During the holidays, downtown sparkles with lights and color, luring even locals to delight in its transformation from a place of commerce into a holiday wonderland.

However, real transformation takes place along the river year- round, as visionaries convert business establishments into dwellings. A good example is the Left Bank Condominiums, where artist Sara Eyestone lives with her husband, David Molin. They've personalized their studio/residence, adding vivid colors, molding and large built-ins to visually expand the 1,850-square-foot space.

Their condo will be one of several spaces featured on the "Downtown Transformations" holiday apartment tour from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $35, and reservations are necessary. Call 225-4728.

The tour will begin at the Navarro Campus of the Southwest School of Art and Craft, 1201 Navarro.

Proceeds from the tour, presented by the San Antonio Public Library Foundation, benefit the remodeling project at the Hertzberg Circus Museum.

Eyestone and Molin chose to transform and downsize their lives by leaving a large family home on the New Jersey shore. After a five-year nomadic period that included a stay in San Antonio for Eyestone to work on a painting, they decided to call the Alamo City home.

Magenta bougainvilleas cascading from the balcony give the first clue to the condo's interiors. Terra cotta planters of interesting shapes and textures cluster around the entryway, where a wooden bench with a fuchsia seat creates an upstairs garden spot.

Inside, a hot-pink ceiling immediately catches the eye. "It's the color of the crape myrtle that blooms outside our window about eight months a year," Eyestone explains. "Red," she adds, "is my neutral."

In the entry room, Territorial armchairs surround a 10-foot pine table that came from a northern New Mexico silver mine. "It is the most heavenly worktable, as well, and it serves a wonderful purpose — we use it with our family and friends," Eyestone says. "In my decor, you'll see repetitive shapes and colors. My whole philosophy is very simple. I feel it's very important to surround yourself with beautiful things — and it doesn't have to be a lot of them."

A 46-inch-tall built-in buffet runs along the wall. Latticework doors are backed by mirrors in a nod to feng shui principles. Janie Williams, a local artist, created red tiles for the top.

"They're all from the same palette of red, but the way they're fired, some are darker than other," Eyestone says.

The condo's tiny study became the master bedroom; its bright candy-cane red walls are visible from the entryway. Even the ceiling is red, while molding around it matches the hot pink of the entryway ceiling. An antique vanity holds dozens of silver-framed family photos and faces a bed inherited from the artist's grandmother, now covered with a bright collage of fabrics.

Eyestone bought "pounds and pounds of red and fuchsia silk moiré for a big, puffy comforter for the bed."

Closet doors hide built-in cabinets and drawers. Eyestone replaced many doors with louvered ones to "give you the idea that there's something there on the other side-they're airy and open."

Candy-cane red moves to the floor tile in the nearby powder room. "Where in one room I have (the color) on the wall, in the next it might be on the floor."

Black-and-white-striped wallpaper serves as a backdrop for Eyestone's colorful posters. Dark-stained parquet floors pull the eye down the spacious hall that serves as a gallery for the artist's paintings.

Beyond, a fan-shaped living room opens to an outside wall of windows. A carved, golden-marble fireplace was acid-washed to resemble locally quarried stone. Crimson velvet sofas flank the massive glass and steel cocktail table that stands 24 inches tall.

The artistic array of mementos on it includes limited edition Picasso and O'Keeffe art books. A brass game table glows with a deep patina; red slipcovers with petticoats update old chairs.

The artist likes to paint outside and wave to tourists on river barges. "I feel like I'm part of the local scene," she says with a laugh.

In Eyestone's kitchen, cabinet interiors are painted crimson. "I like the idea of opening up something and having something else inside," Eyestone says. Black granite counters meet a backsplash of stainless steel that's been imprinted by antique ceiling presses. Black and brown leopard-print wallpaper adds a dramatic touch.

The couple uses the former master bedroom as an office. An existing doorway was widened and reshaped into a Gothic arch, and the wall was painted a raspberry wine hue.

Clearly at home in San Antonio and her transformed surroundings, Eyestone says, "I belong here. I feel so at home in this colorful, spirited place."

By: Ingrid Tomey
New Jersey Monthly, June 1992

I am one of those chicken-hearted cravens who have never once gone to their class reunion. Every five years, as predictable as death, comes the invitation: "The Midland High School class of ’61 cordially invites you to attend its fifth reunion (its tenth reunion, its fifteenth reunion…)." Six times now, I have allowed this event to slip through my fingers. Once, five years ago, I actually paid $38.50 for the two dinners—my husband’s and mine—at the Airport Restaurant. But then, a week before the reunion I got my hair cut too short. You see how it is with me.

Maybe you don’t see how it is, but "Fish" does. Fish (her real name is Sara) is my oldest friend, my alter ego, my heroine. While I sat in the back of Mr. Meyers’s math class, penning love poems, I listened to Fish, up in front, telling Mr. Meyers how algebra was irrelevant because she had decided to be a swimmer at Cypress Gardens in one of those performance tanks. Bold, beautiful Fish in her red Tycora sweater and matching skirt was the perfect foil to my tounge-tied Emily Dickenson.

