DESIGNERS’ NOTEBOOK Home-related tips, trends, and tidbits
GET OUTDOORS: Riverbend Home, a home décor online marketplace, reveals in its Around the Bend spring trends that they’re seeing lots more outdoor working spaces, and also acknowledges that front yards are the new backyard (think drive-by celebrations). riverbendhome.com FENCE ME IN: Sherwin-Williams’ 2021 Color of the Year is proving to be a great shade for wood fences. Urbane Bronze is a rich, grounding brown with gray undertones. sherwin-williams.com TO MARKET: The High Point Spring Market returns to an in-person event June 5-9 in High Point, N.C. It’s the place to be for those who love design, as it’s where tomorrow’s homes are imagined, given form, and brought to life by home furnishings industry innovators. The fall market is scheduled for Oct. 16-20 highpointmarket.org COOL COVE: The Ford Cove Shoreline and Coastal Wetland Restoration Project is transforming Ford House’s Lake St. Clair shoreline back to its natural state. It was originally created by the Fords when they built their estate in Grosse Pointe Shores in the 1920s. fordhouse.org PETITE PITS: Measuring 10 inches tall, Baby Fire Pits are perfect for smallcottage patios. They’re designed to be used with a smokeless, nontoxic gel fuel for hassle-free enjoyment. babyfirepits.com — Compiled by Megan Swoyer
Have news about waterfront living? Email MSwoyer@Hour-Media.com.
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Shore Thing
A Grand Rapids-area artist expresses Lake Michigan’s beauty with paint, water, and a few surprises By Megan Swoyer
F
ive years ago, Susan Anderson picked up a paint brush and started to create a beach scene on pallet board. “Everyone was in Florida and I couldn’t be, so I said, If I can’t be there, I can at least try to paint a beach,” she recalls. Dipping her toes into the world of painting turned out to be a very good thing. She used wood from a pallet as her canvas and painted water, sand, and sky so beautifully that when people saw the results of the Michigan beach scene, they wanted to purchase her paintings. “My brother wanted a painting immediately,” she recalls, “then others, and then I started to attend craft and art fairs.” The “beach painter” from Jenison, Mich., soon became a well-known fixture at a variety of venues. Anderson’s husband, Paul, has become involved in the art scene, as well. Today,
he purchases Anderson’s tongue-andgroove wood (no pallets anymore) and does the framing. “He’s been alongside me and I couldn’t do it without him,” Anderson says. A lover of art since she was young, Anderson, who grew up in Forest Hills, attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids and then Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. “I loved painting landscapes in watercolor,” she recalls, “but I wanted to be an art therapist.” She eventually received a degree in marketing, with an art history minor. Anderson, who has three grown children, says she soon started to “get out of my box more.” Floating in a more tactile direction, she added different mediums and textures to her acrylic base, such as gels and sand and crushed beach shells. Her dimensional creations with the added
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