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By John Stang

The Daily Inter Lake

In the zone

You won't see Deborah Newell's art on a museum wall. But you'll find her work in her Lakeside shop and on celebrities such as Aretha Franklin

and Mary Tyler Moore.

T here are clothes.

And then there's fiber-wearable art.

In most ways, they're pretty much the same thing.

The difference?

Clothes are mass-produced - the same cuts and designs copied thousands of times.

What Deborah Newell of Lakeside does is "fiber-wearable art."

Handwoven fabric. Colors and designs literally painted on. Each piece is hand created. Each copy of a design is at least slightly different.

Subtly something more than utilitarian.

Something that the creator's heart and hands have personally touched individually. Something that's looked on as an piece of art along with being something to wear.

Also something that's sold solely at upscale boutiques, craft shows and juried competitions.

Something like a designer gown, but more practical. Plus Newell, who usually wears blue jeans from Sears, has no idea how nor inclination to create a formal gown.

Newell, 59, creates long dress jackets, short dress jackets, tops, skirts, pants - predominantly in black and dark colors so they can be matched with almost anything. Newell's target clientele are professional women who travel a lot - the type who want to use a jacket more than once with the contents of one suitcase.

A Newell piece starts as a roll of soft bumpy white fabric - chenille or rayon boucle.

She comes up with a clothes pattern. Then she paints the fabric with tiny brushes, using all sorts of items - grates and other things with geometric patterns - as stencils. Or she paints bits freehand.

Newell's longtime studio manager Stephanie Johnson then does the tailoring before turning the work over to seamstresses.

Newell came from a San Francisco Bay-area family of engineers, and had an aptitude for math. She studied art history at Humboldt State University in Northern California - admiring 19th century French impressionists and loving to paint and draw.

Somewhat acquainted with weaving as a little girl, Newell decided to tackle a weaving project for a class assignment.

"The first time I sat down with a loom, I felt I belonged there," she said.

Weaving appealed the math geek within Newell. Weaving patterns and a setting up loom's floor pedals take lots of math to control how something is woven.

"I fell in love with the process," she said.

"[Mahatma] Gandhi said weaving is the highest form of meditation. You just get in the zone. I can't explain it. I don't find painting relaxing. But weaving is relaxing," Newell said.

Married, Newell followed her wildlife biologist husband - eventually teaching textiles and weaving at Cerro Coso Community College and at the University of Alaska's Sitka campus.

She tinkered with her weaving, painting and designing.

She hand-painted her first piece of clothing with a tiny brush, hand dryer and an ice-cube tray in Sitka.

Eventually, she and her husband ended up in Kalispell, where she set up a studio in her house, moving a few years later to a downtown building.

Newell nurtured her artistic eye.

Her color selections and combinations improved.

She learned to design a piece so it complemented a woman's face and features - where the clothes did not become the star and overwhelm the woman wearing them.

That led to five awards between 1999 and 2004 from Niche magazine, a Baltimore-based crafts publication.

Also in 1999, she won an honorable mention at the annual Smithsonian institute's crafts juried exhibition that is the Academy Awards of the craft-related arts.

A few years ago, Newell - now divorced and living in Lakeside - went on a trip to San Diego, where a friend introduced to Jeremy Newell.

Actually, re-introduced her.

He was her college sweetheart.

It was that ages-old story.

Boy dates girl for two years. Boy proposes marriage. Girl goes to Europe. They don't see each other for decades. Boy and girl meet again. They instantly click. Boy and girl finally marry each other.

Jeremy Newell - who goes by "Jere" and is now 61 - moved up to Montana.

With decades in the construction business, Jere Newell looked around for something to do, and found a dilapidated mall-like building south of the Spinnaker and along U.S. 93 in Lakeside. To Deborah Newell's initial horror, he bought and renovated it into the current Lakeside Mercantile Mall.

The Newells set up the Panache studio in one of the mall's storefronts. The front part of Panache holds a tiny upscale women's clothing boutique - the skirts, tops and jackets are designed and made by others, not Newell.

Panache's back half is where Newell and Johnson design, paint, dry the material and tailor the clothes. Jere Newell provides all the supporting labor, including managing the mall, building the design tables and cutting out windows in the studio.

Newell's creations mostly are sold outside of the Flathead.

The Newells have an Internet site at www.panachehandwovens.com. But visitors can't shop there. The site is more of a way to show some designs and tell people how to contact them.

Custom-designed clothes can't really be sold over the Internet, Newell said. Instead, she needs to consult with a customer and design specifically for that individual.

Deborah and Jere Newell fly to about a dozen shows a year in places, such as New York City. There, women custom-order from Newell, or boutique galleries buy clothes from her to resell.

In three weeks, they will fly to Boston to the CraftBoston arts and crafts exhibition to which only 175 artist worldwide are invited.

Newell's world grapevines have spotted her clothes on Maya Angelou, Mary Tyler Moore, Aretha Franklin and ex-Supreme Mary Wilson.