We’re detecting a pattern here. More than one, actually — from the purely conceptual to the sumptuously touchable — but one at the core of it all: Michelle Dirkse is a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool artists’ ally. And quite the artist herself. Dirkse launched her own interior-design business five years ago, after “working with a high-end construction company and other interior design firms that I was not connected to,” she says. “I was doing a lot of work to make something happen that I wasn’t passionate about. I couldn’t fake it anymore.” From there, authenticity — and opportunity, and inspiration — helped fashion that foundational pattern. “In my old space, in Belltown, Seattle, I also had a retail storefront, and I wanted to take advantage of that,” she says. “I housed Art Walk for two years and, in doing that, was supporting local art. … Because of that history of Art Walk, and always being on the hunt for client artwork, we developed relationships.”
And now, Dirkse has developed a new line of textiles based on her mutually beneficial relationships with more than half-a-dozen local artists: one-of-a-kind wallpapers, fabrics and area rugs that fill her new workspace on Capitol Hill, her own city-chic condo and the music room she remodeled for a couple of clients, for starters. “Part of why we did this is that when the opportunity calls for a wallpaper, pattern or rug that’s a statement, I felt like there weren’t a lot of resources,” Dirkse says. “I wanted to make something as a team that is different and hadn’t been seen. I wanted something that’s a statement. That’s how it started, but then it became a collection.”
There’s yet another consistent pattern: collaboration. There will be more. “It feels cool to make something new and different with people you know and respect,” Dirkse says. “I’m not done. They’re not done, either.”