By Ben Woodson/Times Sentinel writer
April 18, 2007 04:44 pm
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A home decorator from Zionsville is using her artistic skills to help women in need.
Home Decor, owned by Sharon Milewski of Zionsville, is one of 22 businesses or organizations that will decorate a table at the April 23-24 Tablescapes fundraiser to help women’s organizations in Boone County. Milewski is also the Zionsville representative on the committee in charge of the fundraiser.
“(The event) combined what I do as a designer with helping the women of Boone County,” she said.
All the proceeds go to the Women’s Fund for the Community Foundation of Boone County. The event started four years ago to fund the creation of the Helping Hands Emergency Women’s Shelter. Boone County did not have a shelter for women and children who were being abused or neglected, executive director of the Community Foundation of Boone County Lisa Johns said. This event was formed to create and support one, she said.
For the first two years of the event, all the proceeds went to the shelter, but now the shelter must apply for a grant like any other organization.
“It really felt right to do something that created opportunities for women to help other women,” Johns said.
The shelter is run by the Mental Health Association of Boone County. To create the shelter, the association provided the space while the Women’s Fund furnished it, director of the mental health association Jane Taylor said. It provides short-term emergency shelter for women who are in danger from physical and mental abuse.
The shelter will be just one of the association’s projects vying for grants from the Women’s Fund, Taylor said. The association also has a program that teaches single women survival skills.
Taylor said it is important to fund women’s programs in Boone County because women will be more likely to use the services if they don’t have to leave their home county. Before the shelter, women were forced to go to a different county for a shelter, and they would have to leave their job and their children would have to change schools, she said.
With local programs, the programs are easier to use and women are less likely to go back to their abuser, Taylor said.
“I thought the cause was something I could relate to as a woman,” Milewski said.
As an interior decorator she could also relate to the main feature of Tablescapes, which is the beautifully-themed table decorations.
Milewski’s table will have a formal Hawaiian luau theme, she said. The table will have a tropical centerpiece with an indoor/outdoor fabric as the table cover. Borrowing from her experience as a home decorator, she will use an Asian-inspired table setting. She said in home design Asian-inspired elements are popular now. Milewski chose this theme because she likes the bright colors, she said.
“And it is just fun,” she said. “It is a fun, light subject matter.”
Part of the fun is a friendly competition between the different tables. On the first day of the event, April 23, the attendees vote on three categories: Most creative, most beautiful and most unique.
This year will be the third time Milewski has entered a table, but she hasn’t won an award yet. She hopes this year she can break that streak, but she said many of the awards go to Donaldson’s Chocolates in Lebanon, which makes its whole table display out of chocolate.
Along with decorating a table, Milewski will also be a model in the fashion show along with her daughter Courtney Oppman of Zionsville. The other model from Zionsville is Barri Andreoli.
The models will show the fashions of F.B. Fogg, the pseudonym of artist Ann Johnson, who will also be the guest speaker. The models are all from Boone County and of all ages and sizes, Milewski said. Several members of the Tablescapes committee will also model.
“We want to show a very colorful array of the women of Boone County,” Milewski said.
Johnson started her business in Muncie selling artistic paper creations and then added the fashion line later. She started out working on her kitchen table making paper sculptures, she said.
That humble beginning turned 37 years later into a world-wide company with a fashion line and paper creations sold in 14 countries. Johnson said she goes by the pseudonym F.B Fogg because when she started her business it was not easy for a woman to be successful in art.
The fashions from F.B. Fogg are made of fabrics and textiles Johnson found during her travels around the world. She was traveling to teach women in third-world countries how to create a business using local crafts so they could develop a source of independent income. She would teach them how to cut out the middle men and keep the profits themselves.
“(I will talk about) how I organized these simple things and how it can be translated to what is happening right here,” she said.
The Tablescapes fundraiser is a two-day event at the Ulen Country Club with a wine reception and silent auction from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, April 23. The second day, Tuesday, April 24, starts with a table viewing at 10 a.m.; a speaker and a fashion show at 11 a.m.; and a luncheon at 12:15 p.m. Tickets for the first day are $25 and the second day $100.
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