Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 6, Issue 12, December 2002

Copyright 2002 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article and photos below in your research. Be sure to quote the Seattle Sun as your source.

Green Lake artist's creations
designed to light up homes

By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Jil Smith sometimes questions whether or not she's a real artist.

Smith knew she wanted to draw and paint ever since she was so young she still colored with mom. But these days her work doesn't hang flat on a gallery wall it's usually round and hangs over a light bulb.

Smith's company, Insatiable Studios, is responsible from some of the most colorful lamp shades you will ever see.

Located behind a rental house in the Green Lake neighborhood, the studio is actually a series of little sheds that house work rooms, an office and storage.

Smith creates her lamp shades, with the help of an assistant, by applying papier-mache, made with special Japanese art paper, on to wire frames.

Some of Smith's lamp shades are so elaborate as to bear portraits of people, made from cut paper. Her work has drawn attention from the national media. Still, Smith struggled with the question: should she put aside the shades in favor of a masterpiece on canvas?

"The worst thing an artist can do it regret what they've not doing," Smith said.

"I (decided) the qualification (for being an artist) is 'can you not do it?' I can't not make something."

Smith, a New Jersey native, has always "made something" professionally, though it took her a while to find her niche.

After graduating from the Pratt Institute, an art and design school in Brooklyn, N.Y., Smith worked as a colorist for Marvel comic books and and designed textiles.

In an effort to escape the fast-paced life in New York, she moved briefly to Arkansas to teach art in 1992. She lived four blocks away from the state capitol building.

However within a year, Smith decided to move to greener pastures, choosing Seattle for both its mountains and what she'd heard was a comparatively good mass transit system.

Upon arriving in Seattle in 1993, Smith freelanced, decorating rooms and booths at trade shows. One day, a friend asked her to collaborate on a lamp he was making he did the pedestal, she did the shade.

Smith enjoyed the project so much that she made more, but for a while the lamp shades just sat around her Pioneer Square loft because she found it difficult to promote her work.

When high rents drove Smith out of her loft, she took a small work space in back of an antique shop. The owner began displaying Smith's lamp shades in his store front windows to attract customers.

Meanwhile, Smith was also having a romantic success. On a trip to an eastern Washington farm with a friend seven years ago, she met her future "sweetheart," Chauncey Rothchild. The two hit it off and she enlisted him to help her pillage some old fruit crates from an abandoned barn for use in an art project.

Two months later, Smith got a call from her partner in crime saying he was in town and could they get together? When Smith agreed, Rothchild confessed he was waiting outside her building. She went downstairs to find that his truck was full of crates.

While the relationship is still going strong, rising real estate costs eventually forced the antique store to relocate.

Smith and Rothchild bought a house in Green Lake (which she says formerly belonged to a pack rat). The house included several storage sheds. The couple installed insulation and sheet rock to turn the sheds in a compact compound which they dubbed Insatiable Studios for making and showing Smith's shades.

Smith and Rothchild currently rent out the Green Lake house, while they reside in a home on Phinney Ridge. In addition to sales at Insatiable Studios, Smith also sells her lamp shades at several local stores including the Greenwood Antique Mall and the Thriftko store in Greenwood.

These days the compound gets plenty of attention from the national media, most recently Sunset Magazine. Representatives from Martha Stewart Living have expressed interest in possibly featuring Smith on the homemaking guru's nationally syndicated television show, but that has yet to be firmed up.

Smith also helped found an informal group known as the Wired Women, made up of six women in the lighting business. Because they work together, Smith and her cohorts are able to sell their products at big events such as the Seattle Interior Show, which took place in early November.

Still, Smith makes time to help individuals pick the perfect shade, which can be a pricey purchase. Most shades go for $185-$220, though those with portraits (including a recent series depicting European royalty of the Renaissance) sell for around $650.

If you go, doesn't hesitate to try every shade on your pedestal before choosing one it happens all the time.

But when you see the Renaissance portraits, don't make a dumb joke like "maybe next time you should do figures from the age of en-LIGHT-enment."

It's been done.

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Insatiable Studios is open by appointment. For details, call 781-3810.