The Business News

Vol. 1 No.9

September 5, 2005

Point artist gets ‘Extreme’ job

He designed centerpiece for room in ABC reality show

By Ed Wodalski

Kent Youngstrom, 32, once considered a career in architecture. He never took an art class in high school, but enjoyed doodling.

When the college he attended didn’t offer an architecture program, he chose interior design, and fell in love with the art classes that he was required to take.

Today, he’s a professional artist and designer whose talent is helping make a family’s dream come true as part of the ABC reality show, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

In case you haven’t seen the show, which airs Sundays at 7 p.m., it features a run-down house, a deserving family, several opinionated designers, and seven days to totally rebuild an entire house –every single room, plus the exterior and landscaping.

Youngstrom, owner of kryoutARTS, 1616 Wyatt. St. ,Stevens Point, said he enjoys watching the program with his family and decided it would be fun to participate. Applying through the show’s Web site, he was contacted three weeks later to design a set.

The idea for Youngstom’s show, filmed in August and scheduled for broadcast later this month or early October, centered around a family of eight children, living in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Two of the girls enjoy staging their own fashion shows, so it was Youngstrom’s task to design the centerpiece for the fashion-themed room, complete with catwalk, photographers, and flashing camera lights.

“What I did is I mad nine or ten comera men, hand-painted, and I mounted them to the wall,” said Youngstrom of the project he was given five days to complete. “They’re hooded up to a sensor with strobe lights behind each one of them. And as the girls walk by, the strobe lights go off.”

Youngstrom was still applying the final touches when crewmembers loaded the pieces into trucks on August 4 for the trip east.

“I figure they could build an entered house in seven days, I could complete a couple paintings n five days, “ said Youngstrom, a native of Illinois, who grew up in Ohio.

Graduating from the University of Charleston in West Virginia, Youngstrom returned to Illinois, and worded in downtown Chicago at Skyline Design.

In 1994, he formed kryoutARTS from Kent Richard Youngstrom. “I do a little bit of everything, so the word graphics, or painting didn’t really work,” he said. “I do graphic designs; exhibit designs in museums; interior designs. Regular painting is my thing. I encompass a little bit of everything.”

His wife, Nicole, is from the Stevens Point area, and in 2000, they decided, for family reasons, to head back north.

“I got tired of freeways,” said Youngstrom, who opened his studio in a one-stall garage. He admits it was rough at first, but has no regrets. Being closer to family and abele to park in his own driveway rather than three blocks away made the tradeoff worthwhile.

Business was show at first, but slowly picked up. Marketing was done mostly by work of mouth. Youngstrom said today he now knows what he will be doing next month.

Primarily a one-person show, Youngstrom occasionally employs art students from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point on larger projects.

This month, he’s adding another stall to his studio, with a 24 x 14 x 8 foot office overhead, and plans to add a few employees in the coming year.

Youngstrom describes his art a “the second thing you would think of.” His company tagline, “Anything can be on the other side,” is a tribute to his grandfather, an auctioneer and collector of “anything and everything.”

“My favorite thing to do when I was a child was to go into his barn,” said Youngstrom. “He had tow or three pole barn full of stuff. And basically, when you opened the door, anything could be on the other side.”

Youngstrom said what gives him the most satisfaction is the process of painting, rather than the finished product: “figuring out what you’re are going to do and going through the trials and errors.”

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His work can be seen as part of the Kids Club décor for Burger King, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, and Picasso’s Restaurant at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

His most unusual project was a six-story mosaic for Disney Quest made of one-inch square costume jewelry.

Closer to home, Youngstrom completed the Dorie’s Stories Reading Room in the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum and a tile project at the Stevens Point YMCA. The reading room exhibit featured a magical forest where stars twinkled overhead, rocks are as soft as pillows, cap wearing monkeys hang from vines, and words and letters dance on a wall. He also has helped with the renovation of the Edward J. Okray Faith, Arts Y Community Center at Pacelli High School, and worked on a wall honoring hospital volunteers at St. Michael’s Hospital.

Youngstrom said he gets his inspiration, among other things, from his children, daughter Riley and son Jackson. His dream project would involve a theme park and “to work with people of the mindset where anything is possible.”

But that’ll have to wait for now. First, there’s a TV show he h as to watch