Pieces and paint
Originally from Southern California, Fagan studied fine art. She performed in a band called the Martian Cowgirls, a punk band called Pandora's and was a hair stylist for 15 years before committing her time to raising a son and creating art.
She's busy setting up the store and trying to get an acquaintance to bring in a chandelier built out of Volkswagen parts. But mainly she's ready to get back to her painting.
Three-dimensional pieces are under way in her studio, including a half-complete mannequin torso named Lilleth, the mythical woman who existed in Eden before Eve.
"I can't even tell you where I'm going to go yet," Fagan said, looking at Lilleth, whose face is painted on the belly of the mannequin. "Usually my stuff is serendipitous. I don't have plans for a lot of things. I just improvise. I'm a huge fan of Peter Max and (I'm) a child of the '60s. The first thing I can think of is '60s art. My favorite colors are hot pinks and chartreuse. I'm very into psychedelic.
"I like figures, human bodies, faces. I like to work on something and have it sitting there."
Most of Fagan's subjects are women.
"Especially after having a child," she said. "I'm very into goddess types."
Her work mingles with everything else in the store. In addition to Fagan and the other local artists selling their work in the store, Crawford expects more art to cover the walls.
Even First Friday crowds, weaving through the store the Friday prior, stopped to work on a community canvas that Crawford said invited anyone to "Leave a piece of your creative spirit behind.
"I'm all for whoever wants to be in my store," Crawford said. "The more art the better. If we could be Melrose (Avenue) in 10 years, that would be great."
Karen Crawford and Deborah Fagan are polar opposites when it comes to practice, but both share the same eye for artwork. While Crawford owns and operates MML Physical Therapy, Fagan is a professional multimedia artist. The two have fused their relative talents, Fagan's artwork and Crawford's hobby of redesigning furniture, into one of the vast array of eclectic businesses in the arts district. The Painted Couch, 6 E. Charleston Blvd., is attracting art lovers as much as it is those who want a living room that might be found in a rock star's home. "I've been in medicine for 30 years, and I am a chronic pain specialist," Crawford said. "But I've always had a knack for putting things together, artwise. I got into redoing old furniture because I thought it was fun. People were coming to my house and saying things like, `Has a magazine ever seen this'? and `You ought to charge admission to your house.' " Essentially, Crawford moved pieces from her own living room to a space located across the street from the Arts Factory. She met Fagan and fell in love with her artwork, which had a similar feel to Crawford's colorful furniture designs.
"When this area became the arts district, she,(Crawford), came to one of the (Goodman's art festival/show exhibits)," Fagan said. "She came up to me and said, `I want that one, that one, that one and that one.' When she opened this place, she had pieces of mine in here." Fagan agreed to be the artist in residence at the Painted Couch and currently has a studio in the back. Her designs include several mannequins in the store's window display. Crawford still works full-time at her office, but makes it out to the gallery each weekend, particularly when it's First Friday and she can talk a different kind of shop with visitors.
Crawford visits thrift stores and secondhand places and admits she chooses pieces that most people would rather pay someone to take than keep themselves.
But she sees past the often gaudy, dated patterns that its current upholstery hosts, and can envision its potential. She plans each design, which inevitably contains vibrant, loud colors mixed together, and upholsterer John Infantino brings her ideas to life.
"As soon as I see it I know what it'll look like," she said. "I feel like people that come in and see this kind of furniture and it's so funky that they can't imagine it in their home," Crawford said. "But Deborah puts her pieces together with mine so people see you can decorate with them. You can live like this."
Although she transported several pieces from her home to her shop, Crawford says she's completed about 50 pieces altogether. The word of the day is "retro" and in her mind anything vintage is good. Although she is professional and composed on the outside, her inner Crawford exudes eccentricity.
"My house is pretty crazy," she said. "My whole back yard cement is painted with rainbows, and I have an antique barbecue grill and a pink refrigerator out there. My laundry room has been completely converted into a birdcage for my seven birds. It's not odd to me, it's just what I like.
"The furniture is so bizarre, all the fabrics don't match, nothing matches, every piece is a different fabric, it's kind of like `retro' Andy Warhol. The shapes are not always traditional, I may make an arm bigger and take a skirt off of a sofa."
Eclectic Avenue: Painted Couch blends art, furniture in Arts District
By Kristen Peterson
LAS VEGAS SUN
City buses rattle past the storefront of the Painted Couch on East Charleston Boulevard.
Inside, Deborah Fagan, the store's artist-in-residence, is setting up shop in the boutique full of funky reupholstered vinyl furniture, accessories, antiques and art by Dray, Mark Zeilman and Fagan.
There are lamps outlandish lamps and mosaic tables paying homage to the Monkees and Pez. There is glass artwork and jewelry made by local artists and a working phone booth that sells for $1,000. Sprinkled throughout is plenty of kitsch.
Fagan, working out of a studio in the back, tends to customers. Her arrival means that the store will be open during regular hours daily, rather than only during First Fridays.
"I worked out of my home studios for years and years. I'm in the process of bringing everything in. I went to Home Depot. I got my chicken wire, I got my gloves."
It's businesses such as the Painted Couch that are helping build a viable Arts District in Las Vegas.
The store, directly across from the S2Art Center, is wedged between Artz Gallery and Modify, a retro furniture store.
Owner Karen Crawford, a physical therapist with an office two miles away, opened the Painted Couch to accommodate the outlandish, somewhat whimsical assortment of art and furniture that she has accrued over the years.
The draw toward the colorful and outlandish created the connection between Crawford and Fagan, who met a few years prior when Crawford purchased soft sculpture from Fagan at an outdoor arts event. Fagan creates work from everyday objects, colors and multimedia. Anything goes. Her "Ode to Andy Warhol Diva" (2000) is a decoupaged Barbie doll covered in form-fitting Campbell's soup can wrappers.
Fagan's soft-sculpture dolls are outlandish. Her refurbished 1800s wicker wheelchair painted sky blue with daisies has hands stemming from the armrest.
"I thought it had to come alive. So I found these hands," Fagan said, stroking the fingers. "I went through a two-year period just customizing dolls. Then I got into bigger things. I went into soft sculpture, then mannequins, wheelchairs, TVs, refrigerators, walls, you name it."
Her collages include paint, fibers, rocks, glass and wire beads.
A mannequin sculpture ("The Succulent Wild Woman") that she created on commission for Crawford is covered completely in text using only one issue of Rolling Stone magazine. It has beads for arms and a flashing heart behind a screen. It sells for $4,500.