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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
The Artist: Edward Seichei, owner of Art Made to Match, hosts an art show and party one Saturday night each month at the studio.
Art Made to Match matches every taste
By Kate Carter
It seems like a new business shows up in Willow Glen every month. But the new art studio at the corner of Lincoln and Coe avenues just looks like a new business every month.
Edward Seichei, proprietor of Art Made to Match, describes his business as an artistic resource where people can come and ask for custom home furnishings. If he can't do the work himself, he will find an artist to do it.
"I wanted to open up a gallery and let artists know there is a place with compassion for them," he says. "This place is all about the artists, it's more than me."
Seichei says that his new studio hosts an art show and party one Saturday night each month. The featured art adheres to a theme, and Seichei hangs a new store sign in front of his building stating the month's theme in an appropriately artistic way.
Seichei is an artist himself, specializing in interior design. He says he has decorated a number of Willow Glen homes with custom wine racks, garden gates, and trellises. He is also designing a public work of art for Skystream Networks in Sunnyvale.
Seichei opened his art gallery in April of this year after leasing his building in November. He says the place was a mess and he had to do a lot of work to fix it up.
"It's just the things that you go through to open a business," he says. "I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't my own business. I'm still not done with this place."
He is using the opportunity to showcase some of his interior design talents in the mosaic tile and painted floors, textured walls and raised ceilings, turning his studio into a work of art itself.
Seichei says that he gave each one of his three rooms a primary color and associated them with a theme. Thus the red room is "hell," the blue room is the "ocean," and the upstairs room will be yellow or "celestial" when it's completed.
Seichei features art for its craftsmanship, originality, and off-the-wall character, he says. He has chairs made of steel and leather, multicolored glass sculptures, and a variety of paintings that change depending on the theme of the month's show.
The gallery's monthly shows feature an artist or artists whose work reflects a theme and include live music to fit the mood. The September show was themed "Stone and Steel" and focused on metal- and stonework. The Oct. 28 show will be a Halloween masquerade featuring a flamenco guitarist. Seichei says he's hoping guests will dress up. Visitors under the age of 18 won't be allowed to see the "adult-themed" art inside the gallery.
Seichei has a background in general construction and studied graphic design--a career he was told would be sensible.
But after painting a mural in a house in Monte Sereno three years ago and using the money he earned to tour Europe for four months, he was inspired to follow his true passion to make real art.
"My purpose is being an inspiration through the creative insights that I have," he says. "If I'd listened to anybody, I probably would have failed."
But he learned from his mother that, "If you do what you love, you'll be successful. I think I'm successful. I'm doing what I'm good at."
Seichei says he likes his Willow Glen location because he doesn't fit in with the rest of Lincoln Avenue.
"I feel like I blend in in San Francisco," he says. "Here I stand out."
That distinctiveness is what makes people just walk into his place and walk out with a piece of art, an order or just an expanded mind.
"If you want to see something weird, go check this place out," he says.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
