Artistic Legacy: Three Northshore Mothers and Daughters Share the Business of Art

by Christina Rukavina

Christina Brechtel Thompson, Marti DuBuisson and Sarah Dunn are northshore artistic talents whose innate abilities are coupled with a fierce entrepreneurial drive. They also have mothers who fostered their individuality, provided opportunities to develop their talents, refrained from advising them to learn something to fall back on and served as role models—women who embrace the arts and live life with courage and determination.

Susan and Christina

A sprained ankle at the age of 10 forced Christina to hop along on a decorating appointment with her mother, artist-designer Susan Brechtel. She became interested in her mother’s work and joined her whenever she could. “I’ve always said that Christina has an informal Ph.D. in design,” quips Susan, whose own career first began in Rosenburg, Texas, where she and husband Peter made their first home.

In the mid-1960s, when antiquing and glazing furniture were all the rage, Susan put her fine arts degree to use on her own kitchen, casting a sage green paint wash on her yellow pine cabinets, coordinating them with her olive green appliances. She heard, “What have you done?” from her less daring friends, but they all soon called upon her design expertise. This led to her enjoying a small side business while tending primarily to her family.

In the 70s, when the Brechtels moved to the New Orleans area, Susan continued freelancing while working on labor-intensive artwork. Using raw silk as the canvas onto which French dyes are bloomed via a steam process, she created silk paintings that she sold and exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her big move came in 1995, when she opened the French House in Covington. During its 10-year run, the shop offered French antiques, specialty imports, works by area artists and furniture that Susan designed from reclaimed antique cypress. Meanwhile, Christina was beginning her fine arts studies at LSU.
As Susan was winding down the French House, which had expanded to three locations, Christina was nearing completion of her bachelor’s degree and eager to enter the “real world.”
Influenced by her mother’s artistry and her father’s business acumen, Christina says, “I’d always wanted to go into design, and I saw a niche in the kitchen industry in this area. I wanted to be profitable. And I didn’t want to work for someone else.” Also an impassioned cook, she surmised the best way to merge her artistic flair, independence and good fiscal sense was to offer beautiful customized kitchen design. Her mother agreed and was ready to hand over the baton to Christina, who, Susan insists, has far more creativity than she does. The May 2006 graduate began her business that November, opening her Mandeville showroom, Bella Cucina, in August 2007.

The hardest part of the business, Christina says, was acquiring brands. The more design-oriented cabinet and appliance companies responded well to her. “They liked my concept of an upscale showroom, but they were also trying to get more young people into the kitchen and bath business.”

“I look at each design project as an art project,” she says. Customizing kitchen cabinetry to resemble fine furniture is one way she utilizes her artistic bent. Her desire to combine functionality with beauty is evident in such pieces as the mantel-style stove hood she designed. “Architecture inspires me a lot,” she notes, showing how the Corinthian columns pull out and serve as storage. Many of her appliances resemble works of art. All of her ranges are gas, because, “There’s an aesthetic appeal, a visual response when you gas them up,” she explains.
Reminiscent of her mother’s early venture into a non-traditional kitchen color back in Texas, Christina has found that people still fear color. She hopes to encourage her clients to take more chances in that regard and to convince them to integrate art into their kitchens. To that end, the showroom serves as a gallery for Susan’s large metallic works based on Louisiana landscapes and created with foil and heavy impasto. Some are mother-daughter joint efforts.

Mary and Marti

Raised in Slidell, Marti DuBuisson was exposed to a variety of arts by both her father, Eric, a classically trained saxophonist and former band director at Archbishop Rummel High School, and her mother, Mary, who’s had theatrical leanings since childhood.
Mary shared her love of performing with Marti by enrolling her in Slidell Little Theater’s summer workshop where Mary volunteered to assist the directors. Marti also participated in dance teams, just as Mary had as a teen.

While growing up, Marti received private art classes, followed by her school’s talented arts program. For 10 years, she was instructed by nationally known Slidell artist Patricia Whitty, (Inside Northside’s June 2004 cover artist). After a brief stay at the University of South Alabama in Mobile studying pre-med, Marti transferred to LSU and settled into fine arts studies. Concerned about surviving as an artist, however, she switched to interior design, graduating with honors in 2005 with degrees in both fine arts and interior design.

After graduation, Marti summered with her parents before job hunting. Then, Hurricane Katrina hit. Her parents’ family business since 1929, Slidell Cleaners, survived the Great Depression but not the storm. Through tears, Mary says, “We walked through thick, slimy, black mud, around equipment, furniture, my computer and the sewing machines. Customers’ clothes had floated out the windows and doors. It’s an incredible thing to lose your livelihood in one day.”

Marti stayed for four months to help her parents. They lent their living quarters above the drycleaners to people in need, and worked tirelessly to repair a second home in Eden Isles, now their permanent residence. Understandably, Mary and Eric felt blessed when STARC, an organization that helps the disabled, hired them to open a drycleaners.

