A FURNITURE WHISPERER

February 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

recycling and revitalizing

mcclatchy newspapers

AKRON — To Judith Rickenbacher, a broken-down table isn’t trash. It’s potential.

Rickenbacher is an artist whose canvas is furniture, a visionary who rescues old pieces and gives them new purpose. Using her artistic eye and sometimes a bit of whimsy, she turns tired and even ramshackle pieces into works of utilitarian art.

She calls herself a furniture whisperer. She’ll study a piece until it speaks to her, until she can envision what it will become.

The results are as varied in style as the furniture she starts with. An armoire might be painted with a traditional pastoral scene, while a chair gets a boldly colored automotive motif and an accent table is given a kicky treatment with geometric shapes.

“I just know what I like,” she said. “... I let the piece tell me what needs to be done.”

Rickenbacher, of Richfield, Ohio, started repainting and decorating furniture for her own home and turned it into a business to supplement the family income when her two children were young. It’s still a side venture; she also works full time as an outside sales representative for General Insulation Co.

She finds her fodder at consignment shops and the occasional garage sale. Once in a while, she’ll pick up a castoff that’s been left at the curb, “if it’s irresistible,” she said. “And now and then, people leave things on my doorstep.”

Revitalizing those pieces draws on skills she’s amassed throughout her life. Her father dabbled in woodworking, she said, and from watching him, she learned about furniture repair. She later spent seven years with the Sherwin-Williams Co., where she learned about paint technology.

In art, she is mostly self-taught, although she studied art and interior design for a year at Kent State University.

Rickenbacher’s typical approach is to repair a piece or take it apart and rebuild it. Then she sands it, primes it and applies a base coat of paint before she even gets to the artistic part.

Decorating a piece might involve applying layers of glaze or paint, a process that’s complicated by the fact that she uses acrylic latex paint that dries fast and doesn’t allow much time for blending.

She finishes each piece with water-based urethane for durability, although her pieces aren’t chip-proof, she said.

Even old furniture that’s beyond saving is deconstructed for reusable elements. The keys of an old piano, for example, were used to decorate three benches. A table leg became a support for a shelf attached to another bench.

She sticks with pieces that have no particular worth and won’t be devalued by her work, she said. If she paints an antique, she said, it’s one that has already lost its value.

Rickenbacher names each piece, often for a person she associates with it. She named a ’60s side table Andrew, for example, because it reminded her of hanging out in her Uncle Andy and Aunt Faye’s rec room.

A small bench with an eclectic flair was named for her friend Julie, a woman who Rickenbacher said is just as comfortable dressed elegantly and playing her harp as she is wearing jeans and riding a horse.

As for Ella, a table with an elegant design around the edge, “I thought, Ella Fitzgerald,” Rickenbacher said. “I don’t know why.”

Most of the furniture is painted in subtle colors, but Rickenbacher said it’s not because she’s trying to appeal to the masses. Rather, it’s because she leans toward timeless design.

“It’s just my taste,” she said. “It’s what I’m comfortable with.”

Nevertheless, Joan Smith, whose Gallery 143 in Green, Ohio, sells Rickenbacher’s pieces, believes customers like that the furniture is painted in colors that fit with their decor.

“They’re not so far out that people can’t imagine putting them in the house,” she said.

The environmental aspect of reusing old things appeals to customers, too, said Smith, whose shop also carries jewelry Rickenbacher designs as well as smaller painted pieces such as silverware chests and knickknack shelves.

For Rickenbacher, recycling is an important part of her work. “I hate to see anything go to a landfill that could be used,” she said.

She points to a small accent table as an example. The veneer on the tabletop was peeling away, so Rickenbacher filled the void with two-part epoxy. She glued and clamped the unstable parts, refinished the wood base and painted the top with a design of cowboys riding into the sunset.

The goal isn’t to make a piece look new. Instead, she lets the imperfections give it character.

“The cracks are just wonderful,” she said, running her hand over the accent table’s fissured edge.

Her pieces sell for around $300 to $400 for a chair, $400 to $600 for a dresser or similar-size piece, and more for large pieces. Smaller items such as silverware chests sell for around $150.

Rickenbacher’s own home is filled with examples of her work, although she said they’re “the ones that are passing through” on their way to being sold.

And each one is special to her.

“The last piece I do is always my favorite piece. I don’t want to give it up,” she said. “But I do, because I know my next favorite piece is coming.”