Sandy Kasten’s son and daughter worked hard to help her open ceramics shop Simply Stated and Painted on Glanzman Road in early December.
Dayna Kasten-Briggs, left, and her mother Sandy Kasten opened ceramics shop Simply Stated & Painted on Dec. 6. Kasten-Briggs died unexpectedly Dec. 14. Photo Courtesy Sandy Kasten
But just eight days later, on Dec. 14, her daughter Dayna Kasten-Briggs, 37, died with no clear cause.
Two months later, on Feb. 15, her son, Charles “Chip” Kasten IV, 33, also died suddenly.
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Kasten said in a Facebook post March 3 that she plans to keep the 3-month-old shop going, but she’s asking for the community’s support.
A post on the Simply Stated and Painted Facebook page reads:
“Friday, March 6th will mark the 3 month anniversary of Simply Stated and Painted, which was but a mere dream in the late fall of 2014. If it wasn’t for my husband saying “you can’t,” we wouldn’t have.
“My son, Chip, did the painting, built the shelves, the displays for the front windows, the paint center, and hung anything we asked him to. My daughter, Dayna, stocked the kitchen, bought the cash register, took care of the utilities, the credit cards, arranged furniture, unpacked bisque and helped price all of the merchandise. We did it! We opened on December 6th.
“Dayna was going to handle the day-to-day operations and I would work the evenings and weekends until I could retire. But, as most of you know, Dayna passed away just eight days later on December 14th. To say our family was devastated would be an understatement! Dayna left behind her daughter, Regan Faith, age 14, two stepsons, three brothers, nieces, a nephew, uncles, aunts and cousins, and a very large hole in her parents’ heart. She also left shoes to be filled at the store.
“Chip tried filling in during the day, but that only worked for a week or two. What most of you do not know, Chip passed away on February 15th, two months after his older sister. Chip left behind his fiancé, Heather, a daughter, Emma, age 8, and a son, CJ, age 4, and a grieving family.
“Simply Stated and Painted is the legacy they have left to me! This store means a great deal to me and the family they have left behind. The store has been featured on a local news channel as a new business, and Matt Liasse wrote a great article in the January 25, 2015 Toledo Free Press about the store. We have hosted a Sweet 16 Party, a birthday party that wasn’t a party, a party and a girl scout troop. I have had the pleasure of meeting and helping several customers – those who said they couldn’t paint have been amazed when they see the finished product. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad finished piece since we opened! But, I need your help — and I’m not good at asking for help. …
“I need your business. I need the store filled with you and your friends! I need you to sit in the chairs and paint something. While you’re doing that, I bet you’ll have fun, and so will I. Please stop in and look around. We are open Wednesdays and Thursdays 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays 12 to 8, Saturdays 10 to 6, Sundays 12 to 5. We are closed Mondays and Tuesday, I have to pour greenware sometime!”
The shop is located at 3322 Glanzman Road. For more information, visit facebook.com/SimplyStatedandPainted.
Below is Liasse’s Toledo Free Press story about the shop, originally published Jan. 25:
“A moment lasts all of a second, but the memory lives on forever.”
This framed saying hangs on the wall of Simply Stated & Painted, a ceramics shop at 3322 Glanzman Road. It’s something that could be found on a magnet in a department store or in pretty typography on Pinterest. But for Dayna Kasten-Briggs, the words resonated.
Toledo Free Press photo by Matt Liasse
In 2000, Kasten-Briggs suffered an arteriovenous malformation rupture while four months pregnant. She had to undergo a 10-hour brain surgery. Although she survived, the doctors didn’t think she would walk, talk or feed herself again. They were wrong.
“Everything was a miracle,” her mother Sandy Kasten said. “Once she cleared rehab, she could do anything.”
Her biggest symptom was her spotty memory; she would often tell the same story multiple times or forget where she put things.
Kasten-Briggs and Kasten opened Simply Stated & Painted on Dec. 6. The shop provides molded ceramics for people to paint, ranging from glass sock monkeys and coasters to candy dishes and more.
On Dec. 14, eight days after the shop opened, Kasten-Briggs died at home with no clear cause. She was 37. On that same day, her daughter turned 14 years old.
Family affair
When Kasten-Briggs’ marriage ended, her daughter decided to stay with her father. Kasten-Briggs became depressed and Kasten took it upon herself to cheer her daughter up.
Having “played” with ceramics for 20 years, Kasten decided to introduce the art form to her daughter. After only a few classes, Kasten said it became all she could talk about.
“She could relax,” Kasten said. “She would sit there and not have to smoke a cigarette.”
The two became a team and started looking for places to open their shop, while trying to create a business plan.
The shop opened after five weeks of preparation. Kasten-Briggs was excited about the venture.
“She was such a vital part of the shop,” Kasten said.
Kasten-Briggs maintained a lot of the shop. She was so busy it took her five weeks to finish a Spider-Man mug, one of the last things she made.
After her daughter died, Kasten had to quickly master the cash register and acquire passwords for all of their accounts. Every time the paper towel roll is empty in the restrooms, Kasten cringes because Kasten-Briggs always took care of that as well.
What she left
The shop has retained much of Kasten-Briggs’ essence. Her desk is still where she kept it. The music that plays (including Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and Rihanna’s “Rude Boy”) was hers. An angel Kasten bought for her daughter and a coffee cup Kasten-Briggs made are displayed on a shelf.
Toledo Free Press Photo by Matt Liasse
The shop was opened with children in mind, as a place to host birthday parties. Kasten-Briggs loved kids and saw the shop as a place for them to be exposed to the art world, Kasten said.
“Kids mean a lot to us,” she said. “We want kids in here painting and doing clay because a lot of schools don’t have that now. A lot of the kids are missing out.”
For the price of the piece, ranging from $13.95-$59.95 depending on the size, customers can take as much time as they want to paint their purchases Kasten helps along the way.
She now works at the shop on evenings and weekends in addition to her full-time job at a law firm.
“If I wasn’t here, I’d be down in the basement painting or pouring,” she said. “The laundry gets backed up a little bit, I noticed today, but [having something for Kasten-Briggs] was more important.”
Simply stated
Behind the cash register, two glass plates that Kasten-Briggs made hang under another saying: “Life is measured by the moments that take your breath away.” Kasten added those words herself.
The shop closed when Kasten-Briggs died but reopened Dec. 21. Kasten said she wants the shop to stay open.
“[Kasten-Briggs] worked for it [and] it’s something I worked for and I think that’s what she’d want,” she said.
She said she finds peace in the shop. Her husband doesn’t spend time there because it reminds him too much of his late daughter, but that is what Kasten likes about it.
“We worried what would happen to her when something happened to us,” Kasten said. “This was our way of giving her something that she could do once we passed away, not vice versa.”
