Artist Profile: Martha Flood

Martha Flood lived and worked in the Beaver Mill artist studio building in North Adams when she joined the first round of Assets for Artists in 2008. Now she lives outside of town but has opened a terrific design studio in downtown North Adams on Eagle Street a short distance from MASS MoCA.

North Adams is not New York or Paris, where opening a design studio is often an obvious business step toward discovery by shoppers seeking cutting edge design direct from the artist, and by major retail and commercial accounts looking for the next big thing: Martha’s design studio in North Adams, far from the center of the design world, is a bold venture, and one that I hope bodes well for the future of our community as a commercial hub for individual artists and designers.

She knows her industry, having spent some 30 years as a surface pattern designer, producing designs for wallcoverings, fabrics, laminates and wrapping papers. Her list of clients and professional accomplishments is extensive, although pattern design remains a challenging industry in which to earn a solid living as a full-time designer.

Martha was the first participant in the “small business” track of the Assets for Artists program to utilize the full savings and match she had earned and thus complete the program. She used her working capital investment to support the start-up costs of her new MFD Fabrics line, printing an initial inventory of eco-friendly fabric from her exciting “Woodlands Collection” that is now available by the yard through Martha’s website.