The Blue Goose on
hardly seems like a haven for budding artists. Bikers — yes. Artists — not quite.
But for Laura Pate, it was at this venerable Tex-Mex eatery where her career began.
After graduating from UT with a degree in art history and studio art with a concentration in ceramics, Pate moved back to our neighborhood, where she took a job waiting tables at the Blue Goose.
But instead of working on ceramics in her spare time, Pate was able to do it while she worked. The owners allowed Pate to store her kiln in the back of the restaurant. During breaks, she would run back to the kiln to fire another piece. She also hung many of her plates along the walls, allowing customers to view and purchase them.
“I sold what I could while I was working,” Pate says. “They really encouraged me there.”
After about five years, some of Pate’s work was chosen for display at the
Soon, Pate began to feel uneasy about the way her career was progressing — more specifically, she worried about the inevitability of becoming sucked into mass production, something that goes hand-in-hand with making pieces such as ceramic plates.
“It stopped being fun making the same thing over and over,” she recalls.
It was around that time Pate discovered Brown Mountain Restoration on
.
“I saw this place, and I walked in. The owner [Libby Brown] didn’t want to hire me. But I kept coming back until she finally hired me. Now we are great friends,” Pate says.
Brown Mountain Restoration is a small house that has been converted into a workshop to repair and restore damaged porcelains and paintings, as well as gilded mirrors, frames and even furniture.
Many of the clients include antique shops, collectors, delivery companies, designers and galleries.
Pate, who had no experience with restoration, had a lot to learn about the business when she started. But, she says, she worked hard to become Brown’s right-hand woman, learning, among other things, how to gild, repair torn paintings and airbrush porcelain.
“Having to learn everything was very hard,” Pate says. “But I felt this business is a way to become involved with art and creativity without the pressures of mass production and creating my own art,” something, she says, she has always struggled with.
In 1999, after working for Brown for seven years, Pate bought the business from her. Pate moved into the building and lived on the side where the break room is now.
“I worked basically 24 hours a day just to pay bills,” she says.
One of her first big projects as the new owner was the gilding of the cross above the altar at Perkins Chapel at SMU. Many more church projects followed.
But the most significant part of the Perkins Chapel project came about a year later when Pate and her husband, Andy, were married under the same cross.
“That meant a lot,” she says as she points to a picture of her and Andy walking down the aisle with the golden cross in the background.
Although she says she enjoys doing larger jobs such as the churches, Pate says she receives the most gratification from individual projects, especially with pieces that have a story behind them.
For example, one of Pate’s clients recently brought in a painting that had been passed down through her family for several generations.
“After it was cleaned, the painting was so bright and beautiful. The girl almost cried when she saw it,” Pate says. “That’s great to be a part of. There’s something really special about bringing a piece of art back to life for a family.”
Pate’s staff consists of herself and three part-time employees: Kathy Hays, Amy Dobson and Nicole Parker. All three do their own art on the side, something Pate encourages.
“It’s important to nurture each other’s interests,” she says.
As far as her own art is concerned, Pate stopped doing ceramics once her children were born. But it’s not something she feels a need to get back to.
“I don’t miss it at all. I’m really content. I feel like I was born to do this,” Pate says. “I think I could do this the rest of my life — happily.”
