Downtown Summerlin home goods store West Elm partners with artists

Who would think that being at a farmers market would land one in a large retail store? But that’s what happened for local artisans when West Elm, a home goods store, opened shop.

West Elm is one of the newest shops in Downtown Summerlin, 1980 Festival Plaza Drive.

The store partners with local artists so that regional accents are included. It currently features three artisans.

“That’s really just classy, I think,” Clark County Commissioner Susan Brager said of the store’s area. “It allows local artists to show what they can do.”

West Elm, which tends toward mid-century, Scandinavian and modern furnishings, has had a presence in Henderson for about five years. The company expanded to Summerlin to take advantage of the increasing volume Downtown Summerlin . The store is set up with vignettes to show shoppers how pieces fit together, but those vignettes are not just for admiring.

“We encourage people to change out the pillows,” said said Nicole Sutliff, director of public relations for West Elm’s headquarters.” That way, they can see what works for them. There’s something about seeing it, feeling it, that makes it a different experience.”

Anna See has items for sale at West Elm. She moved to Las Vegas in 2011 after working as a full-time graphic artist at UCLA.

One of her works was chosen to grace the freebie bag given away for West Elm’s opening. For that, she hand-cut the linoleum tiles, one for each color, then rolled out the paint to apply each layer.

“It’s very low tech,” she said of the process.

The kicker was that each color had to dry overnight, so it took about two weeks to produce the final look. From there, she created a giclee to mass produce them. Other projects might involve illustrations done in anything from markers to oil to pencil.

See’s work gained interest through social media such as Pinterest. She’s working with Urban Outfitters, Serena & Lily, and is in talks with IKEA.

“That’s the beauty of what I do,’” See said. “I never know where my works will end up.”

Herman “Kerm” Sablan, works by day for a homebuilder. But come nighttime, he repurposes wood, some of it found at builders sites, taking scraps to make into home decor pieces for his business, Urbanwoodworx, facebook.com/Urbanwoodworx/. The Henderson resident began making the pieces in 2012, finding customers through online media but also by being part of outdoor events at Town Square. The latter brought him to the attention of West Elm scouts and his pieces have been appearing in the Henderson store since the holiday season of 2015.

Now, at West Elm in Summerlin, one his pieces there is a table made of pallet scraps. The 48-by-34-inch table took him about 26 hours to make.

“It’s therapeutic for me to work (on such projects),” he said. “… My mind wanders and I never have a set plan mind because as I start to build it, different ideas come into my head. Every piece has a story.”

With the success of being in West Elm, he is expanding his reach to selling in Southern California with an eye on quitting his day job in a couple of years.

The store’s headquarters is in New York City Brooklyn, N.Y . It started as a catalog brand in 2002. It opened its first Nevada store in Henderson about five years ago, added Reno earlier this spring and is now in Summerlin.

Shopkeeper Nathan DeHaan is in charge of finding the artisans. He relies on word-of-mouth, referrals from employees, local art shows and farmers markets.

“It has to be something that fits with the locale of the area,” DeHaan said. “We’ not going to source something that doesn’t fit with Vegas, so a lot of the stuff we have here is desert, rustic and reclaimed. We’re not going to do simple, clean lines. We want that desert feel.”

For even more exposure, the artists get to share their products online through the store’s website.

Visit annasee.com.

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.