The couple decided to return the blessing by resurrecting and expanding their former drycleaners site into a community arts center. While the outer wall still bears the floodwater marking “6 1/2,” the sparkling interior doubles as a newly opened gallery and a studio for local artists. On the eve of its premiere, Mary proudly held three of Marti’s artworks that escaped the storm’s wrath.

Satisfied with her parents’ recovery progress, Marti set out to forge an interior design career as a licensed member of International Interior Design Association and certified by Leadership & Energy Environmental Design. Hired by Rees Associates in Dallas, she’s become a major player in the interior design of NASCAR Media Group’s portion of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C.

With the massive complex scheduled to open by 2010, Marti has had little time to visit family or dabble in painting. While she loves the responsibility and excitement of the NASCAR project, she misses doing artwork. “I definitely still want to paint and hope to start back soon. I’ll probably take some classes in Dallas just so I’ll have a set time to go and do it. It’ll all work out,” she smiles.

Sally and Sarah

Covington native Sarah Dunn has packed more living into her 25 years than most people twice her age. Perhaps it’s because her mother, Sally Dunn, was going through changes of her own during Sarah’s tender years that Sarah’s freethinking spirit was given free rein.

Both mother and daughter knew as young girls they wanted to be artists, but Sally followed a more predictable path, including a business degree from Baylor University, marriage and babies. When her brother died at 18, Sally, then 30, saw it as a sign to take some chances with her own life.

She enrolled in photography classes at Newcomb College. Under the tutelage of Peruvian artist Fernando La Rosa, Sally made a career in photography, progressing from managing a traditional studio to becoming the right arm for writer-photographer Maria von Mattiessen. While on trips with medics and missionaries to locales such as China and Belize, Sally found her voice as a documentary photographer.

Meanwhile, young Sarah experienced difficulty fitting into a traditional school setting. For example, having her own vision at age seven, she was upset when an art teacher said that her rendition of an apple didn’t resemble an apple. Also, “I was a cheerleader in fifth grade—for about two weeks.” Sally didn’t push the issue, noting that Sarah was actually a hard worker and exceptional student despite minimal attendance and an aversion to school.

A perceptive sixth grade teacher gave Sarah the go-ahead to write and produce a play, “Run Away for Freedom,” for which she also designed costumes and sets. Not just artistically talented, Sarah took state science fair honors with a microbial study of the Bogue Falaya River.

Sally and Sarah moved to that same river in Covington, into a 100-year-old fixer-upper that is Sally’s present home and gallery. Here they began their journey of participating in Covington’s Fall and Spring Art Walks where Sarah cooked, catered and served at her mother’s photography exhibitions. Meanwhile, Sarah continued to explore art mediums including glass blowing, stained glass, sculpting and metal forging, but always returned to drawing. By the end of her senior year at SSA, she was prolific in oils and acrylic.

Although she was doing well, Sarah felt the need to pursue additional formal education in fine arts. She soon realized, however, that there was more inspiration in her travels to Paris, Hawaii, Prague and Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, she took to street art so much that she incorporated that genre into her latest show, “LA Contemporary: Louisiana vs. Los Angeles,” which coincided with the one-year anniversary of her Covington gallery.
Along the way, Sarah found receptive audiences for her bold, powerful abstracts, exhibited not only in the Big Easy and Big Apple, but also in Chicago, where she evacuated during Hurricane Katrina. Immediately upon her return, she completely sold out her work at Ariodante Gallery, New Orleans.

Still, it’s Covington she loves best, a sentiment strongly returned. In 2001, she was chosen cover artist for the Greater Covington Junior League’s “Roux to Doux” cookbook, and in 2007 she created the official poster for the October Harvest Cup Polo Classic. Also in 2007, her impassioned pleas resulted in her triumphant bid for a coveted downtown space. Within four weeks, she completely rehabbed the studio-gallery in time for last year’s Spring for Art event, where she experienced a near sell-out of her paintings. This year’s show was punctuated by Sarah’s collection of Kandinsky-esque nudes.

With success as stunning as the young woman she’s become, it would seem Sarah’s cup is more than full. But in addition to painting and exhibiting, she not only offers classes, but hosts a live weekly radio show she named Art Evolution, interviewing and promoting artists on WGSO in Slidell.

Meanwhile, Sally’s career has taken some twists and turns, literally. In March 2004, when she had her business on Columbia Street and was president of the St. Tammany Art Association, Sally broke her ankle and was out of commission for six months. “I was at the top [of my career] when I fell,” Sally muses, explaining she interpreted this as a message to re-evaluate her life. Hurricane Katrina forced her to be even more reflective, and Sally decided that, while she would continue to accept commissions to photograph peoples’ lives, her main purpose now was to pull together images from her archives and combine them with words to help, heal and inspire others.

“We’re fearless, peaceful warriors,” Sally says of herself and Sarah. “The hardest thing in this world is not going the traditional route.” Sally is especially looking forward to breaking tradition in the spring of 2009, when, for the first time, she and Sarah will show their work together, as sole exhibitors at Art Center Waco in Texas.

Now, that’s truly a mother-daughter alliance!