Meeting Carol Van Zandt in her home studio near Bernal Heights, you are first struck by how much color and pattern surrounds her. Carol lives in full color, much more than most of us do. Even by San Francisco standards, this is the full 64-Crayola box of color. Carol herself is almost apologetic about it, but the effect is jewel-like, embracing and warm. This house is a tribute to surface design, and what better place could there be for a rising design star like Carol? White walls? Forgettaboutit.
Within these multi-patterned Victorian walls, where nearly every surface is treated with paint, gilding or moldings, Carol creates a world entirely her own. She is a classically trained artist who had the good luck to live in Japan and Taipei, traveling throughout Asia and immersing herself in Asian art and design. In Japan, Carol found herself drawn once again to brushwork, line and color. She studied with master teachers willing to share the traditions of calligraphy and sumi-e painting with her. Carol had a natural aptitude for handling the long brushes used in ink painting, freeing the ink from their tips in swirling, fluid contours.
After nearly ten years of study, Carol achieved high rankings in her mastery of Japanese calligraphy: "sandan" for kanji characters and "yondan" for kana. If this were karate, Carol would be the equivalent of a fourth-degree black belt. She exhibited her art in group and solo gallery shows in Japan and found many eager collectors. Not content to stop there, she then embarked on a career in textile design when she returned to San Francisco, taking classes toward a professional certificate from the California School of Professional Fabric Design in Berkeley. Now Carol is a workshop instructor at the school where she trained, sharing a wealth of knowledge and experience with other students.
Where to next for the woman who has crossed cultures and boundaries in pursuit of original design? For Carol, it's New York, where she will debut ten unique collections at Surtex 2011. Art buyers, artists and industry professionals gather each year in May at Surtex to find the next great designs that will eventually adorn fabric, bedding, dishware, wallpaper, you name it. This is Carol's debut year and she is busy preparing for the steady onslaught of appointments, portfolio showings and "dog and ponying" that such shows require. She hopes to come back with new licenses for her designs and opportunities to develop her designs with major manufacturers.
Design has given Carol a new life in art, and it is one she relishes. "I am thrilled to be making designs for beautiful fabrics, paper and products people use in their everyday lives," says Carol. It is easy to see what a labor of love it all is for her. She is prolific in the extreme, achieving in one season what might take other designers several years to create. That energy infuses everything Carol does, and it is completely infectious. Being with Carol in her design world is like being given a passport to a remote garden where the flowers come to life and start singing. You want to stay there with her, watching it all dance before your eyes.
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