Written By Donna Engle
When Jackie Smith makes coffee in the morning at her Westminster home, her cat is sometimes under foot. But where you can always find her fuzzy friend is on the wall above her kitchen counter. YesÉ on the wall.
When Dee Cunningham paints a door or a window on a wall, it often looks as if you could open it and look outside.
Both women are decorative experts who transform rooms for people.
Smith is a custom tile artisan who permitted the dynamic, high-relief-and-curious cats, modeled after her own pets, to take up permanent space in the kitchen when installing the wall mural and countertop tiles that she designed.
Together with her husband, Chris, an architect by day, Jackie Smith has turned playing with clay into Gooseneck Designs, a successful, nationally marketed business that markets custom floor, wall and bath tile murals, as well as sinks, fountains, columns and decorative facades.
“I’m not that fond of plain, square tiles,” said Jackie Smith, whose studio is also in Westminster. “They don’t do much for me.” Her clients must agree because they embrace pushing beyond the norm to apply their imaginations to a wish list, which fuels Smith’s creative vision.
A recently completed 208-square-foot tile mural for a fireplace exterior of a Pittsburgh client challenged the Smiths to build a full-scale replica of the three-story chimney so they could ensure that the corners, where tile met tile, would match up perfectly.
Smith explained, however, that the project’s true challenge was keeping the clay moist during the mural’s design process. “Even with damp towels, the clay would want to shrink away from those edges, so it was a race against time.”
“If you don’t stretch yourself and try new things, you get stale,” said Smith. “We’ve been doing custom tile murals for 16 years now, so we have a lot of experience to draw on, but we still run into technical challenges and think, ÔHow are we going to do this one?’ That’s what keeps it interesting; that and the subject matter that people come up with.”
For instance, a Hanover, Pennsylvania, couple commissioned her to create a whimsical bathroom mural for their grandchildren in the large home they were building. Smith designed tiles for the tub, the floor and the vanity counter, and even sculpted the sink.
The resulting room features mermaids, porpoises and other sea “critters,” as Smith calls them, that are far more lively, colorful and fun than the even the most decorative tiles sold at home improvement stores.
For those who want something a little more sedate, but still decorative and handcrafted, Smith offers more than a dozen tile lines, created from molds, although approximately 75 percent of her business is custom tile murals.
Surprisingly, Smith denies being able to draw and is modest about admitting to being artistic, even though turning raw clay into art certainly is not something everyone can do.
Painter Dee Cunningham, who works in a different medium, captures the whimsy or realism of her subject matter in murals.
Learning from her grandmother, an art teacher, Cunningham was painting before she could write. The lifetime of practicing her craft has earned her growing acclaim and a blossoming business, Deelite Design, which she started in 2006.
A former Westminster resident now living in Baltimore County, Cunningham gets satisfaction out of painting for other people, enlivening their spaces with art that they can’t buy in a store. She recognizes that as a society, we have come to view art as an accessory and have lost contact with the ways it can really be a part of our daily lives, our culture.
“Art is a necessary part of being a fulfilled human being,” says Cunningham, “so, bringing that back to people and doing one-of-a-kind pieces for them is something that I really get a lot out of.”
In finishing a mural in a home in southern Carroll County, she gave a unique gift to yet another delighted client. Hoping to mark a moment in time, the homeowners relied on Cunningham’s keen eye and steady hand to capture a scenic view of the family’s farm as it flourished during its more than 100-year history.
From the brand of tractor to the shingles on the farmhouse’s roof and down to the nuance of the grazing Hereford cattle, she painted and installed a multi-paneled mural on the dining room wall of the couples’ new home, just down the road from the farm.
In additional to murals, Cunningham does trompe l’oeil decorative paintings, which fool the eye through their realistic spatial and tactical qualities, and applies faux finishes to walls and furniture. If you think that faux finishing is your grandmother’s three-colored sponge painting, Cunningham can open your eyes.
She takes an almost environmental approach to faux finishing. She can make an oak desk look as if it is made of an exotic or endangered wood.
In addition to adding beauty, her painting talent adds value, and even saves money on some projects. With paint, glaze and know-how, she is able to spare clients from having to add their old kitchen cabinets to the landfill by giving them a painted facelift.
And in case you are thinking of overlooking a yard sale item for its mundane quality, think again. Cunningham recently took a $10 thrift store sewing table and painted it to look as if its top was sea-green marble with a rich, mahogany border. After painting a Pompeian-inspired beadwork design on the legs, she estimated that the new neoclassical style of the table could easily fetch hundreds, if not thousands, if sold.
Although she cannot describe a favorite among her projects, it is “that moment every time” that Cunningham favors. That moment, she said, is when she presents the completed work to her client and sees their pleasure and excitement.
“It’s serendipitous,” said Cunningham. “I was meant to do this. I think if you’re really doing what you should be doing with your life, everything else falls into place.”
