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Special Section: Maine's Creative Economy

Creative entrepreneur spotlight

Angela Adams - By Design
The world has taken notice of this Portland designer's signature styles.

Contributed by Bob Keyes

Reprinted with permission of and as it appeared in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.

	Photo courtesy of Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram

It's a long way from North Haven to Neiman Marcus, but for designer Angela Adams, the miles didn't matter.

Adams, who grew up on a Maine island and passed time by doodling in the margins of school books, soon will have her latest product line selling in one of America's toniest retailers. That can hardly qualify as a surprise, given that Adams is among the most respected designers in America, thanks in large part to her hand-tufted rugs that command the kind of price art collectors pay for original paintings.

What may be more surprising is that Adams has achieved her success without feeling compelled to leave Maine to be closer to the upscale markets where her work is coveted. Her Portland-based business - Angela Adams Design LLC - has blossomed into a 20-employee operation in a little more than six years, with sales exceeding seven figures annually.

Adams, 38, started by making high-end rugs for people with a lot of money. Her philosophy was that a nice rug could fill a similar design aesthetic as a painting on a wall. She and her husband, Sherwood Hamill, expanded the company to include his custom-made furniture, and lately they've added a variety of lifestyle products that include fabric, pillows, stationery and drinking glasses.

Next spring, Neiman Marcus will sell her new line of purses.

Adams' superstar status hasn't gone to her head, changed her ideals or influenced how she treats people. The lessons learned growing up in North Haven - self-sufficiency, resourcefulness and a sense of community - are evident in her life today.

She hires family members, friends and the sons and daughters of co-workers as models for her ads. She named her signature motif, Manfred, after a neighbor's dog. A photo of her lobsterman grandfather hangs above the register of her Congress Street storefront.

Sure, Adams gave up island life to live in Portland, which among islanders is sometimes akin to moving to another country. But Adams has a healthy perspective. She doesn't pine for a New York penthouse or dream of squashing her competition.

For her, life in Maine is just about perfect, thank you very much.

"We don't even talk about leaving," says Adams, who often rides her bike from her home atop Munjoy Hill to her showroom and offices at the foot of the hill. "It's never been a consideration. It's almost like we created this business so we could live here in Portland."

It's tempting to describe Adams' signature look as retro - think "Brady Bunch"-era TV dinner trays in shape and color, or any piece of linoleum from generations past. Adams prefers to think of her look as ultra-modern with a nod to the influences of her youth. She creates images with soft, looping lines and muted but distinct colors.

North Haven painter Eric Hopkins has known Adams for most of her life and he has watched her art evolve. He hired her to run his island gallery more than a decade ago. At the time, Adams painted funky designs on used furniture.

Hopkins sees some of those early notions in Adams' work today.

"She took some of those same motifs, refined them and came up with a vocabulary that refers to retro stuff but really isn't," says Hopkins. "Her family had all that old stuff around. It was just there, that Deco-ey, designey kind of stuff. Things on the island never change as fast as in other places. So the '30s, '40s and '50s design trends were current when she was growing up. They weren't old-fashioned at all."

Islanders are proud of her, Hopkins says. "Most people on the island are big fans. They like the fact that they know her. Angela is a real person, one of us. She's not Madison Avenue or Rodeo Drive. She's an island girl."

Christine Vincent, president of the Maine College of Art in Portland, picked up Adams' trail soon after Vincent arrived at the college in 2001. She was drawn to Adams' style and product line.

"She takes marvelous modern design concepts and updates them in a fresh, contemporary and exciting way.... Like many women, I adore a good briefcase and a great belt. I was just telling her she needs a line of shoes and then she will have me all sewn up."

In Adams' world, shoes might not be out of the question. Her company has expanded since she opened in the mid-1990s. This past year has been particularly fluid. Adams introduced what she calls her Studio Collection of accessories, which features her splashy look on such items as tote bags, clutches and pocketbooks. The Studio line is meant to be affordable - $37 for a belt, $95 for a pocketbook, $13 for a sketchbook - opening up a larger and also younger market.

Her Signature Rug series remains high-end: more than $10,000 for a 9-by-12-foot rug. Vincent, who co-chairs a gubernatorial-appointed steering committee with a mission to measure and recommend policies to promote Maine's creative work force, says Adams is a poster child for the state's Creative Economy.

She's an entrepreneur who makes use of her skills as an artist and employs a young work force, many of whom are artistically trained and employed in their field of choice. Better still, instead of leaving Maine for a glamorous and prosperous life in a bigger metropolitan area, Adams has chosen not only to stay, but also to ensure her roots remain firmly planted in Maine.

The state figures prominently in the promotion of her company, and virtually every press report on her business - Adams is the darling of the design press - discusses her island upbringing. Just as Maine is woven into the image of L.L. Bean, so it is with Angela Adams Design.

That sort of recognition is good not only for Adams, Vincent says, but also for the arts community and the state as a whole. She is, perhaps, Maine's most visible visual artist and as such serves as an ambassador for Maine arts. "When she travels to all these international trade shows and chats with people, she is out there chatting about Maine and her life in Maine," Vincent says.

Adams' success came through hard work. She arrived in Portland by way of Philadelphia, where she moved for her art studies and ended up staying to work after she got her degree.

Back in Maine, she took a job as a waitress at Cafe Uffa and the Pepperclub restaurant in Portland. All the while, she kept experimenting with her painted furniture, which she says evolved directly from her fondness for doodling when she was young.

Her early designs were free-form improvisation, all done by hand and instinct. And then she got an idea: What if she could transfer those designs to rugs? And what if she could make, by hand, the kind of high-end, three-dimensional rugs that people would pay a lot of money to own?

"I saw these hand-tufted rugs as something I could relate to and understand. I knew I could sell one high-end custom rug, similar to selling one painting. It just made sense for me to try this," she says.

So she hooked up with rug-makers and brought several examples to a trade show in Chicago. She wanted to gauge interest, listen to feedback and re-evaluate her idea. The show was so successful, there was little to tweak. People loved the rugs. Adams returned to Maine emboldened, confident she had found a commercial vehicle on which to carry her design ideas.

There would be no more waitressing for her - and no apologies to her artist friends who scoffed at her for selling out. "The whole idea of the struggling artist is an irritating concept to me," she says, explaining her decision to find a commercial medium for her artistic expressions.

"I'm definitely not into being a victim of the arts. I want to make a living." Early on, her husband-to-be, Sherwood Hamill, caught on to her painted furniture. A cabinetmaker and carpenter by trade, Hamill liked what Adams was doing with her designs. The two have known each other a dozen years and have been married nearly a year.

While design is still very much a part of Adams' daily life, the business side occupies much of her concern these days. Not long ago, the company manufactured all of its products on Munjoy Hill in a building formerly fronted by Tommy's Hardware. These days, about half is made here, with the rest farmed out. A large chunk of Adams' job is ensuring the manufacturers she hires meet her standards.

Adams wouldn't have launched her rugs if she didn't believe in her product or business plan. But even she admits surprise at her level of acceptance.

"I never expected it to the degree it's at right now. I didn't expect so many people to get so excited about it."