Two sisters getting the chance to not only be with each other weekly, but to create together, has this fiber art team feel privileged.

Their collaborations have produced a 12-product line of fashion accessories and another dozen products for a home accessory line. The collection is called Graceful Essence Fashions by Patti Pease Johnson, the silk painter, and JoDee Schumer, the fashion designer.

The sisters live a few miles from each other in a quiet, peaceful rural area of Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii. Patti loves the solitude her nearly 3-acres provides in this semi-rain forest. Her painting studio is at bay windows on the second story overlooking the trees and forest surrounding her home.

“I think my mana is leaves and trees,” she says. “I can be just as excited about a leaf or a piece of moss or branch as a mountain or the ocean.” Much of her two-dimensional artwork can be seen at fine art galleries around the island and is owned by various art collectors around the world. “I call my color journeys on silk, up-close naturally, a sort of stylized form of semi-representation and abstraction,” she says. Her work includes vibrant color and movement with organic shapes representing the flora around her. One art critic explained her work as “familiar things to which you haven’t paid attention reveal themselves to be bold forms with fascinating and undulating repetitions. Her eye reduces natural forms to their serene essentials. Then she fleshes out their ‘personalities’ with subtle and striking liquid dyes that seem to shimmer on her silk canvases.”

Patti’s style stems in part from her 15 years as a graphic designer creating magazines and newspapers.

Sister JoDee has spent her lifetime working with fiber. “I realized fiber is my art medium as I’m very much at home with it.” Having spent over 20 years with an alteration service business and 13 years with a boutique next to her shop, it allowed JoDee to have the creative outlet for her own artistic projects. “I was also able to dabble in quilting and couture clothing before that time,” she says.

JoDee has done much more than dabble. In the 1970’s, she was teaching quilting in Northern Minnesota and doing quilt restoration, along with making original clothing on commission for porcelain dolls. By the ‘80’s she had included selling quilting and trapunto patterns of her designs. Later in that decade, around the time the quilting trend cycle changed and she had her 3^rd child, this fiber artist went in a new direction of fashion design, combining quilting and appliqué on clothing in vest, jackets, coats and dresses. She got a sales rep for the first time, which brought her collection out of the Northwoods and into the Chicago market, and was fortunate to hit the market a couple years before appliquéd clothing went into the mass market chain stores.

 “We make it look easy – each of our skills,” says JoDee as they often get some good laughs when the other helps out and tries to do minor parts of the other work.

JoDeesigns is a name for the myriad of jewelry and clothing created by JoDee Schumer. She finds an unusual focal piece and embellishes it with silk, wire and beads. Dresses, blouses and skirts complete her creative desires. JoDee has spent decades as a fiber artist: teaching quilting, owning a boutique and alteration shop, and providing an eclectic line of clothing to the Chicago market.

The Graceful Essence Fashion silk line is created by two sisters that live near Hilo.
Adding elegance and grace to all women is their mission in the one-of-a-kind hand painted delicious colorful silk garments including wraps such as ruana shawls, poncho capelets and two styles of blouses.

Embellishing your look with fashion accessories includes purses and clutches, five styles of scarves, and unmistakeable art behavior jewelry.

These sisters also have a home accessory silk line including tablerunners, mobiles, wall masks and pillows.

Creators are Patti Pease Johnson, silk painter, and JoDee Schumer, designer.

Merchandise can be ordered directly from JoDee at the Kona International Marketplace My Little Cauliflower Shop, or found at various art galleries throughout the state including the Volcano Art Center at Hawaii Volcano National Park, the Hilton Waikoloa Gallery on the Kohala Coast, and the Maui Hands Galleries on Maui. Retail prices range from $30 to $200