Art hobby in retirement transformed the look of woman’s Brookfield home
Ann Sheahan has lived in her Brookfield home for about 50 years.
When she first moved there, she turned the 1955 ranch house into a home where she raised her four children, and in 1976 the family added a sizable addition to the back of the house. Over the years, she also added flower beds in her yard.
But it wasn’t until she retired 10 years ago that the interior of her home changed dramatically with the addition of artwork, and her gardens became even more lush.
Sheahan, who worked as a teacher in the Elmbrook School District, and who also owned and operated a consignment shop in West Allis, said she had always loved artwork but that she never had time to spend on it.
“Just before I retired I started taking a watercolor class at a Brookfield senior center,” she said. “I really enjoyed it. I had an art background in college but hadn’t done any painting in 45 years.
“That class got me going, and I started painting whenever I had time. I tried lots of different media from acrylic and pen and ink to watercolor pencils, and collages. I really enjoy experimenting, and I continue to take watercolor classes from local artists.”
Today her home is filled with artwork she created as well as with pieces she purchased or received as gifts.
“I have 145 original paintings and 23 prints from 34 artists, including myself and my daughter Katie Stensberg of Wauwatosa,” she said.
Sheahan’s other children are Kristen Gries of Jackson, Wyo., Mary Prascak of Memphis Tenn., and Mike Stensberg of Keshena. She also has three grandchildren.
Her gardens have benefited from her retirement as well.
Although she has always gardened, and for a time was a master gardener, with extra time on her hands the gardens on her three-quarter-acre corner lot expanded.
“I have all native plants,” she said. “Today I have a patio that is surrounded by plants, the driveway is lined with flowers on both sides, I have a 40-by-20 foot vegetable garden, a prairie garden that is 85 by 25 feet with flowers that are taller than I am, and gardens that surround the house.
“I also have a large hosta bed and a large wildflower garden in front of the house, and a garden at side of the house that is filled with perennials.”
In addition to accenting her home with art and expanding her gardens, she turned her living room into an art studio and gave a guest bedroom a log cabin motif.
“In the art studio I have a large table, and sometimes I have friends over and we have informal classes where we do different art techniques,” she said.
“In one of the bedrooms I painted the walls to look like logs about five years ago. It took awhile because there are a lot of layers of paint.
“First I put down a cream color to look like chinking, and then I taped over the areas where the chinking would be. Next I added light gray paint and topped it with dark brown to make a log look. Over that I used a little light yellow/ brown paint. For the knots in the wood I twisted the end of my brush on the walls using a darker brown color.
“Now it’s a guest room,” she continued. “I also made green gingham curtains and used a shower curtain with a Northwoods theme in place of a closet door.”
In another bedroom, she has a large grouping of photos and paintings of farms.
“I have a photo of a log cabin my great-great grandfather built in 1836 in Franklin,” she said. “It was moved to what is now Lions Legend Park in Franklin. It’s called the Sheehan-Godsell cabin. The family name was spelled differently then, and the Godsell name was added because that family owned the cabin after my family did.”
While she made changes in many rooms of her house, she left one of the home’s bathrooms untouched.
“It’s a 1955 original,” she explained. When we added the addition, the window was covered on the outside, but I wanted to leave the window frame on the inside. I found some artwork to put in the center of the window to make it look like you were looking out into a garden. The tile in that room is a buttery yellow and light green, and it still has the original tile floor.
“I know people who have houses from this era that updated their bathrooms, but I never did. And now I’m seeing that as the years go by it’s looking better.”
She recently talked about the changes she made to her home and gardens while her cats, Nessie and Sophie, who are both rescues, relaxed in the sun.
Question: What kind of artwork do you do?
Answer: Watercolors and acrylic. I also like to cut up paintings I do and weave the pieces together like a basket. I also will cut a painting into horizontal pieces and then paste them on a mat with thin white spaces between the pieces so it looks like you are looking through a blind.
I tend to use bold colors. Katie does abstract pieces. They are bold in style and color.
Q: What’s the story behind the ponies on your kitchen wall?
A: I painted the wooden ponies, and they are semblances of wild Chincoteague ponies that I saw on a trip to Chincoteague, Va. I love wild ponies and wild flowers.
Q: What are some of your favorite pieces of artwork?
A: Right now they are my ponies. But I also love two pieces in the family room. One is by Agnes Rathonyi, a Canadian artist. I got it at the Lakefront Festival of the arts. It’s an abstract on wood with a resin over the top. The other one is by my daughter, Katie. That’s an acrylic on canvas and has deep green and purple colors. I also have my grandfather’s fiddle on that wall.
Q: How much time do you spend gardening?
A: I average about two hours a day. If I’m not gardening, I’m probably painting.
Q: Why do you focus on native plants?
A: They don’t have to be fertilized or watered and because they are good for birds, bees and butterflies. They also bring back fond memories of my childhood. I lived in part of Wauwatosa where there was nothing around our house and I played in the fields. When I see wildflowers, it connects me to my childhood.
Q: What are some of your favorite plants? A: Purple coneflowers, Virginia bluebells, trillium and New England Asters.
Q: You have a lot of stumps in your yard. What’s the story?
A: My son had to cut down two big spruce trees. We saved the stumps for decorating and seating. I also wanted to save them because in winter butterflies live under the bark.
Q: How many trees do you have in your yard?
A: When I moved here there were six trees. Now there are 15, two of which are original. I keep adding trees.
Q: Did you do any hardscaping around your home?
A: The patio. It’s a year old. My son Mike did it for me.
Q: How large is your home?
A: Before the addition I had three bedrooms and 1 1⁄2 bathrooms. Now I have four bedrooms and 2 1⁄2 bathrooms. The addition almost doubled the size of the house.
Q: What is your favorite room?
A: In the summer the unheated porch. That was part of the addition, and you can see the brick exterior wall of
the original house. I left the windows in the wall so I could see from the porch into the kitchen.
We eat out here a lot when we have people over. With the help of my children I added porcelain tiles on the floor and a knotty pine ceiling about 12 years ago. We’re do it yourselves whenever possible.
In winter my favorite place is the art room because it has so many beautiful paintings.
Q: You have some interesting antiques. Are they family pieces?
A: Yes. The porcelain doll was my mother’s doll when she was a child. It’s from about 1915 and was made for her using my grandmother’s hair, so my grandmother was a young mother at that time.
The fiddle belonged to my Irish grandfather, William Sheahan, and it’s from about 1910. I also have a library table in the family room that’s from mother’s parents’ home. It was made in the 1920s from burled walnut.
Do you, or does someone you know, have a cool, funky or exquisite living space that you’d like to see featured in At Home? Contact Fresh home and garden editor Nancy Stohs at (414) 224-2382 or email nstohs@journalsentinel.com.