Had it not been for Fish, I would never have had the nerve to taste the gin from her father’s closet. It was my first taste of anything stronger than Coke, and it was so vile that I washed it down with another, and another. How pleasing it seemed to me to then show up drunk at Randy Wysong’s party (I had never done anything worse than read Peyton Place). I loved Fish for bringing out the worst in me.

I forgot the 500 others in the class of ’61, but I kept in touch with Fish. While she traipsed back and forth across the country, I stayed fixed for 25 years. "You know where to find me," I’d write from suburban Detroit. From New Jersey, she’d write, "Come for my opening." She had traded in her Esther Williams dreams to become an artist.

Fish had become Sara Eyestone, painter of luscious florals and sunlit gardens. Her oils hang in collections and galleries all over the country, and grace posters, shopping bags, calendars, and note cards. A dozen times a day, I look up from my writing desk to a magical painting of carousel horses that she gave me. I loved the paintings. I loved the painter. But like the Big Reunion, our own reunion failed to take place.

Until now. Something—middle age, Time’s winged chariot, curiosity—finally inspired us to get together after all these years. You can imagine the thrill—seeing someone you haven’t seen for three decades, observing what 30 years has done to that seventeen-year-old face, seeing how 47 years sits on that once-lithe form.

As I stand waiting at her gate in Dallas, where our planes meet, I think how safe it was behind those letters. I think of Emily Dickenson writing to Thomas Wentworth Higginson all those years. And her absolute panic when she finally confronted him in person. I feel something like panic when the passengers begin disembarking. I study their faces, looking for clues. What if we don’t recognize each other? What if she’s looking for a ponytail and horn-rimmed glasses? I half lift my hand to a porky, dark-haired woman in a denim jumper, but she lumbers by me. What will we talk about after so many years? Bobby Darin? Do I look gray and withered in these bifocals?

Suddenly, out of the scuttling herd, Fish emerges, gliding up the ramp like a single, bright sail on a lonely horizon. She is wearing a cherry-red trench coat and yellow shoes, dark glasses, and a brilliant flowered scarf tossed about her neck. I smooth my khaki shirt and plant myself in her path, feeling sacrificial.

"Inky!" she screams

"Fish!" Her old name leaps across three decades and into my mouth. We throw our arms around each other and laugh like high school kids.

"You look fabulous," I say, thinking I should have been an artist instead of a writer.

"Look at you," she says, dropping her bags again. "I leave you alone for 30 years, and you get married and have kids. My God, Ink—you’re all grown up."

Indeed. We’ve changed so much. How do we fill in all those years after high school—the years of falling in love and getting married and having babies, and struggle and failure and success?

Nonetheless, it is a wonderful week we spend together at my writer’s conference in New Mexico. We wake up early and sip tea, watching the sun turn the gray Sangre de Christo Mountains a bright lavender. In the evenings we walk into town through the burning pinon-scented air. And we never stop talking. One night, as I sit on the edge of my bed pin-curling my hair, Fish points out my pink cotton pj’s.

"Do you always sleep in those?"

I shrug, I know exactly what she’s thinking, sitting there in her shimmering silk gardenia-sprinkled kimono. Inexorably, we are pulled into our old roles.

"You know, Ink, you’re not getting any younger. You can’t just use any old thing on your hair."

She means my little Marriott Inn bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I write down what she tells me: Nexxus shampoo and Humectress conditioner.

One night, we decide to beautify ourselves. She brings out the works. We start with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol-like stuff, which we smear on our faces. Within minutes it hardens into two pink tragedy masks. I hand her my hair clips, and we pin-curl our hair. Then we look in the mirror. It’s no use trying to keep a straight face. We laugh like Lucy and Ethel, and our faces crack into a million pieces.

The last night, Fish hisses me out of my sleep, "I’m starving to death."

I get up and follow her flashlight out into the dark, across the footbridge to the main lodge, where she intends to break into the kitchen. "Don’t forget, this was all your idea." My very words when we got into the gin.

And it is rather like the crime of 30 years ago. But as we sit there, laughing and stuffing our faces in the dark, I’m glad it’s Spanish rice instead of gin. I want to remember the moment. Two middle-aged seventeen-year-olds at their first reunion.

A TRANSPLANT IN BLOOM
Now settled in San Antonio, successful artist remembers the words that set her on course: ‘Stay Focused’

By Jasmina Wellinghoff
San Antonio Express News, December 7, 1997

Artist Sara Eyestone’s apartment-cum-studio is like a little garden abloom with the most exuberantly vivid flowers you ever saw. These blossoms are painted on canvases, printed on place mats and bedspreads, reproduced on posters, cards and coasters.

