HOME-RUN PURSUITS
An ambitious breed of California creatives finds
their modern residences ideal, natural workplaces

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

When sculptor Tony Natsoulas decided it was time to relocate from an inner city warehouse to a real home, he knew it had to include a studio.

"I like working at home. I like going out to the studio anytime I want instead of going across town," he says. "If I get a whim at two o'clock in the morning, I can sculpt."

Tony and his wife, Donna Natsoulas, chose a light-filled Streng Bros. home in North Sacramento, turning its garage into a studio and the rest of it into a virtual museum of California Funk.

It's turned out to be an ideal place to work, providing enough room to construct his larger-than-life figures and to run two kilns. The garage also makes it easy to load his work onto trucks. Plus, he's made friends. "Tony has the garage door open, so he knows all the neighborhood kids," Donna says. "Kids come in and make things with clay."

Modern homes attract creative people, so it's not surprising that many are used for creative businesses. Many creative people who run businesses from modern homes say the homes inspire their designs. Others appreciate the flexibility the homes provide. Some even say that without the home, there would have been no business.

That's what Rita Lawrence said about the business she founded in 1950 with her husband Max. Architectural Pottery won fame for its simple, starkly beautiful planters. It became one of the best-known producers of modern ceramic and plastic furnishings in the country -- and, no doubt, one of the best-known artistic endeavors ever run from a modern home. "We wanted to "produce the classics of the future," the Lawrences vowed. They succeeded.

The firm got its start in a compact 'Modernique' tract home in Los Angeles' Mar Vista neighborhood designed by Gregory Ain.

What inspired the Lawrences to produce modern planters? "I think in truth it was from living in Gregory Ain contemporary housing," Rita Lawrence told an oral historian in 2000 ('A Better World Through Good Design,' an oral history conducted by Teresa Barnett for the Oral History Program at the University of California, Los Angeles). "Because when we went out to try and buy anything from a lamp to an ashtray to furniture, there wasn't anything (that would fit the house)."

The Lawrences, socially conscious as well as obsessed with cutting-edge design, did more than live in an Ain home. They became Ain's angels, financially backing several of his projects. They lived in his Dunsmuir Apartments in Los Angeles, and briefly at a cooperative project Ain designed in Altadena.

"We came to be called Ainal erotic," said Rita, who dated Ain once, long before she met Max. Ain concluded the date by taking her to see one of his houses.

Although the home in Mar Vista was only 1,200 square feet, it worked well for the business. "It was a house that you could make function in any number of ways. In that, we ultimately had wonderful usage," Rita said.

The house had a pass-through between galley kitchen and open living area, where a high school boy she hired as secretary set up his typewriter. A foldout door separated the living area from a room the Lawrences used as their master bedroom at night. During the day, the room was filled with pots and paperwork. The two back bedrooms were occupied by their son, Damon, who was seven when Architectural Pottery began, and daughter Diane, "a tranquil little roly-poly of six months."

Neither Lawrence ever threw a pot. Instead, they worked with young designers Max met at Los Angeles' Chouinard Art Institute. The ceramics were outsourced to an old-time terra cotta firm.

They sold less to stores than to architects and interior designers who needed modern objects for their projects. An early customer was Frank Lloyd Wright. Rita remembered when a department store executive from St. Louis stopped by. "I think he expected a business, and I think I was in my mommy's dress and my baby crawling around." Still, she said, he placed "an enormous order."

Within a few years, however, the house proved too small, so the Lawrences moved to the high-toned neighborhood of Bel Air. "We found this place, and it seemed to answer everything we wanted, except the design," Max recounted. The house was Spanish. The Lawrences wanted modern -- and they got it, by bring in designer Hendrik Van Keppel, of the firm Van Keppel-Green. Van Keppel opened the home to the out-of-doors, provided a glass-walled atrium, and modernized the interior.

Rita continued to run the business from the home, using the atrium to display her wares, and working with her staff around a large Van Keppel-Green table. Max, who retired from canning in 1958, was soon working alongside his wife. Even as the firm expanded, creating large fiberglass planters for malls and furniture for airports, the Lawrences ran it from their home.

Heather Peterson's firm, Girl Charlee, also got its start because of her interest in modern design. Peterson runs the business from a 2,000-square-foot home in Long Beach designed by an unknown architect in 1949. She finds the home inspiring, and its mid-century modern architecture matches her mid-century fabrics.

