BrightLooks Futur� The

This San Rafael–based interior designer prides herself on a more-is-more aesthetic.

By Amber Turpin

Bright's bold use of color and patterns is what sets her apart.

UNLESS YOU’VE LIVED IN THE BAY AREA for four decades and were lucky enough to attend a Silicon Valley corporate event back in the day, you probably don’t know about the cover band SRO. This group, made up of a staggering 19 people, was wildly popular with tech and pharmaceutical companies looking to book the band for their extravagant parties in the 1990s. There were four singers, three classically trained symphony violinists, a three-person horn section, a rhythm section, three dancers and a guy that wore a fez, suitably called the fez guy.

Even longtime clients of local interior designer Barbra Bright might not know that she was in that band, and married to the bandleader and master of ceremonies Dick Bright. But why should this article about a leading design industry professional bring up a ’90s cover band? It turns out that her experience in SRO was a pivotal chapter in what became a thriving design career and eventually the founding of Barbra Bright Design (www.barbrabrightdesign.com).

“You can only dance for so long,” explains Bright, and there came a time when her creativity and childhood sewing hobby served as a transition to costume design.

“With 19 people onstage there was a lot to look at. The band radiated a fun, colorful, sexy vibe. Dick wore a top hat with custom coattails in sequins. The violinists wore black sleeveless coattails with sequin bras, hot pants, bow ties, cummerbunds and wrist cuffs. And they wore matching wigs in different colors. And the dancers wore everything — glitter, feathers, spandex and leather,” she recalls.

She was in the group for about eight years, and during that time she styled the look of the band and also enlisted others to make costumes that she designed. After she retired, she thought it made sense to go back to school to learn fashion design. But an offer to become a design assistant at a kitchen showroom detoured that plan. “At the time, I said I would try it for six months since I didn’t cook,” she says. “But it turns out that design is design and you either have a ‘good eye’ or you don’t. I loved it and took classes at Cañada College in kitchen design.”

Bright’s next chapter came in the form of a divorce, an obvious turning point in many ways. She had been working part time while married and continuing to discover design, but then 10 years ago when the marriage ended, she knew she wanted to be able to support herself. “So I dove hard into creating an interior design business,” she explains.

That leap of faith has led to the completion of Bright’s own studio, which she finished last August. A former comic book store in San Rafael that she slowly remodeled over the last five years as her pocketbook would allow is today a unique showroom that illuminates Bright’s keen eye for design. She wanted her studio, set up like a “model home,” to reflect her design sensibility as if it were in an actual home. “You come in and there's a bar, there's a living room, there's a closet. The whole idea is to show how cohesive the whole house can be, but very livable. For it to be beautiful and also to be functional,” Bright explains.

This layout changes the client experience in two ways, she says. When clients come in they see that she is a serious designer in a fully realized space. And there is also a sense of comfort in seeing a design style that is exciting and gives direction and permission to go bigger, even if it's not the client’s specific design style. “I’m so grateful to be able to show clients concepts in a space. The pictures look great, but it really doesn’t do it justice. I love having people visit. I’m very proud of the end result and was lucky enough to have talented friends to help my vision come through,” she says.

Inspiration is everywhere for Bright, from architecture to museums to fellow designers' work. She loves looking at Instagram, and she celebrates how many points of view people can access from that platform all over the world. She believes that design rules are meant to be broken and that innovation and risk are important tenets for every project.

“I feel like you can mix things that you wouldn’t normally put together," she adds. "It's a maximalist theory: you can mix colors and patterns. But what happens is that people get frightened that it's too much. My job is to hold their hand and assure them that too much is just right. Really, what I'm trying to have my clients do is to be brave. Having a beige wall is not brave. Having a red wall is brave. It's just paint, we can repaint it. Don't be afraid to try new things because you assume that the outcome will be not to your liking. You might be pleasantly surprised.”

This brave notion comes, in part, from Bright’s earliest creative endeavors and the support she received as a child to pursue her artistic proclivity. “I attribute all of my style to my mother. She knits, sews, paints, gardens, she does it all,” Bright says, adding that her parents gave her a lot of leeway and time to explore these hobbies. “I did a lot of reading and I looked at a lot of pictures," she reflects. "My parents gave me full access to my artistic ability. It just sort of grew. I remember lots of glitter, lots of dried noodles and glue. That's kind of how I got started … I just use nicer products now.”

Bright’s upbringing and her sense of culture have been influential. She explains that being biracial (her mother is Korean and her father is African American), as well as being an only child, instilled a unique outlook. “This gave me a lot of time to think, to play, to see both cultures in terms of food and objects, yet being kind of different from both of my parents, and to be free as myself.”