In fact, the entire residence is awash with color, with shades of pink casting a dominant warm glow on everything. Even tea cups "bloom" with red petals.

"I am very domestic at heart," says the mistress of this charming dwelling. "I am very into color and comfort. That’s why I like to paint for private collectors. I go to their homes to see how they live so that I can make a personalized painting."

She points to a poster titled "Tea for Two." In the original, which hangs in the home of the couple who commissioned it, Eyestone included an heirloom teapot and crab apples from the couple’s garden.

Although Eyestone and her husband, David Molin, moved here only a few months ago, she already has received several commissions from San Antonians. Her clients get to know her work, she says, from the published images on Caspari note cards, calendars and posters sold in museum and other fine gift shops. A segment of her painting called "December," a mass of red poinsettias, graces the invitations for this year’s Poinsettia Ball, a charity event Thursday supporting VNA and Hospice of South Texas.

"But I support myself through my original work," says Eyestone, who is looking at some 24 commissions, a year’s worth of work.

It was thanks to one of these commissions that she finds herself in Texas. In 1996, San Antonian Ann Ash asked Eyestone to do a piece, and the artist spent a couple of months in the Alamo City working on that canvas, mostly from a balcony overlooking the River Walk.

"I felt so much a part of the local scene," she says. "San Antonio is colorful; the entire state is abloom for part of the year. I felt that people who live surrounded by so much color would respond to my work."

Eventually, Eyestone and her husband sold their house in New Jersey – where she also had a gallery and store – to travel. From Hawaii to Holland to Tuscany, Eyestone painted, returning home only to handle the business side of her affairs. The latter include a line of signature rugs handmade in Poland for the Chicago-based company Graphics & Wool and fabrics manufactured by Bloomcraft of New York. When the time came to settle down, the couple opted for the colorful city they remembered so fondly.

Her parents, daughter and grand-daughter have moved here, too, and her pleasure at how things have worked out is obvious.

But then, Eyestone is a person who finds pleasure in so much of what life has to offer. Reared in the intellectual powerhouse of Los Alamos in New Mexico and the daughter of nuclear physicist Robert Shreffler, Eyestone credits the entire community for serving as her role model.

Though her parents were inclined to emphasize academic pursuits, Sara was drawn to art. When a Brownie leader took her and a group of 8-year-olds to visit the studio of collage artist Pansy Stockton In Santa Fe, Sara was so absorbed by all she saw that she could not sit still for the artist’s presentation.

"When I grow up, I want to be just like you," she told Stockton, who then imparted a lesson that has stuck. "Just remember that when you do grow up, and stay focused."

She did. But this woman who appears as exuberant as her artistic palette had another desire – children. At 19, Sara married David Eyestone, with whom she would have four children. By coincidence, he, too, lives in San Antonio.

"I never had an education in art," says the artist. "I had to discover everything for myself the hard way."

But she never lost that focus. At 21, Eyestone boldly wrote "artist" as her profession on her drivers license application. And that verbalization strengthened her confidence. Throughout the ‘60s, she showed her work at art fairs.

Then in 1971, while living in Saint Louis, she had her first gallery opening. After an opening night that saw every piece of her art sell, Eyestone returned to the gallery the next morning to collect her check. To her shock, the place was empty. The owner had disappeared, taking paintings and money with him.

Still, she stayed focused. In her late 20s, with "three babies in tow," Eyestone moved to New Jersey to be near New York publishers. Her career switched to high gear as Bruce McGaw Graphics introduced her first art poster, while Switzerland-based Caspari bought her designs for note cards.

Her luck with galleries also improved. The St. Louis fiasco has been followed by no less than 51 shows in galleries and libraries around the United States. In 1981, a one-woman exhibit at Bloomingdales launched a yearlong national tour of her originals. Commissions and contracts started pouring in, including the 1986 assignment to design the official Statue of Liberty commemorative plate.

Today, the self-managed artist invites prospective collectors to visit her studio (821-1444). Eyestone is also developing a mail order business and is preparing to publish a limited edition lithograph. She also has been devoting more time to portraits and drawings.

"Doing portraits puts you in a win-win situation," she says, "because when I am drawing people’s children or their own portraits, I am by definition doing their very favorite subject. Drawings are one of my great passions."

ARTIST SAYS GOODBYE TO NEW JERSEY

By: Eric Gonzalez
Asbury Park Press, October 16, 1996

Sara Eyestone says she moved to The Jersey Shore, an hour by train from New York, “to become a famous artist.”

Today galleries in Aspen, Colorado and on the island of Maui, represent her original oil paintings that she has painted all over the world, from the tulips of the Netherlands to the flower markets of Paris, to the textiles of Guatemala and the hollyhocks in her native New Mexico.

