Local Artisans Featured in New HGTV Series “Stay or Sell”

Premiering this month, the Twin Cities’ own HGTV show highlights local makers, artists, and craftspeople.

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Everyone wants a dream home. With an eye for design and knack for renovation, Brad and Heather Fox make those dreams come true—and not just on their new show Stay or Sell, but from our own backyard in Twin Cities. After airing a pilot episode last year, the first season of HGTV’s Stay or Sell is set to premiere August 27.

“We would do it again,” Heather says. “It was great, and we were able to create such fun projects with these really amazing homeowners and make some really awesome connections in the local community of local artists, and artisans.”

To help put the finishing touches on the renovations, the Foxes enlisted the help of local artisans.

“I love supporting local artists, it’s always been a passion of mine, well before this show came about. It’s been really fun to work with them so closely,” Heather says. “I feel so honored and privileged, as silly as it sounds, to be able to share their art with anyone else.”

If you tune into the show’s premiere at the end of the month, watch for these local makers.

wool + timber

Real estate appraiser by day and artist by night, Nathalie Carrigan painstakingly crafts fiber art by way of textured tapestries. What started as a hobby and gifts to her friends and family eventually evolved into a side business.

Her friends had recently convinced her to start selling her tapestries when she connected with the Foxes via social media where they were looking for fiber artists.

“I had just started dipping my feet in the water,” Carrigan says. “And it was just a coincidence.”

The collaboration was a perfect match, and after using one of her tapestries in a Stay or Sell remodel, they asked her to be a featured artist and make a tapestry with Heather on camera.

“It was my first time making a tapestry somewhere other than my house,” she says, adding how thrilled she is to see her artwork on TV. “I actually haven’t seen that tapestry hanging up yet, so it’s going to be completely surprising to me, but it turned out really good.”

Over several days, Carrigan dip dyes the alpaca and wool blended yarn to create tapestries with organic, natural hues. Strand by strand, she attaches the yarn to a board of stained live-edge wood.

“You never have two pieces that are the same, because every tree is different," Carrigan says of the wood, adding that the dye has a mind of its own too. “So really, every single tapestry I make is different.”

From colors to design, Carrigan is inspired by nature and her travels. While her tapestries are abstract, her muses include horizons, mountains, and oceans.

“I never want to mimic a specific scene, I just like creating the feeling of being somewhere,” Carrigan says. “You have all of these different feelings, just depending on the person, and I love that.”

The majority of her work is done custom to order, but sometimes she sells extra pieces at markets, pop-ups, and on Instagram.

Mercury Mosaics

Mercury Mosaics offers a wide range of handmade ceramic tiles that cam complement nearly any aesthetic, and add a personal touch to your kitchen back splash, bathroom floor, or shower walls. Upon purchasing her first kiln, ceramic artist and entrepreneur Mercedes Austin founded Mercury Mosaics 17 years ago.

“I’ve been an artist all my life, and it was something I stumbled upon that really just stuck,” Austin says of tile making. “It was something that I just really wanted to pour myself into that encompassed all the creative things that I had been working on or experimenting in for most of my life.”

Designing handmade ceramic tiles is the ideal combination of Austin’s passions: mathematics, problem-solving, architecture, art, and design. 

“For shapes and patterns that we use I’m inspired by drawing from textiles–I’m inspired from things that I discover in travels and geometry,” Austin says.

Historical books and the many spaces Austin has explored provide muses for her designs. With a team of about 30 people, Austin has been hands-off from the tile creation process for a decade, but she is still hands-on with the process, design, planning, sales, and development of the tiles.

“We have such a rainbow spectrum of colors,” she says. “It’s really just curating a palette that feels pretty universal and timeless, but also gives enough of a variety for you to play with, and for clients to personally curate their own thing.”

Austin says it she loved collaborating with the Foxes for Stay or Sell. And the numbers show it. Mercury Mosaics ended up working on three of the Stay or Sell properties with the Foxes, and Austin says she'd love to do it again.

“Heather has a pretty incredible eye for curating a very well-loved space, and I feel like her tastes really layer a lot of exceptional craftspeople and more of a timeless feel,” Austin says. “And she strings in her clients’ personalities to take things to a whole other level.”

Austin is excited not only for her own growing business to be on television (soon to add a second location), but for the whole state.

“I’m going to be waiting on the edge of my seat along with you and many other people to see this, because it’s a great, great, great opportunity to put a little spotlight on Minnesota,” she says.

Emily Quandahl

A classical viola player turned abstract artist, Emily Quandahl specializes in art of all shapes and sizes, from small paintings to large murals. Her flowing geometric style merges with tasteful color combinations to create pieces that deliver stunning visual appeal.

“I can’t ever really plan what’s going to happen with a painting, outside of like color palette,” Quandahl says.

One of the main materials Quandahl uses is water, which gives her work its nuanced, fluid appearance.

“Once I get the first layer down, I just kind of have to react to it and see what goes next. It’s not like being a landscape artist, where you just sit, and you already know what you’re going to paint. I have no clue what I’m going to paint," Quandahl says. "I can just kind of tell when it’s done, and it’s ready to go.”

She pulls her inspiration from little snippets of life, and things that catch her eye, such as a two-toned pink and red semi-truck. She certainly caught Heather’s eye, and wound up working with the Foxes on one of their last remodels.

It was such a positive experience collaborating with the Foxes, that Quandahl hopes to work with them again in the future, saying that their styles play off each other.

“They have the eye for picking out people in our community, the artist community, and connecting them with their clients, the buyers,” she says. “Those are the people that I can’t strongly thank enough, because they create these connections that would be hard for me to create otherwise.

Ashley Mary

Colorful abstract shapes, wild patterns, and intriguing design characterize much of Ashley Mary’s work. She imbues a sense of playfulness and vivaciousness into the viewer through her vibrant colors and curious shapes.

“I don’t pursue inspiration intentionally,” Mary says. “I just pay attention to colors and shapes in front of me.”

The abstract artist creates a variety of paintings, collages, prints, murals, and even does product design. All of it permeates a lighthearted positive energy, complemented by tasteful colors.

“I got into collage art my senior year in college,” she said. “I was painting canvases as a background for my collage work.”

Eventually the collage pieces fell away, and she began focusing on painting.

“What started as a fusion because a matter of focus,” Mary says of her painting. “It was a slow transition over the course of several years.”

Mary first connected with the Foxes when Heather asked her to paint a mural for them. This led to a project with Stay or Sell when Heather asked her to paint a wall for a little girl’s bedroom in one of the show’s homes

“I have worked with Heather and Brad a number of times now,” Mary says. Her mural is in the first episode, and she painted the entire piece in one day, with the help of an assistant. 

The process was collaborative, with Heather picking a color palette, Mary using her style, and the two coming up with a language of images, such as an ice cream cone, a flower, and a puffy cloud.

Mary's work is available to purchase online, and she is currently working on launching the Curiosity Studio, a space for anyone looking to explore creative learning and therapeutic art.