THE WALLS are HER CANVAS
BY LAURA RASKIN INDEPENDENT ARTS WRITER

Sterk: “There's a level of trust there, too. Especially doing work in people’s homes, especially their Nantucket homes.” ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

In James Treyz's house on Hawk's Circle in

'Sconset is a mural in the style of Rufus Porter, a 19th century American painter who personalized 160 houses from New England to Virginia with sweeping town and harbor scenes.

Treyz's mural is by Nantucket artist Audrey Sterk, who is nearing Porter's proliferation with murals and design work in countless private homes as well as the Brotherhood, the Westmoor Club and 141 Main St., a former Preservation Trust show house. For the Treyz family, she stenciled their front hall and a seashell-themed floor. In their Nantucket harbor scene is a tiny boat with the four members of their family. “You'd never know it was there unless you knew the owner,” said Treyz, who called Sterk “a little gem on Nantucket” and clarified that her work, which could easily veer, is never kitschy.

He did not have to be pressed to talk about her style: the way she understands the island's “micro” environments and paints what is appropriate depending on the part of town; the way she pours over personal photographs or sentimental fabric samples with her employer so that the collaboration is about them, not her; her infectious energy and creativity.

Treyz supposed that all of this is because Sterk’s work is her lifestyle; it is who she is, not what she does. Unbeknownst to him, this is exactly what Sterk said a week earlier, sitting on 57 Centre St. home where she just completed another mural and where the house tour would stop during Christmas Stroll.

“It's my lifestyle,” said Sterk. “Even when I'm not working, I'm flipping through material books, fabric books, visiting the Boston Design Center.”

Sterk is little, like Treyze said – petite and blond, with creamy skin, sparkly eyes and a wide smile. She came to Nantucket 10 years ago from Ohio where she grew up and where she attended the Columbus College of Art and Design. College friends were coming to the island, which Sterk had never heard of, and she joined them and waitressed here. When she finished college, she came back.

“I had no idea, I just take leaps,” she said, leaning in and opening her eyes a little wider.

The program at Columbus had been vigorous, to say the least. Sterk was encouraged to apply by a high school art teacher. “It was a very, very regimented program,” she said. “I was a zombie for five years.” She started in a class of 600 and watched through weary eyes as it dwindled to 125.

Sterk described her childhood home as the one that all of her friends wanted to visit. She was encouraged to be artistic and there were many family projects, including free reign over kitchen walls that were being renovated before the new wallpaper went up.

Her college background was interior designbased. She worked for an art company that did large-scale murals and hand-painted wall coverings, mostly for retail stores.

“I'd be studying during the day and painting fine art at night,” she said.

When she graduated she wanted to find a way to weave painting and decorating together. Once on Nantucket, it took a solid four years of decorative painting and marketing herself for Sterk to make a primary living. “There's a level of trust there, too. Especially doing work in people’s homes, especially their Nantucket homes,” she said.

For people with second (or third or fourth) homes on the island, it is a distinctly different place from their primary residence, and Sterk is gifted at interpreting that feeling into a scene on a wall. Homes here are not so much about moving forward – the daily grind of work and family – as they are about looking back: at whaling, at old seafaring days, at idleness caught in time.

If Sterk could survive off the satisfaction of her clients, that is all the payment she would need, she said.

She cannot make a guess as to how many murals she and her intimate team of helpers complete a year. One project leads to another, or multiple projects in the same house. Some overlap. It is seamless work.

The mural at 57 Centre St. is in an itinerant painter’s style. Sterk may distress the walls to give the painting the look of old plaster. Lately she has been focusing on a slightly more modern, Asian style. She starts from a drawing and uses a low odor, water-based paint. At 57 Centre, there is a stack of photographs of the owner's family boats and dog, as well as a couple of books with large color photographs of water scenes.

Her work has been “quite an experience in architecture,” she said. She has seen old and new, unexpected modernity and antiquity. She has helped a bachelor with his well-planned bachelor pad (complete with bookcase doors that open to a home theater) and covered another client's walls with burlap coffee bags.

Sterk has plans for the future of her business located on Amelia Drive. She is cryptic, but it is obvious she wants to spill. “It's a take-off on what I'm doing now. Eventually people will know about it. It’s a Nantucket-based concept incorporating interior design and decorative painting,” she said.

“Sometimes the charge is to come up with something different. There’s so much you can do if you think outside of the box,” said Sterk. “The difference comes from the individual. You're helping them with an extension of their thoughts.”

Visit www.audreysterk.com.

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