Like Peterson, Palm Springs graphic designer David Dixon says his modern house, recently built by Palm Springs Modern Homes in a mid-century style, inspires his designs for such clients as the Palm Springs Modern Committee and the Palm Springs Museum. "I find inspiration from the house and the view for the things I design," he says.

Like many people who work in modern homes, Eric Haeberlie says the environment is conducive to creative thought -- and very relaxing. Haeberli, owner of WeLoveJam, develops his recipes in the kitchen of his light-filled Eichler home in San Francisco's Diamond Heights. The jams themselves are cooked up in a commercial kitchen.

"It's the best work environment," Haeberli says of the home. "I'm sitting in my office upstairs, I can look out the windows and I see trees. I'm surrounded by nature. I couldn't ask for anything better."

"Your environment is so important," he says. "I feel I'm more creative, more productive, working in this house. I'm happier."

Pianist Jim McCormick bought his Alexander home in Palm Springs because he thought it would be ideal for his profession of piano teaching. His piano occupies the living room. "I love the space because even though the house is small, it has a nice open living area with high ceilings and lots of glass, and that works very well for me as a studio," says McCormick, who teaches piano to advanced students, beginners, and other piano teachers.

In Sunnyvale, painter Sydell Lewis has discovered that, with a little modification, an Eichler can make a fine professional art studio. She turned some exterior, carport storage into interior storage, removed a wall to turn a closed-off bedroom into a light-filled office, and uses the atrium room as her painting studio.

"What's the opposite of claustrophobia?" Lewis asks. "This is the best studio I've ever had."

At home on the job

Tony and Donna Natsoulas
At-home sculptor and artist
Streng home, Sacramento

Tony Natsoulas, who grew up in a Streng home in Davis, took advantage of nearby UC Davis's strengths. In the art department was the master ceramicist of California Funk, Robert Arneson, along with artists Wayne Thiebaud, Manuel Neri, and Roy de Forest.

"The whole idea of Funk Art was to thumb their noses at traditional art," says Natsoulas, whose sculptures are whimsical, cartoon-like, often shocking, and well made. "I see it as a movement that has come and gone. I'm a post-Funk artist."

Natsoulas works on commission, creates works to sell at galleries, and for the past few years has created public sculpture -- though public sculpture can't be as shocking as he'd like.

Donna Natsoulas, who handles her husband's marketing, is also an artist. Working at the dining table, she creates hand-painted purses and shoes -- often featuring robots. She's also got a corporate job outside of the house.

Not only does their garage offer great space for working, the entire home proved perfect as a museum for their collection of Funky art -- much of it by friends. They own hundreds of sculptures, paintings, and drawings, most of them on display, some stored under the beds.

"What really appeals to me besides the nostalgic appeal of the house is it's a completely clean slate," Tony says. "There's no crown molding, no niches. Any kind of art can go in here." For more: tonynatsoulas.com

Photography: Izzy Schwartz, courtesy Natsoulas family

Eric Haeberli
At-home jam maker - WeLoveJam
Eichler home, San Francisco

Eric Haeberli got into the jam business by accident. Visiting his partner's mother in the Santa Clara Valley, he spotted apricots lying by her tree. "I said, 'We should make some jam.'"

"We began making it for family and friends," says Haeberli, who'd had the wisdom to join Yahoo when it had fewer than a dozen employees. He was semi-retired and enjoying life in his Eichler home in San Francisco. "And people loved the jam. They'd wait every year to get some. This is a cool thing."

Inspired, Haeberli sent a few jars to the food magazines along with a press release praising the Blenheim apricots that once filled much of the Santa Clara Valley before being displaced by suburbia and silicon wafers. 'Food & Wine' magazine ran a short blurb. "They said it was the best jam they ever had," Haeberli says. "We were nowhere at all prepared for the deluge of requests for jam," he says.

Today the firm has a commercial kitchen, but much of the work still takes place in Haeberli's Eichler. "All the recipes are tested and developed in our home kitchen," he says. "We fine-tune them in the house. I find working in the house much more relaxing. It's the Eichler setting. Commercial kitchens don't have floor-to-ceiling walls of glass."

Haeberli, by the way, is a serious student of modern design. His current project -- writing a book about Hendrick Van Keppel.

WeLoveJam, which uses recyclable and biodegradable packaging only, is also helping preserve Santa Clara's Blenheim orchards for future generations, Haeberli says. "There are only a few of these orchards left," he says. "Slow Food USA has them on the endangered list. For more: welovejam.com

Photography: David Toerge, WeLoveJam

Sydell Lewis
At-home abstract artist
Eichler home, Sunnyvale

Most abstract artists don't appreciate people looking at their paintings upside-down. But for Sydell Lewis, that's the point. "I'm hoping to open up the way people look at things," she says. "It's almost like addressing a prejudice."