She was invited by Governor Whitman to paint the gardens of the Governor’s Mansion in Princeton, a project called the Garden State Series. Next spring, at the request of Hilary Clinton, she will continue painting flowers from the Rose Gardens at the White House. She began the series a decade ago when she was the Statue of Liberty Commemorative Plate artist in 1986. Sara Eyestone has connected with publishers in New York who have distributed reproductions of her work on art posters and Caspari note cards internationally.

Famous enough?

Eyestone thinks so; she’s relocating to San Antonio and to her native New
Mexico right after Christmas.

Her “New Jersey farewell,” as she calls it, is an exhibit of her work at Moonstruck Restaurant in Ocean Grove, and will run through the end of the year. The opening party was held September 22.

“People tend to drift out of galleries, so it’s more interesting to have shows where large numbers of people gather,” Eyestone said. “We had at least 300 at the opening. My husband and I are having supper at Moonstruck every Tuesday through Saturday so that we can kiss our community of friends goodbye, surrounded by my paintings.”

Howard Raczkiewicz, co-owner of Moonstruck, said the pairing of fine art and leisurely dining is a natural. “This way the audience can get introduced and digest the art in a cozy surrounding, and have time to appreciate it.”
Eyestone is best known for her vibrant floral and other impressionist-style paintings, about 20 of which adorn the Moonstruck walls, including fruit from a Parisian cart and roosters from Giverney, France, one of her personal favorites.
“Actually, they’re all my favorites – some just have more interesting stories than others,” she said.

Eyestone calls New Mexico her “heart’s home,” but is proud to be known as a New Jersey artist. “New Jersey has been wonderful to me. That’s why I’m thrilled to be doing this Garden State Series,” she said. “These paintings will connect me with New Jersey for life and show people elsewhere to appreciate how beautiful this state is.”

She didn’t know herself how beautiful New Jersey was when she moved here in 1972, only its proximity to New York City.

“All I knew was I wanted my work to become published and global and that New York is the center of the art world,” she said.

“I love New York but I couldn’t live and work somewhere where my kids can’t ride their bicycles without me watching constantly.”

She settled in the Wayside section of Ocean Township because of its school system and then made weekly trips to the city for years, connecting with publishers and galleries.

“I’ve always had to take my art seriously, since it’s how I make a living,” she said. “I may love it and be naturally artistic, but it’s still how the bills get paid. I work very hard but then I don’t know anyone who is successful
who doesn’t work hard.”

Eyestone recently signed with Bloomcraft to design a new line of fabrics, so in the near future Eyestone creations will be on everything from place mats to beach umbrellas.

“I like the fact that I can somewhat control where my work goes,” she said. “There are a million talented artists in the world, but only 600 with posters of their work, so I’m very fortunate. The posters, distributed internationally, make the artist familiar to the general population as well as global, and that generates other opportunities.”

Eyestone says she believes it essential that artists have their work published and become global. “If the community doesn’t know we’re out here, they can’t get our work, and since they support the arts, we need them so we can create more beauty. Every artist should be famous.

Eyestone began what she calls a “Bohemian Passage” of her life when she and her husband of 20 years, David Molin, sold their home in 1991.

Initially they intended to move to Scottsdale and summer in Santa Fe. They put their belongings in storage and began their “move” with a cruise to Hawaii. “We jumped ship in Maui and spent the winter and then decided to do more of the same before settling in Arizona. We kept the studio in New Jersey so we had a fax and telephone, but we were rarely there.”

They bicycled through the Netherlands when the tulips bloomed in the spring. From there they went to Paris and northern Italy, New Mexico, then back to Maui for three months, a stay paid for with an Eyestone original.

Without a plan, they traveled to sunny locations where Sara painted on commission and for six years before they discovered San Antonio. They never did get to Phoenix.

“This period of life has been very exciting,” she said. “Wherever we’ve gone has been difficult to leave and there’s no place we’ve been that we’re not going back.”

As for her future, Eyestone will continue to paint flowers and portraits on commission, and eventually the dancers of the world, from the ballet of New York to the hula of Hawaii.

But that’s only one of her ideas. She calls her creative process more of a process of elimination.

“I have so many ideas, it’s just a matter of deciding what I want to do next. What I don’t paint I might photograph or write about.”

“I’ve had a wonderful life, because I allow myself to think freely. Being open-minded allows me to give and receive pleasure in all aspects of life.”

By: Robert Goetz
The North San Antonio Times, Thursday, Dec. 18, 1997

Artist Sara Eyestone, a child of mystical New Mexico and a longtime Jersey girl, first heard San Antonio calling her more than a decade ago.

She painted two large portraits of the late Henry Clay Koontz and his wife, Mary Sue, who told her she should come to Texas when the bluebonnets and Fiesta is swinging.

The years passed. Eyestone and her husband, David Molin, embarked on a journey after they sold their home in Ocean Township, New Jersey, five years ago. Their travels took them to Hawaii, the Netherlands, Santa Fe, Tuscany, and back to Hawaii.

But the journey didn’t end there.

