Everyday artistry: Designs for all occasions

Brian Love loves this time of year, when ghost tours and haunted houses are in abundance. As an artist, he says, he finds them "inspiring." But in the interest of immediate deadlines, his head is in another holiday.

Duross & Langel, the handcrafted-bath-products boutique in Center City, has hired him to design a line of six candles it will feature in a German alpine-inspired Christmas village planned for the second floor of its shop on 13th Street, where it operates a hair salon.

"Cannot wait to show them to the world," said Steve Duross. "We feel our work as deeply personal at D&L, so joining with Brian creates a truly local gift or series of gifts."

Though getting a chance to design specifically for international retailer Target "is really one of my big goals," Love said. He recently returned from a five-year "finding himself" move to California in hopes of serving small businesses in Philadelphia.

"National stuff is awesome, but so is local stuff, to actually be right in the middle of it, meet with people, connect," said Love, 43, a native of Florence, Burlington County, and a 1994 graduate of University of the Arts whose business, B.Love Studios, is in a shaded, walled-in patio behind his first-floor apartment on Camac Street.

Connection is why he has made a point of buying some of his work when it hits retail shelves, pridefully alerting cashiers to his creations.

"It's one thing to do it on my computer," he said. "It's another to see it exist out in the world."

Besides holiday-themed Kleenex boxes, Love has designed a series of four mailers for Macy's with themes dictated by the department store - spring fashion, beach, Paris, and New York City - and Christmas cards and gift wrap for the Museum of Modern Art. He has designed ornaments and canvas art for Crate & Barrel's children's line, the Land of Nod, and water bottles for outdoors-equipment company CamelBak Products L.L.C. in Petaluma, Calif.

Through CamelBak, Love's designs - best described as modern, midcentury, and whimsical - have been carried at sports retailers and Target.

But his most enduring relationship has been with Great Arrow Graphics in Buffalo, exclusively publishing hand-silkscreened greeting cards since 1983 that are sold in Barnes & Noble and Wegmans stores, as well as small specialty shops. Of its more than 6,400 cards, Love's first was No. 2,742, one of 208 he has created for Great Arrow so far, said company president Alan Friedman.

"He's got this kind of retro collage-style that speaks to many generations," Friedman said. "It's sophisticated. It's funny. It's hip. It works on so many levels."

At age 7, Love started private oil painting lessons, which he continued until he got to University of the Arts, where he studied photography. By graduation, he had burned out and wanted to focus on painting again, "creating from scratch . . . rather than looking through a lens."

For 10 years, he worked as a buyer at Afterwords, a high-end Philadelphia boutique that sold cards, giftware, and art books. It's where he "really started to fall in love with modern art," Love said, and where he was first encouraged to submit work to Great Arrow.

By the early 2000s, one of his designs - a wedding card featuring a headless bride and groom, reminiscent of the logo for the 1960s sitcom My Three Sons - had been named Card of the Year by the Greeting Card Association, which estimates annual U.S. retail sales of greeting cards at $7 billion to $8 billion.

But the "feast or famine" nature of his work wore him out. Though fees for his designs have ranged from $500 to $20,000, he's had to augment his income with a job in a hardware store, among others. He moved to California at a friend's urging in 2010 and got his teaching certification in yoga, which helped him pay the bills - still does; he's on Facebook as B.Love Yoga Philly - and "understand my psychology, where I'm holding myself back."

Shortly after Love started teaching, Macy's found him through his blovestudios.com and offered him the mailers job, reigniting his commercial-

design passion. Missing family brought him back to Philadelphia in spring 2014.

Designing for even the most basic household products is artistically satisfying, he said.

"That becomes your everyday art. You're looking at this stuff all the time - even if it's a tissue box."

dmastrull@phillynews.com

215-854-2466@dmastrull