andrea enthal – victorian excess

 

Andrea ‘Enthal is big on symmetry; her designs are reminiscent of 60s paisley and psychedelia, with big measures of Art Nouveau, William Morris, Rococo, and Medieval styles all adding to the mix. The colours are cool, rich and clear, featuring a spectrum from bright pinks to blues and greens with lots of vibrant contrasts. They are almost lurid in their patterned excess, but still somewhow compelling and seductive.

When I first approached Andrea for an interview about her designs on Spoonflower, she told me that she doesn’t really consider it a business. Instead, she suggested that if I ran a Google search on her name, I would be more likely to find about her life as a rock critic and dj on KPFK radio in Los Angeles, which she did for 18 years. I would probably also find a fair bit about her passion for vintage cars, especially her 1960 Edsel and her 1952 Studebaker, both of which have been used in the series Mad Men.

 

andrea enthal – the wedding present

Currently, she divides her time between her beloved cars, and a couple of part time day jobs. One of them is as a consultant to a private high school “where they give me a beautiful computer and do not mind at all if I mix Spoonflower work between the work I am doing for them during the day.”

“I don’t think I have ever been employed as an artist.

 

“But being an artist isn’t what you are paid for. It is who you are. Swimmers have to swim. Farmers have to farm. And artists have to art, whether anybody pays them to do that or not.”

 

 

andrea enthal – enchanted alien jungle

She said she probably started making art as a baby in a high chair, when she discovered that crayons were more fun to make lines on the walls with than to eat.  “My mother was an artist, so I never knew there was anything but doing art as I grew up. There were no basketball hoops at my house. But my mother did build an art counter with northern light for me to spend time at in my childhood. I think everything in my life has led to this point in one way or another.”

 

“My mother painted a little girl walking down a garden path on one wall of my bedroom when I was still crib age. She painted the kitchen curtains with scenes from an imaginary France and Italy.

 

“She taught me how to use watercolors, and how to draw in perspective.
She had me paint a rose on my bedroom door and we found a sample book of wallpaper in the trash, so she had me wallpaper my clothes closet with a patchwork pattern from its pages.
And she was a stern teacher. Nothing I ever did was good enough, no matter what. It could always be better.

“She taught me enough that in 9th grade, when the art class was going to spend a term studying perspective and the final exam was to draw a spiral staircase in three point perspective, I went home the night of the first class, drew the staircase, turned it in the next class, got an A, and was then allowed to draw or do anything I wanted for the rest of the term.”

 

andrea enthal – hassan’s house of hookahs

Andrea had some formal art training later in high school, with an art teacher “who was even less willing to give praise to anybody than my mother. Usually my native ability had got me through any school art assignment. But when I first tried his weekly rendering assignments I flunked. Took about 2 months before my shadows were correct and my gradations smooth, and I could have my work pinned to the board as having gotten an A.”

She did also have a brief encounter in the early 70s with “art school” in college. She produced a simple portrait; but on presenting her work for critique, was questioned on its “meaning”. When she said it didn’t mean anything, it was just a picture, she was criticised for being “emotionally repressed” and not in touch with her feelings or politics. “I never took another class in the art department. Too much bovine by-product for me to tolerate.”

 

andrea enthal – if pennsylvania dutch drew paisley

She draws when ever she can. Her abstracts are all drawn freehand on card stock, and are mostly made in fiber tip pen. However, she doesn’t worry too much about using fancy artist’s supplies. “I use everything from Flair felt tips through store brand gel pens, and watercolor markers. I own a few fancy Copeks and some brush markers. I am particularly fond of Sakara Glaze and Souffle and gel pens.

 

“But the art comes from the artist, not the pen. So I will use anything and everything I get my paws on.”  

 

Generally making one or two master drawings a day, each master drawing can result in 1-20 proofed designs. It is only after she is happy with the drawing that she scans the work in; the computer is not used to manipulate the image at all, so editing is limited to processes such as cropping, changing colours, and adjusting contrast.

How did she get the Spoonflower handle Edsel2084? “My first design on Spoonflower was a picture of a 1958 Edsel. Edsel2084 is from the serial number of my own 1960 Edsel car. It was the 2084th 1960 Edsel made out of 2846. My parents bought it new for my mother to drive me in the kindergarten carpool and I still have it. I named the account that because I figured I would sell fabric to other Edsel owners. I never imagined there was any market for the abstracts (which I call paisleys, even though they don’t all have actual paisley in them) at that time. But one day, I had extra space on a proof set so I put some of my abstracts on it, figuring they would never sell, but I was paying the same for 15 designs as 12. Turns out the paisleys were the hit, and the car pictures create very limited interest. That was 11,000 designs ago.”

 

andrea enthal – we’ll never be royals either

 

You can find {LOTS} more of Andrea’s designs in her Spoonflower shop, edsel2084.