With architectural antecedents including Mead & Requa, Greene & Greene, Wallace Neff, George Washington Smith and Richard Neutra, Ojai has long been a laboratory in the art of living. The spirit of openness and tolerance included black and female trailblazers Paul Revere Williams’ and Julia Morgan’s earliest commissions.

FEATURE | By Bret Bradigan

Ojai’s Designing Women

After years of working amid Palm Springs’ Mid-Century Modern masterpieces, the variety and diversity of Ojai’s styles enchanted Janelle Kandziora of Janelle’s Interiors. Her and lead designer Erin Bernthal recently opened their showroom at 221 East Matilija Street, behind the Arcade and on the second 

story above Serendipity Toys.

“After working with Janelle for a few years, we partnered to create Ojai at Home, the home decor store and furniture boutique,” Bernthal said.

It gives them a place for clients to feel what their lives will be like in their newly designed spaces, to pick up fabrics, flooring and accessories. It is also a chance to balance her and Erin’s busy lives with two and three children each respectively. 

“Erin’s strength is her keen eye for design,” Kandziora said. “I manage all our design projects and use her talent for selecting furniture and finishing touches. She’s also wonderful with clients.” She describes their work as “house therapists. I say someday I’m gonna write a book about that.”

The two met at an Ojai bunco groups, a game of chance involving dice and teams of four with three or more teams. They also teamed up on the Ojai Women’s Fund and struck up a friendship.

While hiking one day, Erin said “I was expressing how I wanted to start working again, but wanted to do something different. Considering that I loved working on my own home, perhaps something in flipping houses or rental properties would be a possibility? She asked if I had any interest in interior design? I said ‘Yes!’ There was a big residential project she was about to start and asked if I wanted shadow her and see the process from start to finish.”

Prior to the downtown location, Janelle’s Interiors was located at the old Ford Dealership just east of the “Y” intersection. “I was there for five or six years, then I went to my house. And it was great, especially during quarantine, but eventually we found this great space and it was larger than we expected. And we wanted to curate our own home decor place because we had the space to have these vignettes and show off our design skills.”

“The idea for the store was is that when we’re working with design clients, we’re always scrambling at the last moment to do the finishing touches,” said Kandziora. “And with the store, we’ve curated our favorite home decor, and we can pretty much immediately grab from our inventory and finish the home.”

Kandziora grew up in Minnesota, and came into the design business through a circuitous path. “I was always going to be an art professor. Every art teacher I’ve ever had in my life told me ‘You need to be an art teacher.’ It just really came naturally to me.”

Bernthal grew up in Pittsburgh area. “I graduated college with a BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) and had a very fulfilling career as an ICU/ Trauma R.N., working in some of the best hospitals in the country with the best doctors and nurses,” She said. Going on to earn her Masters at the University of Southern California, she became a certified RN in Anesthesia. “I worked most of my anesthesia career at Harbor UCLA Medical Center and 90210 Surgery Center in Beverly Hills.”

After Janelle earned her undergraduate degree, she could not find an internship with a gallery or an established artist anywhere. Her boyfriend at the time, Chris Kandziora, now husband, the sales and operations chief at the Ojai Valley Inn, was working at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and asked his employer if they had any openings. It turns out the hotel’s designer needed help. “She asked a couple questions and says ‘I’ll hire her. Can she start tomorrow and I’ll pay her.’ When you’re in your twenties and all of a sudden this opportunity became a paid opportunity. I started working with her and I never looked back.”

Kandziora has decades in the business and is not bound to any particular style of design. “A lot of people have asked me that. And I’m always like ‘I think that if somebody says, I don’t like calamari, then OK … just like if you said you didn’t like a certain