Eliot ME, January 10--Located at the end of a typical industrial park building, Carpet by the Yard appears to be a normal small business with stacks of tile samples by the front door, according to The Portsmouth, Maine Herald.
Looks can be deceiving. Step inside Steven Mutch’s business and the uninformed customer can’t help but stop in his tracks.
"Oh yeah, a lot of them do a double take," said the 46-year-old Mutch about the eye-catching artist’s studio and gallery in the back of his carpet store. "They look a little bit confused."
No, this is not your ordinary carpet store with many of Mutch’s intense abstract paintings adorning the walls. It’s also not your typical artist’s studio with in-progress works competing for space with dozens of carpet rolls. It’s a lot of both and it represents Mutch’s split personality - the small-business owner who would like to be full-time artist.
"I’ve always painted but never seriously," said Mutch, who began his artistic odyssey relatively late in life. "I doodled and painted a lot, but in high school I used to get kicked out of the art room all the time."
His Newburyport, Mass., high school teacher accused him of being an "idle" teenager, and Mutch doesn’t dispute the charge.
Mutch is making up for squandered time. He used to hang his watercolors in a former shop in Kittery (the name Carpet by the Yard comes from the business’s former proximity to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard), but he has far greater ambitions. This mostly self-taught artist has reached a crossroads in his career and life not unlike tens of millions of workers and executives who yearn to change careers and stake a creative claim over their lives.
"I do (flooring) to pay the bills," said Mutch, who figures he has laid down carpet, tile and hardwood floors since he was 12, and has owned his own business since 1995.
"The flooring work is necessary, but I’d like to leave it behind and pursue my real passion. It’s who I am."
The prices of his works range from $200 to $5,000, and he has sold a handful of paintings since his artistic passion emerged seemingly with a will of its own a few years ago.
Next month, he begins what he hopes will be his first dive into the treacherous waters of the art world with a one-man show at the Kittery Art Association.
The exhibition, which opens Feb. 3 and will run on the weekends throughout the month, will give me some exposure and hopefully catch the eye of an established art dealer," Mutch said as he gave a tour of his gallery/studio and explained the stories behind his works. "It will be something for my resume."
Mutch made some local headlines following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., when he painted a watercolor rendition of the famous news photograph of firemen at ground zero.
He sold 460 prints of the watercolor and eventually donated $4,600 to a fund supporting children and widows of fallen firefighters.
But as he looks around at his eclectic collection of abstract works, some of them quite stark and startling, he shares a realistic assessment.
"My style of art is hard to market and there’s not much of one here (in the Seacoast region)," he said. "I need to get an art dealer interested in me so I can show my work in Boston or New York."
Mutch has a slight build and a pleasant demeanor at odds with the ferocity of some of his paintings and his own artist’s statement: "My work is an impulsive assault on any object or surface that can embrace the perplexity of a random thought."
He’s a passionate Red Sox and Patriots fan who has created a work highlighting Sox slugger David Ortiz in a jigsaw puzzle fashion with a nude woman.