In early 1996, Alamo Heights resident Ann Ash, a longtime collector of all things Eyestone, commissioned the artist for a painting that would hang in her home.

Eyestone thought she should come to San Antonio to paint and remembered what her friend had told her five years ago. So she called Mary Sue and inquired about a place to stay in the spring.

Curtis and Kathleen Gunn offered Eyestone and her husband a guest house on the river.

"We spent spring in the guest house with the parade floating by," Eyestone recalled. "We attended the (Order of the Alamo) Coronation and were introduced to a lot of people."

"We hated to leave," she continued. "We felt so embraced."

Eyestone and Molin left, but not for long.

When they were in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Eyestone told her husband she wanted to move to San Antonio.

"He said, ‘I’m with you, girl,’" Eyestone said.

Now Eyestone and Molin are living in the Lincoln Heights area and plan to build a house and studio in Terrell Hills. They spend their summers in Santa Fe, not far from Los Alamos, where Eyestone grew up, but call San Antonio their "main residence."

Eyestone has been in San Antonio less than a year, but she has already made her mark on the community in bold, colorful strokes.

Ash, who was chairwoman of this year’s Southwest Craft Center gala, asked her if one of her works could be used for the invitation to the event. The painting inspired the name of this year’s event, "Moonlight and Roses."

Last week, the Friends of Hospice San Antonio sponsored the 1997 Poinsettia Ball to benefit the hospice program of VNA and Hospice of South Texas.

The cover of the invitations to the ball was excerpted from a painting of poinsettias called "December."

Eyestone said the invitation came about when she was here In 1996. She went into Nancy Harkins Stationers and ran into watercolorist Beth Eidelberg, who had also painted poinsettias for a Poinsettia Ball invitation. Harkins asked Eyestone if she had any paintings of poinsettias.

Eyestone was more than happy to support the hospice program.

"It’s such a worthy cause," she said. "Hospice needs volunteers."

Eyestone’s paintings aren’t obscurities. Not only are they in the hands of collectors, they grace posters, coasters, place mats, her own calendars, and Caspari note cards.

She said others describe her work as "contemporary expressionism."

"I call it colorful," the self-taught Eyestone said. "I’ve never come up with a label."

She paints beautiful blossoms and bouquets and still lifes and interior scenes that include colorful flowers. Eyestone also paints portraits and enjoys drawing children and babies.

"Most people think my paintings are bright," Eyestone said. "They’re colorful, but they’re not always bright.

"I have a magnolia piece with 90 colors," she explained. "They’re all pastel shades, soft colors."

"I use the complete gammut of colors – it just depends on who I’m painting for."

A case in point is a painting that now stands on an easel in her apartment.

"This is a painting for (artist) Janie Williams," Eyestone said. "She has a quilt collection, so I used that as a basis for the tablecloth (in the painting)."

The painting also includes roses and crab apples.

"It’s going to be colorful because Janie is colorful," she said.

When she is commissioned for a painting, Eyestone said she enters her client’s world.

"Everybody I paint for I go to their house at my expense," she said. "I go into their world and see what they surround themselves with and what colors they live with."

"I’m not trying to match the painting to their sofa," Eyestone continued. "I’m interested in reflecting their lives in some way or another."

One of her paintings became a poster known as "Tea for Two."

"It was commissioned by a couple back east," she said. "They had very old-world tastes, so I included brocade, a tea pot, and urn and flowers that reflected their tastes."

Eyestone, who is as much a businesswoman as she is an artist, owns the copyright to all of her paintings, so she has control over how it is used.

When her paintings are used as posters or by Caspari as cards, Eyestone’s name and birth date are included.

"That’s so people know I am still around," she said. "That’s how people find me. They contact the company and call me."

"I don’t make money with published works, but I get wonderful exposure," Eyestone said. "My paintings support me."

Eyestone said she has a mailing list that now includes about 3,500 people outside of Texas.

Her husband, a former business owner, handles their mail-order business and frames her paintings.

Eyestone said they are now going into the publishing business. Her son Joshua is working with them on that venture.

She is also working on a series of blossoms from the Rose Garden at the White House.

"It will be a limited edition series," Eyestone said. "The White House has rights to reproduction."

She said her White House connection came through Hillary Clinton’s mother.

"I received a call from Mrs. Rodham," Eyestone said. "Hillary had given her one of my calendars for Christmas and she loved my work."

Eyestone said she visited the White House last summer to take pictures of the blossoms in the Rose Garden and will continue to go back there.

The Rose Garden is not really a "rose garden," she said. It includes "old-fashioned seasonal flowers" such as tulips and irises as well as blooming trees.

Eyestone was born an artist. She grew up in Los Alamos, where her father was a nuclear physicist.

"I was subjected to beautiful things – an amazing sky and a wonderful culture," she said.

Eyestone said her parents didn’t encourage her to take art classes when she attended college in the ‘60s. Her major was English.

