A Winery Uncorked Endeavors

After raising her four children, Beverly A. Hicks found happiness in the business world, and it began in a winery, of all places.

It happened this way seven years ago:

“I was touring the Fieldstone Winery in Alexander Valley and I was wearing a T-shirt I had painted with flowers,” she recalled. “The buyer for the winery came up and asked if I would design some for the employees at their seven wineries. I told him I would.”

But that just whet her appetite for more.

So much so that now she has other people making T-shirts for her national mail-order catalogue so she can concentrate on her other activities.

She also gave up a home business of painting kitchen and bathroom wall tiles.

Now she has a silk-screen painting business, an advertising business using plexiglass acrylic stands in restaurants and a marketing consulting business. She is also teaching classes at Golden West and Saddleback colleges on silk painting.

“I’ve always been active and always been curious,” said Hicks, 53, who once taught papier-mache at the Garden Grove elementary schools her children attended. “I keep busy.”

And she plans to stay that way even after she and her husband, Howard Hicks, 57, a budget analyst for the California State University System in Long Beach, retire and travel the country.

She is already making plans to teach weekend seminars on a variety of subjects at schools across the nation during those trips.

Painting on silk will be one of the classes, said Hicks, who operates her businesses from her Garden Grove home.

“These are one-day seminars, and after attending, the people can paint on clothing, scarves, any kind of textile and anything silk,” she said. “Best of all, a person doesn’t need to be an artist to learn how to do it. That’s one of the reasons for the popularity of the class.”

Hicks, a one-time secretary, is also an artist and has exhibited and sold her paintings in malls.

She said a person can learn the entire silk painting process in one day and go home with a marketable skill using a technique she calls “Squiggles and Streaks.”

Hicks, a grandmother six times over, also plans to present a class called “Creative Grandparenting.”

“I want to show grandparents how to have a better relationship with their grandchildren,” Hicks said. “I want to tell them to get on the floor with their grandchild and act silly instead of being formal.”

She also wants to promote simple activities with grandchildren.

That includes visiting a park and counting out loud the number of pushes on a swing as a learning experience.

“It will also build a strong connection with the grandchildren,” she said.

All these ventures, said Hicks, who is six units short of graduating from Golden West College, is the result of her inquisitive mind.

“As I get older I find I’m more of an idea person and problem solver,” said Hicks, who went back to school at age 40 to hone the marketing skills she first used to sell her wall tiles.

Despite the penchant for her businesses, “I really enjoy the teaching. I like the challenge, and there is something new all the time,” she said.

“I like sharing skills that I have,” she added.