Lewis, who works in a Sunnyvale Eichler, mounts her canvases on motors that rotate the paintings regularly -- one minute, ten minutes, 15 -- at the viewer's discretion. The paintings are displayed vertically, horizontally, and at an angle. "It turns out a lot of people like these diagonal positions," she says.

"Rotating is not gimmicky," says Lewis, a retired chemist who's been painting full-time for 16 years. "It's not a shtick. It came out of my work. It contributes to how you see things. I think it adds a certain dimension. If you think about it, art should work upside down if it's composed well."

It seems to be working for Lewis, who shows her work at several galleries, including Gallery House in Palo Alto. Her work is also displayed in restaurants, at Kaiser hospitals, and in corporate collections.

Lewis, who loves working from home, says she made some modifications to make that possible. "I decided I didn't want toxic materials so I work in acrylic. There's no odor. It's compatible with my lifestyle." She even uses acrylic paint for her monotype prints, which is unusual. "Most prints are soft colored and muted," she says. "That's not what I do."

She does find one problem with working in a light-filled Eichler -- too much light, especially on winter afternoons when it pours through the atrium into her studio. "I just work around it," she says. For more: sydellart.com

Photography: David Toerge

Jim McCormick
At-home piano instructor
Alexander home, Palm Springs

Jim McCormick, a Mid-Westerner who never appreciated Los Angeles' traffic and noise, relocated to the desert in 2002. "I wanted a quieter place as an artist, and there was something peaceful about the desert," he says. "The desert just drew me."

Since then, he has become an important part of the Coachella Valley's musical scene. He founded a popular awards festival for piano students with the Steinway Society, and has become an esteemed piano teacher who often educates fellow teachers.

McCormick, who favors Chopin, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, says he's happiest when teaching. "You need first of all to be very patient, patient with others," he says, "sensitive to what's going on with another person physically, perceptually, emotionally. And you need a thorough knowledge in life's experience of playing piano."

McCormick, who used to be on the faculty at the University of Southern California and Cal State Long Beach, still sees students several days a week in the Los Angeles area. But most of his teaching takes place in his Alexander home in Palm Springs.

The house, a long-gable model, has an open-beamed ceiling with its high point in the living room, where McCormick teaches piano. It provides an ideal setting, and is one of the reasons he bought the house. The room is big enough for McCormick to give master classes with four or five students.

"I just love the feeling of the room and the glass, being able to look out at the yard," he says. Because it's a corner lot on a cul-de-sac, the yard is large. "It's not close to my neighbors. That was definitely a draw here. I can play any time of the night if I feel like." For more: 760-325-2389

Photography: Larry Merkle

Heather Peterson
At-home kids clothing designer - Girl Charlee
Modern living, Long Beach

Heather Peterson's home-based business started as a byproduct of daily living. Peterson, a website designer and new mother, couldn't find clothes for her daughter, Charlotte. So she rummaged through her collection of vintage fabrics from the 1960s and '70s, began sewing -- and attracting comments on the street. "People who saw Charlee stopped in their tracks," she says. "Where did you get that from?" they would ask.

The result was Girl Charlee, children's clothing made from vintage fabrics using vintage fabrics and patterns, updated for modern living. Peterson designs most of the clothes at home, and markets clothes from other designers as well. She does some of the sewing there, and develops the patterns. Most production takes place in Texas, where she used to live.

Today she has a son as well, Mason. "It's definitely hard running a business and being a mom at the same time," Peterson says. "It was more manageable before the baby came along. I don't have that extra pair of hands growing out of my side like I need to."

She turned one room into a workspace. "It's wall-to-wall fabrics," she says. "I try to keep everything about the business in one room, but it's hard."

Peterson understood e-commerce, so she started an online shop and connected with moms' blogs. It paid off. Now she hopes to get her collection into boutiques as well. The clothing appeals to young mothers who want clothes that are unique, and who enjoy retro modern, she says.

"I didn't expect that things would become so popular. The vintage-modern thing is so mainstream now compared to the way it was then," she says. "I did it because I loved it, not because I thought it was a trend coming."

"If I can picture my ideal client," Peterson says, "it would be someone who lives in a modern house." For more: girlcharlee.com

Photography: John Eng

Additional photography: Ernie Braun, Jack Carrick; and courtesy Damon Lawrence