"My first husband encouraged me to work at something I was interested in," she said.

So in addition to developing as an artist, she taught art.

Eyestone also learned the value of discipline and how to make sacrifices.

"You can burn the midnight oil for the rest of your life if it’s something you want to do," she said. "You make time to do what you want and give up other things."

"That’s what I learned from Georgia O’Keeffe – making time for her work at any cost," Eyestone continued. "She didn’t have any children. I chose to have a family and gave up sleep."

Eyestone, who is as vibrant as her paintings, said she is both right- and left-brained.

"I’m full of great advice," she said. "I have a great attitude. I got that from my parents. They’re fabulous role models."

Eyestone’s parents have also taken a journey – leaving their "adobe hacienda" in northern New Mexico for the Alamo City.

By: Stephanie Bennett
The Herald, January 12, 1995

Perhaps you’ve seen her posters decorating the sets of television’s Murder She Wrote or Melrose Place. Her artwork is a favorite with Angela Lansbury. Maybe you’ve seen her official Statue of Liberty commemorative plate, entitled "Golden Lady," a design produced in 24 carat gold on porcelain in a limited edition for the Liberty Preservation Program. As a Liberty artist she spent seven months traveling the country signing plates, raising money for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Or possibly you’ve received a letter on one of many note cards printed by the renown Caspari company. Since 1980 her floral and pottery prints have been featured in over 300 museum shops worldwide. Who is this diversified and accomplished artist, and what is it that she does to bring about such a wide scope of success? This is the work of Ocean Township-based Sara Eyestone: artist, entrepreneur and renaissance woman of the nineties.

Walking through the door of the Sara Eyestone Gallery and Studio, I was immediately enamored by the elegance of the artist’s display. Paintings, finely framed and elegantly hung, fill the walls of her gallery in harmonious symmetry. Bright, bold poppies, ivory orchids sprinkled with fuchsia and dots of golden pollen, delicious periwinkle, and brilliant sunflowers bursting forth from their frames, shouting "yes" to life and all that it holds – this too, is the work of Sara Eyestone. Her paintings and her life are contagiously cheerful and upbeat, providing an immediate reason to smile upon entrance to her small, but lovely studio.

Stepping further inside, my eyes fall upon easels and oil paints. The genial optimism of the artist’s human heart is openly displayed on canvases spread about her studio. Palates bursting with vibrant color, oils swirled in varying shades and degrees of intensity, brushes and frames; all, her work in progress. This is the studio where the Wanamassa-based artist reproduces the beauty she sees all around her. It is the place she combines color, talent, and the unique savoir-faire that creates such a strong attraction to her work for so many. Interestingly, both the process and finished product are treated with the same degree of kindness and respect. Both studio and gallery are located at 3310 Fairmont Avenue, Ocean Township. It is easily accessible to the public, both for viewing and purchases. Often the artist can be found within, ready to chat with anyone who shares her zeal for art and beauty.

Although she received early recognition for her work in batiks and acrylics, years ago Sara switched to oils and says she "remains captivated by all the endless possibilities of oil paint on canvas." As well as a growing line of signature series products. Sara continues to make her "bread and butter," as she aptly puts it, from people commissioning paintings. During 1994 she produced 33 new oil paintings. This is twice the normal amount of activity, as her typical productivity ranges from 12 to 16 new paintings annually. The artist attributes this to her new lifestyle.

"Now that I am homeless," she explains with a chuckle, "I tend to paint more." Until recently, Sara operated her public gallery/studio with a small staff, but worked out of her private home studio as well. In the last year she and her husband of nineteen years, David Molin, decided to sell their home and travel all over the world, going places where, as she artfully expresses, "The light is brilliant and beautiful." Yet, the couple do not consider themselves typical travelers. Rather they set out for faraway places and stay there for extended periods of time.

"We realized we wanted to be out in a variety of places. To go somewhere…and stay for a while. Soon we want to go to the South Seas and paint there," she explains. Recently the two returned from several months of living and painting in Hawaii, where Sara painted on the beach to her hearts content. From that experience several large pastel florals were created.

"I like places," she says. "To find places with perfect light, to surround myself with beauty and history, and people." Presently she has four large paintings at the "Village Galleries of Maui" in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii at the Ritz Carlton. They are called "Kissing Fishes," "December," "The Morning Glory Vase," and "Good Things Growing."

In Amsterdam, she arrived when the tulips where in bloom. In Paris she went during the spring and painted a pastel bouquet entitled "April in Paris." This year during her visit to Maui, Hawaii she intends to paint the Hula dancers. Her excitement overflows when discussing the prospect, "They’re fabulous…so full of history, like the Indians of New Mexico. I’m so into the history of it all when I’m watching the dance. It’s so beautiful to see the way other people see things and celebrate life." When it comes to celebrating life, Sara Eyestone doesn’t go halfway. Her enthusiasm and vibrancy totally translate on to the canvas. Call it "joie du vivre," as the French, or "con brio" if you prefer Italian – whatever name you attach to the life of Sara Eyestone it all means the same thing – there is a zest, a vivacious zeal, an embracing of life that the artist brings to her work which is unmistakable.