Dwight Eschliman

If you’ve ever held a Twinkie (or any other bunker-approved food item) and wondered what exactly it was made of: Mill Valley–based artist Dwight Eschliman (www.eschlimanstudio. com) took that curiosity a step further by deconstructing the snack and photographing all 17 ingredients. The project led him to team up with science writer Steve Ettlinger to create Ingredients (ReganArts), a stunning book that artfully documents 25 different store-bought foods. Eschliman has made his mark as a commercial photographer, shooting campaigns for Apple, Absolut, Audi, Chobani and Adidas as well as editorial work for The New York Times There is a unifying crispness, brightness and optimism to his work. He describes it as orderliness, making sense of the space. “When I was a little kid, I used to have all these knickknacks on my dresser. I would arrange them and take a picture when they were perfectly organized. And I think I somehow turned that into a career.”

He’s able to explore the deconstruction concept even more fully in his fine art photography series where, as Eschliman says, “the group informs the individual.” His prior series can be explored on the Eschliman Studio website and you can visit his newest series, One Day, exhibited as Color of Light at the Sarah Shepard Gallery at Marin Country Mart. As a photographer, Eschliman has long been fascinated by how one conveys movement or passage of time in a single still image. When he started thinking about landscapes and how even one vista changes throughout the day, he wanted to experiment with a portrait of a place in its full 24-hour cycle. By capturing a still image of every second of the day (fast math: that’s 86,400 images) and arranging them in chronological order (“like reading a book”), you get a color thumbprint of a location. The results even surprised even the artist, who says, “Even though I lived through the day, you never know what the final image is going to look like.”

Szilvasy uses an old-world technique in her Marin–inspired

Bernadette Szilvasy

If one could ever be born to excel at a certain craft, Bernadette Szilvasy would be that person. While her father was a master artist at the revered Herend porcelain factory in Hungary, little Bernadette was painting in the factory’s preschool with the same brushes the artists used. Fast-forward past art school and her own instruction in Herend, and you can now find her handpainting porcelain in her Ross workshop. She has united the European heritage of refined porcelain painting with a more laidback California vibe. While out hiking (Muir Woods is a favorite) or strolling on the beach, she racks up inspiration — ferns, flowers and seabirds are frequent motifs. “I love to be outdoors as much as possible,” Szilvasy says about how she is continually finding new ways to represent Marin’s limitless beauty in her art. “I love to catch a moment, like how the bird’s feather was moving.” Szilvasy brings the outside in, making the flora and fauna the center of her creations. Via an old-world technique, raccoons, birds, moths, beets and parsley all are transformed by a delicate brushstroke into timeless works of art on porcelain.

And if you want to see her work in person: Szilvasy loves when people come into her workshop and watch her work (www.hand paintedporcelain.art). Often, customers are so taken with her style that they ask her to create a custom pattern for them (a pet, a scene from a vacation), which she is happy to do. Though chuck-it-in-the-sink items they are not, all of her products are durable and meant to be used every day. Pieces start at around $65 (for a hand-painted mug) — an investment for tableware, but a bargain for holding a piece of art in your hands each morning. When reflecting on her father’s legacy living on in Marin, the artist’s eyes sparkle. “He’d be so proud.”

Denis Fraisse

Denis Fraisse (www.fraissedesign.com) has spent the majority of his life on the water — growing up in a small fishing town in the south of France where his father owned a boatyard, and later as a craftsman, building and repairing racing sailboats. He’s always built things, primarily out of wood. So, it’s no surprise that when the Corte Madera–based sports enthusiast tried paddleboarding while on vacation in Hawaii, he fell in love with it and resolved to build himself a board as beautiful as the boats he was used to. Countless people told him he couldn’t make a sufficient SUP out of wood, which only increased his resolve. The high-end result quickly proved his naysayers wrong. Requiring 400 hours of work to build (and $40,000 to $50,000 to buy), Denis’s SUPs are almost too stunning to strap to your roof. But whether you take one to McNears Beach or mount it above your mantel, it’s craftsmanship at its finest.

Fraisse’s success with the paddleboard encouraged him to expand his offerings to one-of-a-kind home furnishings inspired by nature. When updating his home decor, he knew his coffee table had to go. So, naturally, he designed and built one worthy of the MoMA (Noguchi lovers, eat your heart out). The range is small, but growing, and currently includes a coffee table, a wall shelf and wall art (ranging from $8,000 to $12,000) — all otherworldly pieces that express the artist’s experience as if the wood was magically curved and shaped by water. He doesn’t use a mold and responds to the size, shape and type of wood, making each piece completely unique. Outside as much as possible, Fraisse finds ideas everywhere he looks. “I was hiking in the rain and there was a tree falling from the weight. There was a curve of the wood that was beautiful, and I took a picture. And in my head, I was thinking — 'this is a lamp,’ ” he says. “We try to make beautiful pieces as a human, but nature is already everything.”

Fraisse works with the size and shape of the wood to make one-of-a-kind coffee tables, shelves and art.