Fab designer

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 21, 2005 | by Monique Beeler, STAFF WRITER

Many of the school's alumni keep in touch with Rothman, sending her postcards or magazine clippings featuring their work. Some who work in the field speak at monthly professional support meetings at the school.

On this sunny spring evening, students in the third-floor classroom to display their finished work and hear Rothman's critique.

"It's show time," she says. "If anyone wasn't here last week, I wanted you to see Nobuko's painting."

Nobuko Tessien Gosulami, 62, opens a large black portfolio. She turns the pages and stops at a red wallpaper pattern of children in traditional Japanese dress playing with beach ball-bright bouncing balls.

"I did finish this one," Gosulami says. "You told me to (add) more sepia and light."

"Isn't that just darling?" Rothman says. She gives the scene and its coordinating border her seal of approval.

Students take turns presenting pieces from an elaborate Asian- style floral to a set of six perky plaids in combinations from lime- and-lavender to black-red-and-white.

Lots of encouragement

Praise is frequent and generous. But Rothman's no pushover. When a pattern isn't quite right, she steps in and guides the student toward a better palette or more complete design. In one case, she sketches in a stem on a repetitive leaf pattern.

For a color matching project requiring students to exactly replicate a fabric swatch, she recommends that the designer add more geranium to the red and a touch of sepia to the olive green.

"An eye for color -- oh my gosh -- she is wonderful with color," says 40-year-old student Vaswati Bhatnagar of Palo Alto. "With her it's an art."

"This school has been amazing," says Bhatnagar, who worked as a textile designer in India before taking time off to raise her family. "I came back to school to upgrade my skills ... a more nurturing school you won't find."

Rothman takes pride in her students' progress and finds satisfaction in passing along secrets of the trade she learned over a lifetime.

"I'm definitely doing my dream job," she says. "I think people know that and they pick up my joy."

You can e-mail Monique Beeler at mbeeler@angnewspapers.com or call (925) 416-4860.