"I live my life artistically," explains Eyestone, "I’m just open…open for wonderful people and wonderful moments. The list of things that are important certainly include health and wealth, but put fun on the list and it will be a lot more fulfilling!"

Multi-talented, vivacious, and ultra-productive, this is a woman that seems "forever on-the-go." Our Christmas-week interview was particularly challenging, aside from what one might expect in the line of usual holiday frenzy. Sara was often keeping twenty-hour days, working hard to accomplish all that she had committed herself to, packing as she prepared to leave for Santa Fe, making the most of a last minute meetings with her staff and friends, and still abounding with energy. Trying to catch up with this dynamo before jetting off to Santa Fe was a feat in itself. We finally connected via Ma Bell an hour before midnight the evening before she was to leave. It was then that I was able to gain insight into her whirlwind lifestyle.

A typical day in the life of Sara Eyestone goes something like this: oatmeal and skim milk every morning, stimulating luncheons, department store autographing, cross-country gallery openings, regional television shows, radio interviews, discussions with those who have commissioned a painting, meetings with her licensing agent, phone calls and interfacing with companies interested in using her designs for their products, overseeing the management of her studio and shop, and of course, the actual painting. How does she do it and remain sane, fit and energized?

I’m on a different time frame," explains the active artist. "I do all my resting at once." Sara and David travel to "the sunshine" one week every month, where she writes and draws…"far from the strenuous pace and intense schedules I thrive upon in my studio. It’s a fine balance," the artist maintains. Her cheery personality, bouncing back and forth between exuberance for her work and the practicality of finishing our interview before morning created an enjoyable tension. Within the first ten minutes of the interview I had more usable information than I can usually expect to gather in an entire hour, and I hadn’t yet even asked one question.

My own initiation with the work of Sara Eyestone occurred somewhere in the mid-1980s. Upon the opening of the innovative new Woman’s Wing at Long Branch’s Monmouth Medical Center, the hospital commissioned Sara Eyestone to paint a 98" x 60" oil canvas which she would entitle "Forever and Ever." This journalist was present that day covering the gala opening for another publication. As I mingled with the hospital administration and staff, casually sampling the hors d’oeuvres, sipping a bit of wine, and chatting with the many well-wishers, someone placed a neatly beribboned packet of beautiful notecards in my hand, compliments of Sara Eyestone. Vaguely familiar with her work, I had heard this name before, but until that moment had not yet been touched with the beauty and energy of the unique artistry of Sara Eyestone.

Since that time Sara Eyestone has made incredible strides in the world of art, both commercially and in fine galleries. Her calendars have sold out every year since 1984. Bruce McGaw Graphics published Sara Eyestone’s first art poster in time for the opening of a national tour of her original paintings at Bloomingdales in 1981. That poster sold out. Today her posters sell from Japan to South Africa. The American Music Box Company produced a signature line of Eyestone’s music boxes that included images from her florals, her cat paintings, and her famous carousels.

As a businesswoman Sara describes herself as "very fussy." Although she was approached by 65 companies wanting to carry her designs in a signature collection, Sara chose "Twin Panda," an exclusive high-end American carpet company owned and operated by Manhattan-based Katha Diddel. Now, Sara’s first signature collection, inspired by some of her florals are being reproduced by Diddel’s company in China. Recently Sara has designed a line of colorful unisex neckties for a firm called tango. They are meant to be worn with denim and oxford cloth shirts, and should be available early this year.

Jeanne Shick has been working as Sara’s agent for over a year, licensing her designs to major manufacturers producing bedding, interior designs, and home furnishings. "Sara is so easy to sell," says Shick. "It’s a happy look. Her products are some that you may already have, but hers are special enough that you’d want them anyway."

The year 1995 has much in store for Sara Eyestone. Home furnishings, interiors, pillows, rugs, cookie tins, covered boxes, neckwear and scarves, as well as a book of drawings that will include Governor Christine Whitman and others that the artist respects and admires, all these and many other new projects are on the horizon for Sara Eyestone. Color remains the essence of her work, and she explains, "I am addicted to it. As I approach the next century creating my most passionate paintings, I will continue working as often as possible in warm sunny places, centered, focused, and inspired to record the beauty around me with each stroke of my brush."

By: Jane Burgess
New Jersey Woman Magazine Cover Story, July/August 1991

To say that she has a flair for color would be like saying Chopin had an ear for a good tune. To say that the vibrancy of the colors in her paintings takes your breath away would be more accurate. The paintings in question are, of course, the work of nationally and internationally recognized artist Sara Eyestone.

