Company Name: Studio 78
In business since: 2000
Owner: Wendy Grossman
Click to view the Studio 78 Collection.
Company Description
Studio 78 is known for sophisticated painted furniture with embossed copper accents. Most of the furniture is designed and manufactured by Wendy Grossman and local fine cabinet makers, using the best quality hardwoods. Some pieces have hand forged iron elements.
Product Offering
As a designer, painter, and craftsperson, Wendy Grossman enjoys the exploration of using common materials—copper, wood, hand-forged steel, and paint—and combining them into the perfect mix of fun and seriousness. Her sense of design springs from shapes and objects around her—forests, oceans, the wisp of her brush. Simple forms and shapes appeal to her the most. Grossman's primary process is one of painting. She began her training as a painter, and furniture is the canvas that carries her work into the homes of hundreds of customers. She designs the furniture to be fun and serious. She loves the marriage of wood and steel, copper and gold leaf—the fragility and hardness of the materials, the yin and yang that the furniture quietly brings into a room.
About the Artist
Wendy Grossman was trained at the Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the School of Visual Arts. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts.
Wendy Grossman began her career as a working artist in the early 1970's as a fabric designer, and potter. At the same time, she studied painting at The Art Institute of Boston, and later at The School of Visual Arts in New York City. In the 1980's she took up traditional watercolor illustrator. After studying at the School of Visual Arts in 1990, she was asked to take a teaching position in computer arts in both the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as at Pratt Institute over the next ten years.
She spent the better part of the decade enjoying the freedom of a commercial computer illustrator, traveling the world while working on a laptop and using the internet to service her clients. Although this was a perfect life style, she felt artistically unfulfilled. She was looking for a new artistic outlet for her painting which was her first love. After doing many wall size murals and closet doors for commission, Wendy's ideas for painting on furniture emerged. In 2000 she began creating beautifully designed and painted furniture. She began to experiment with copper, and as she noodled around with the metal, she came up with an embossing technique that satisfied her artistically and gave her furniture the punch she was looking for. Wendy continues to experiment and to bring her discoveries to the furniture, maintaining a freshness that she demands of herself and her work. Wendy, having worked in many media, including fabric, wood, metal, and clay, brings with her an understanding and a diversity into how home furnishing can blend, meld, and ultimately flow in creative and unique ways.
Wendy is very conscience of the wellbeing of our planet and chooses to use only products that are made from non -threatened trees and recyclable products. She also wants to make it possible for every person to enjoy the enriching and fun experience of having her furniture as art in their home. So, with the contemporary adage that, If the product is not affordable, it is not sustainable as her guide, she continues the daily creativity in her studio. Studio 78 furniture is custom manufactured to her design by local cabinet makers, with accent pieces made by companies that operate in the United States.
Product Examples:
In Summary:
The creations of Wendy Grossman/Studio 78, reflect her deep belief in always keeping a positive outlook on life, and in encouraging growth in herself and in others, while staying in harmony both spiritually and economically, with her environment.
Wendy would like to send a special thank you to her mom, for helping Studio 78 be what it is today.
Click to view the Studio 78 Collection.
