About Our Studio
My name is Eva Niewiadomski and I was raised in a bilingual household where our Polish culture and crafts were infused throughout our home. I had a father who was incredibly creative even though he worked in small manufacturing shops throughout most of his life. He was an artist and artisan who could take what he learned in one discipline and apply it to another. If a tool didn't exist for a project he had in mind, he would make one. The basement and garage were filled with cool materials leftover from other people's projects, items thrown out by others who lacked the imagination to see how they could be re-purposed. Above all, there was a love of wood in all its forms - furniture, carved into sculptures, transformed into musical instruments. And of all folk crafts, whatever their country of origin.
All these influences must have seeped into my pores as before I knew it, I was creating environments filled with color, art, vintage furniture and ethnic handcrafts. It started with my home, then it was my cubicle, my office, the hallways at my corporate employer, an off-the-grid conference room at that same employer which morphed into the establishment of my own business, Catalyst Ranch, a creative meeting and event space in downtown Chicago. Then came the requests from meeting clients who wanted some of that Catalyst Ranch creative environment brought into their own workplaces, which was the birth of Catalyst Ranch Design almost 15 years ago.