An Ocean Township, New Jersey, resident, she is probably best known for her impressionistic style and brilliant florals. Considering her unique abilities, it is not suprising that her career in art, rooted in the 1960s, continues to soar to new heights. And anyone familiar with her work readily understands why it is sought by collectors, and through reproduction, in ever widening circles.

In order to keep up, she says, "I work long, back-to-back days, because it takes me forever to do what I do."

What she does would stagger the heartiest of us. In a year’s time, she completes, just for starters, from 10 to 16 large paintings and about 35 drawings. (Almost all of her original art is now done by commission.)

"My subjects are predominantly florals," she explained, "although I’m now doing many portraits as well and am interested in exploring the subject of people caught unaware."

Happily married to business owner David Molin, whom she calls the "love of my life," she has also raised five children, yet the 47-year-old artist is continually expanding her horizons. The commissioned paintings and drawings are only part of what she does. With a head for business that is right up there with her talent for art, Ms. Eyestone has steered her work into the business as well as the world. Most of us have seen her reproductions on Caspari cards, notepaper, desk accessories, and even playing cards, all sold in countless shops around this country and others. Then there are her limited edition prints, and her posters and calendars, which are big sellers worldwide. Her art even adorns a line of music boxes. Her association with porcelain manufacturer Villeroy & Boch, the venerable firm for which she designed the official commemoratives for the Statue of Liberty Centennial, shows just how diverse are the outlets for an artist with talent and determination.

Still, you have to wonder how she has managed all this when so many other artists spend a lifetime of struggle and end up with crates of unsold work.

"Artists are notorious for being considered lousy business people," says Ms. Eyestone. She feels this also goes for most of us who are not in a business-related profession. It is an attitude that she said "rolls off my back like water off a duck."

Empasizing her philosophy that "business is something we have to work at in order to do well," she claims that she spends as much time marketing her work as on the art itself. She alternates the long hours painting in her studio, where her days usually start with the rising sun, with other long hours attending to a myriad of business matters.

"As an artist," this artist says, "if you are self-employed, you have no choice other than to create a plan that works."

So successful has she been at marketing her own work that she gives seminars called "The Art of Good Business" to other professional artists. She says that the positive results come back to her a hundred times over.

"There are so many talented people in the United States, and it’s an especially good time for artists – the more that are successful at what they do, the better it is for us all."

Success, though, has not come to her without hard work and an extraordinary persistence. Mainly self-taught, Sara Eyestone was raised in New Mexico, a place she calls her "heart’s home" and where she still visits frequently. Although her family emphasized higher education as the ideal (her father was a nuclear physicist), she married David Eyestone when she was only 19. Eventually they divorced, but that was after having four children, and a long period of time when she had to cope while he attended graduate school. Her entry into the art world actually sprang from this coping when she began teaching arts and crafts to children and then branching out to adults…and learning about what she was teaching as she went along. As her own interest in art deepened, she even became the artist’s model so that she could study the artist’s techniques – always watching, learning, focusing on colors, improving on her own natural talent as she realized that this was what she wanted to do, what she had to do.

When she felt she was ready to market some of her work, she spent hot summers knocking on the doors of galleries, traveling by bus, because children rode free and she usually had several tots and diaper bags in tow. She even had to drop the "Sara" from her name for a while after being advised that a woman, especially a housewife, could not command a decent price for her paintings. When she did have her first one-woman gallery show, it was one she would never forget. Every painting sold. But before they were picked up by their new owners, who had already paid up, and before Sara received any commissions, the owner of the gallery sneaked out of town with the whole caboodle – all the paintings, all the money and even the roses her parents had sent in honor of the opening. Now that would be enough to turn many a budding artist into a quick retreat toward oblivion. But not Sara Eyestone. She went on and did more than 50 one-woman shows!

"So you pick up and go on," she says, recalling the event, as if, well, wouldn’t everybody? "I learn from my mistakes, what not to do again. I learned who not to be doing business with."

Now she speaks of her career in terms of decades, from the starting ‘60s, when she was "experimenting with everything from sculpture to oil painting and weaving to jewelry making," to the ‘70s, which she spent "developing my painting and drawing skills, focusing on batik as my medium." The ‘80s brought her to painting in acrylics as more of her collectors out of her area wanted large canvasses, and the batiks were hard to ship.

And what about the 1990s, now that her work is shown in museums and commissioned by serious collectors all over the world for serious prices? She says that the ‘90s have brought her to a "romance with oils." In fact, she writes in some personal comments describing the art in her upcoming 1992 calendar.

"I love the feel of the oil paint when it moves from my brush to the canvas; I love the deep, rich spectrum and the smell of the turp; I love painting with the same supplies artists have used for centuries; and most of all, I love the discovery that I can paint petals that look like velvet and porcelain that shines."

Sara Eyestone may be a savvy business-woman; she certainly knows how to market her work. Maybe she’s really a chameleon. But whatever else, the words in that statement had to come straight from the soul of an artist.