In the dining room she used to eat in when she was little, Casey Williams now creates art. A white cloth speckled with acrylic paint covers the long wooden table that holds an impressive amount of art supplies: wood blocks, a colorful array of paint, finished and unfinished artwork, sandpaper, brushes and more.
A cheerful bouquet of tulips, reminiscent of the bright colors she uses, sits among the flurry of art supplies. Her lively pug, Nigel, keeps her company under the table and sometimes eats a stencil or two. For this local artist, art is a full-time career.
Her gig as a local artist started when she moved back home to Athol in 2011, after living in Boston working as a real estate agent — a job she didn’t enjoy. Her mother died that year, and it made her realize that life is short.
“You need to do what you like doing,” Williams said.
For her, that’s art and being a disc jockey.
One of Williams’ most popular artistic pieces are her 8.5-by-11-inch town maps. They’re not meant for directions; they’re meant to highlight the quirky aspects of each town and encompass the most important parts of it.
It all started when Williams moved back to Athol and began to truly appreciate her hometown.
“I fell down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what North Quabbin is,” she said. “Is it a county? A region?”
She wanted the specifics.
Williams embarked on a “scavenger hunt” for information. Eventually, she found out that the region of North Quabbin encompasses nine towns.
“It’s an official but unofficial term coined in 1980,” she said.
She brought her completed North Quabbin map to the following year’s Garlic and Arts Festival in Orange in print and postcard form.
“I sold a ton,” she said.
People began asking her if she sold prints of the individual North Quabbin towns, so she began painting those, too. She eventually had prints of both North and South Quabbin and all of the towns in each region.
So far, she estimates she’s painted maps of at least 40 towns in Massachusetts.
“The maps are a completely different animal,” she said. “It’s a completely different process. I have to clear this entire table and put everything else away.”
There’s also a lot of research that goes into her maps. First, she has to get on the computer and “figure out what makes the town tick.” Town information has to be accurate, and the placement of everything is important.
“They’re a lot more difficult to execute,” she noted.
The first step is research, which takes the longest amount of time. Then, she draws the map on tracing paper before transferring it to the final paper. Painting the maps is the last stage. For words, she uses a paint pen.
“When they’re done, I’m psyched,” she said.
All of the maps sold in stores or on her website are digitally printed. She keeps the acrylic-painted originals in her home.
While she’d eventually like to paint a map of each of the towns in Massachusetts, she doesn’t have a concrete plan to do so.
“I’m really just staying on the trajectory of doing new maps all the time,” she said. “(Doing them all) could take a lifetime. I would love to someday have them all. But will it happen? I don’t know.”
Creating maps can become exhausting for her, too.
“I’ll do maps for a while, then I need a break,” she admitted. “Maybe even six months.”
To get correct information for her maps, she reaches out to the historical society of each town. However, not every piece of the map needs to be historical. She also likes to focus on town icons and quirks.
The next map she plans to paint is Sunderland. She’ll be attending a show there in June for the town’s 300th anniversary celebration and would like to have prints of the town available for attendees.
“Learning new things about all the towns is very satisfactory,” she said.
LOOT, a quirky odds-and-ends store in Turners Falls, was one of the first places to sell her art, and its owner Erin MacLean inspired Williams to make a Turners Falls map.
“From there, I started to do all the towns around LOOT,” she said. “Erin would want all the Montague villages, Greenfield … It just kept going.”
“The maps I have represent the area I live and where I’m doing business,” she added.
Williams’ artistic side spans further than drawing and painting. She began occasional work as a DJ in Boston during her late 20s, playing mostly 1980s classic soul music like Rick James and Prince.
“I love Motown, old soul, funk — music they call ‘boogie,’ a lot of ’80s, and New Wave,” she said.
Back in Boston, she used to hold a DJ night where she’d play classic rock like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath.
Now, she occasionally DJs for local establishments like LOOT and some weddings.
“Even when I have artistic license, I still try to consider who’s there and what the event is,” she said.
For her, art and being a DJ go hand in hand.
Like many artists, Williams has loved creating and viewing art since she was very young. However, unlike some artists who complete a masterpiece over the course of months or even years, Williams doesn’t like to work on a single piece of art for too long.
“I want everything I sit down to work on to be done,” she admitted. “I don’t like things to be ‘in progress.’”
While she likes to sit down and finish pieces quickly, she wasn’t always that way. It took her a while to be able to complete art so quickly.
“I had to make a lot of bad art before I could … have it come out the way I wanted it,” she said.
Williams prefers to paint mostly with acrylic since she likes its consistency and how it doesn’t take too long to dry. Aside from her maps, her other popular pieces are painted wood blocks, usually with 1970s-inspired patterns and birds. The blocks are hand-cut by her father in the garage.
While she typically creates smaller pieces, she still enjoys painting on bigger canvases or pieces of burlap on occasion. Some of the canvases in her studio reveal previous artwork that have been painted over. Williams said painting over other paintings she’s previously done adds interesting depth and texture.
Williams is inspired by all things 1970s and what she describes as “roller skating rink art.”
“I grew up in the ’70s, so I have an affinity for all things macramé and burlap,” she said. “My grandmother had towels with those ’70s peacock teardrop patterns … It’s nostalgic.”
“Those ’70s peacock teardrop patterns” are a recurring theme in her bright, cheerful wood block paintings.
She also keeps a journal of “random stream-of-consciousness ideas” and magazine cuttings to inspire her artwork. Much of her inspiration comes from television shows, especially sitcoms with interesting interior design.
“I’m a junkie for visual information,” she said.
Also, sometimes her inspiration comes from what paints need to be used before they harden.
“That’s why you see a bunch of turquoise now,” she explained as she filled in a bird on a wood block.
She freehanded a perfectly round orange sun in the corner of the block, commenting on the way that blue and orange complement each other.
“It wouldn’t be the same if that was yellow,” she said, examining her work.
Spring and summer mark a busy time for Williams, when most of her Saturdays are completely booked for art shows or DJ gigs.
“Everything I get hired to do is on a Saturday,” she laughed.
Among other events, she has an art show planned for May 19 at The Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew, and a community yard sale where she’ll display her art in Jamaica Plain, where she lived for 12 years.
Most of her business comes from participating in art shows; she typically books eight to 12 shows a year during the summer.
“I’m just at that point where I maybe need to hire an assistant,” she said.
Reach Christie Wisniewski at:
cwisniewski@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 280