining eco-friendly,” he claimed.
Furniture is designed onsite, but “we operate with the Amish group for sections and parts,” Strauss claimed.
“We won’t be able to do everything,” stated Strauss, whose great aunt was Mabel Schamberg, the inside designer of the “Residence of Tomorrow” at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
His father owned a substantial-end household furniture showroom in downtown Chicago and his mom was an interior designer.
Ohio is abundant with welders, metal polishers, glassblowers and artists, Strauss observed.
“There are resources for just about everything we want to have made,” he said. “We really like that about Ohio — it is pretty much a state that can make artwork. There’s so a great deal creative imagination and production. This would not exist just about everywhere in the place.”
Arrive at Ed at 330-580-8315 and [email protected]
On Twitter @ebalintREP