Amherst Bulletin, May 24, 1989
by William Conelly
It’s 85 outside, finally T-shirt weather. Which of your dozen or so T-shirts are you going to wear for the rites of spring? Probably the most colorful and the zaniest, that unique one nobody else could possibly be wearing.
If that’s your choice, chances are good that it was designed and hand- painted by local artist Donna Estabrooks. Since 1985 her T-shirts, sweats, fashion tops, and nightshirts have been hot sellers at local stores, boutiques, and craft shows, as well as at selected locations up and down the East Coast. Fish with big red lips, concert conductors with fly-away scores, glitzy female faces in swirls of color, her patterns and color combinations may repeat, but each garment was rendered unique at inception by the artist’s own hand.
“It got to be too much,” she confides; “one person can’t paint for the entire country.”
Last year about this time Estabrooks was a one-woman business. She was painting, drying, stacking, packing, shipping and billing to her capacity. Ominously, however, with only one sales representative nationwide, she had ten times more orders than she could fill.
Successful as it was, she had to change the concept of her little business. “My ego loved all the stuff I was doing,” she exclaims, “but I needed help! I was taping all these boxes and not painting!”
Painting was the start of it all. Estabrooks took a BFA from the University of Massachusetts in 1982 and she’s never really left. “Art fits in on university campuses.” she says, not mentioning all the places it doesn’t.
She took some post-graduate courses, painted any number of bright, upbeat canvases, and a year or so later was granted the post of artist-in-residence, a position she still holds.
The responsibilities of her appointment were fluid and remain so. She teaches painting, acts as a
program director for the campus arts council, conducts workshops, and generally supplies direction to undergraduate art students.
In exchange she receives a little salary and the use of a small studio and smaller apartment on the lower level of Butterfield Hall. Of course, an artist-in-residence must constantly prove herself through production. Since 1983 she’s had a number of shows in Amherst and Northampton, but her work in oils and acrylics has not supported itself until recently.
Hence the idea to make some extra money painting T-shirts. “I was just going to do It for the cash to finance my art,” she says, “but I loved doing it. I loved the excitement and the being busy; and the more shirts I sold. the more attention my paintings and graphics got.” Until the orders backlogged, it all seemed fantastic.
The University would not allow Estabrooks to employ people and develop her little business on campus: there were rules. With art and painting the focal points in her creative life. She did not want to abandon her artist-in-residence position for the nuts and bolts of running a business, even a business she loved.
Her solution? She struck a three-way agreement between herself, Kennedy Screen Graphics of Northampton, and a marketing specialist named Barbara Goldstein. Estabrooks will still design and paint the original T-shirt. Then, however, it will be silk screened in considerable quantity.
“Beautifully silk screened,” she adds. This will lake some of the splash and dash out of the production process, but the garments will remain as striking as ever. More importantly- perhaps, the niggling jobs of stitching in labels, adding ID tags. and packing and shipping will be handled by the studio.
For her part, Goldstein is making marketing contacts nationwide. “She’s already got ten sales reps lined up,” Estabrooks exclaims; “I was deluged before when 1 just had one!”
Orders have just begun rolling in to test the new triumvirate, but so far at least, things are going swimmingly. There are even hopes of landing accounts with department store chains and mail-order companies, accounts that Estabrooks couldn’t have dreamed of a year ago, down in her little studio, trying to pile up enough T’s for the craft show on me Amherst Common.
The new freedom is allowing her to work as a genuine fashion designer five to seven months ahead. “Between oil paintings, I’m getting my Christmas designs ready, she says.
And what about the intermediate future Christmas and beyond? “Every idea I have seems to generate ten more,” among them a desire to supplement her basic line of T’s, sweats and nightshirts with fashionable sportswear, all luminous with color; then perhaps some post and greeting cards also with original artwork. “I’ve got an infinite number of ideas,” she smiles.
Estabrooks doesn’t have a sales outlet for her garments in the Amherst area just yet. Her work maybe seen and purchased at Kennedy Screen Graphics in Northampton, however, and a two-person show called “Night and Day” will feature her latest paintings in the Music Room of the UMass Campus Center sometime in September.
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