LETTER FROM THE EDITOR – February 2014
By: Rebecca Falzano, Managing Editor 
Photography: Sean Thomas Photography

I once had an English professor who told our class, “You’re becoming a real writer when you realize you can’t help but write.” The words were ominous but encouraging—there was a certain freedom in knowing the pull was beyond our control. As if we were predestined to this. No pressure to find a career. It would find us.

There are many professions like this, professions more accurately described as vocations, full of people who feel called to the work, who just knew—most of the time early on—that this is going to be their contribution, the thing they’re good at, the answer to the question, “What do you do?”

Almost every interior designer I’ve met falls into this category. 

There’s Krista Stokes, who moved every few months growing up, hauling belongings and reconfiguring them time and time again to fit a different space. Her belongings were her only constant, holding memories and stories that gave her and her family a sense of connection to the old and the new. From the time she could walk and speak, she rearranged things in her house. She and her mom always made an instantly warm home. “My whole life I felt compelled to create art in this medium and help others play in their own spaces,” she says.

Ariana Fischer says her childhood play dates at friends’ houses almost always involved cleaning and rearranging their rooms (much to the delight of her friends’ mothers)—the early markings of her need to create order and beauty, to feel “grounded,” not to mention of the satisfaction she feels in doing it for others.

And then there’s James Light, whose story is best told in his own words: “At the age of five, my mother bought my father a white Naugahyde La-Z-Boy recliner for Christmas. After breakfast, while my parents were upstairs, I decided that the chair needed definition. I traced the entire chair with a black El Marko permanent marker, around the tufted buttons and all. I thought it was a great improvement…my parents failed to see my genius. I was quite pleased with my foresight.”

In this issue, we celebrate interior design in Maine. The ideas, the vision, the challenges, the solutions, the beauty and order, and the people who can’t help but do it.