A babbling brook runs along Northfield’s gently twisting Warwick Road, harbinger of the beauty awaiting in Susie Secco’s hilltop home, art studio, gardens and orchards. A steeply winding driveway leads to the post-and-beam home her husband Phil Watson completed just before their 2010 wedding.
A longtime builder, Watson bought 36 acres years ago from the family of the late Roderick Parker, another builder he met while hiking. As a young man in the 1920s, Parker built a cabin in the woods and lived there without running water or electricity until well into his 80s.
In a breathtaking spot, Secco and Watson create what they call “useful art” to share with loved ones and customers. Their home and outbuildings represent a sturdy and graceful sensibility in keeping with the couple’s wide-ranging talents and habits.
“Phil’s main medium is wood and I concentrate on textile arts, but sometimes we collaborate in making gifts for loved ones, like cutting boards with wood-burned designs,” Secco said. “We like to make things.”
This extends to edibles, including ravioli, kefir, butter, wine and cider, often incorporating produce from their land. The couple is also locally known for homemade music, with Watson on fiddle and guitar and Secco on piano.
Each year, they host a December “Star Party,” where guests create elaborate paper decorations, and there’s an annual springtime event where, guided by Secco, participants use wax and ink to transform eggs into colorful pysanky treasures in the Ukrainian tradition. “Well, we used to host those gatherings,” Secco said with a sigh. “The pandemic has changed everything.”
Despite current disruptions, Secco and Watson continue to create and innovate, filling every cranny of their home with delightful colors and shapes. Nowhere is this more spectacular than in Secco’s hand-printed fabric business known as Nuthatch & Bluet Studio.
“I love that I’ve managed to transform hobbies into a business,” she said. “I was always making things as a child. My parents were incredibly patient and supportive. When I think of some of the things I made for Christmas presents? Truly pathetic — picture a tin can covered in lumpy paper-maché and finished off with house paint. Oh, goodness.”
Her creativity emerged when she was young. Secco said she began making clothing “at age 7, after Mom taught me how to use a sewing machine. … My earliest creations were hideous. I can’t believe they let me go out in public like that.”
In her art, Secco has left “pathetic and hideous” far behind, creating stunning works to use and wear. She decorates napkins, flour-sack and linen tea towels, and onesies for babies. She designs and sews linen clothing — dresses, blouses, pants and skirts — plus bags, pillowcases and a new line of cards.
“I make the clothing roomy,” Secco said, “so it’s likely to fit more people. I go for comfort. This is clothing I love to wear, myself. I get a lot of commissions for apparel.”
Her biggest sellers, though, are napkins and tea towels populated with whimsical images of some of her neighbors: fox, porcupine, moose, bear, coyote and “lots of birds.
“That’s how I named my business,” she said. “We have loads of both nuthatches and bluets. We’re surrounded by beauty and wildlife — it’s the biggest part of my inspiration.”
Secco has raised chickens and bees, and both appear in her art, as do the fruits of her grapevines and small orchard. Her adorable housemate, Sadie the black lab, is another guest star.
Secco’s artistic process — born in appreciation and culminating in sumptuous tangible art — goes through several steps, starting with a sketch. Her sketchbooks alone could fill a display case: animals, plants and geometric shapes hum on the pages, nearly jumping to life.
Next, she develops a stamping block.
“I carve out of rubber using linoleum cutting tools,” Secco explained. “It’s one of the most time-consuming steps, but once I’ve made a block, I can use it over and over.”
When a stamp is ready, she paints it with silk screen ink, presses it onto fabric, allows it to dry and heats the image with an iron to set the ink.
“During that last step, I often listen to music or audiobooks. It’s meditative,” she said. “This work is more than a hobby but less pressure than a full career.”
Secco began her current venture a few years before retiring in 2018 from 25 years as a first-grade teacher in Amherst.
“I loved teaching and enjoyed the cultural and economic diversity of my students and colleagues, but over the years, I was expected to do the job of a therapist more and more,” she said.
She laments the wide-ranging, increasing pressures on families that lead to educators being asked to fill significant gaps.
“It became harder to attend to academic growth while addressing mental health issues,” she said. “I attended seminars focused on trauma and was no longer supporting just one or two troubled kids per year. It was more like seven out of a class of 18. It was exhausting. I was less patient, and losing emotional strength.”
In 2016, Secco considered parlaying her artistic skills into a small business, and by the summer of 2017, she began selling at the Greenfield Farmers Market, which she describes as “the best thing I’ve stumbled into. The vendors and customers are so wonderful. That market is a godsend.”
Using a set-up she designed and her husband built, she was in business.
“I’m lucky that I got something going before I retired. I was able to step right into my new life,” she said. “Of course, my pension makes it easier. I’m only going to do this while it’s fun.” She enjoys flexibility, noting, “It was impossible to make my own schedule while teaching.”
Another pleasant aspect is seeing that “people love my stuff and want to buy it.” She stays busy even though the pandemic nixed craft fairs and delayed farmers markets. She’s not interested, however, in having a large online presence.
“I deliberately limit my online sales apparatus,” she said. “Many of my items are one of a kind, and if I got into major online sales, I’d spend all my time managing it. I tell my customers to come see me at the market, or get in touch and we’ll discuss options. I advocate for slow shopping, kind of like the slow food movement.”
Before her teaching career, Secco worked as a professional cook and at other jobs that drew on her college major in the sciences and a minor in community nutrition. She put some time into training as a midwife, and worked at Sunderland’s Button Box repairing and tuning concertinas and accordions.
But clearly the roots of her success are traced to a childhood filled with creativity and room to dream. She now passes those gifts along to her three grandchildren, ages 8, 3½ and 15 months.
“They get it,” she said with a smile. “Homemade is often best. It can start with a cardboard box and a bit of imagination.”
To contact Nuthatch & Bluet Studio: nuthatchandbluet@gmail.com. Phone: 413-768-9850. Website: nuthatchbluet.com
Eveline MacDougall welcomes comments: eveline@amandlachorus.org