By Jeff Kenney Citizen editor
As a student at Culver High School, Hilary Sopata – then MacDonald – enjoyed math and science studies. It hadn’t occurred to the 1991 CHS grad that a career involving art and design might be in her future. “I remember taking an art class in high school,” says Sopata, “and I found it very relaxing.”
She wanted a career that would allow her to use both her artistic interests and her mathematical and scientific leanings. “I remember talking to (CHS art teacher Marybeth Harness) one day and discussing what you can do with an art degree without being a starving artist. What’s the practical application of art, where people can use it every day? I realized this is what I want to do.”

After graduating from Valparaiso University in 1995 with a double major in interior design and art, Sopata soon had to face the fact that few Indiana communities were conducive to a strong interior design career. So she set her sights on Chicago. “It was really scary being someone from a small town moving to the big city,” recalls Sopata. “In the end, I ended up doing ok.”
In Chicago, she says, she didn’t know anyone, “so by default I worked six days a week. I worked hard and tried to increase my mark in the world…it takes a long time to root yourself in a new community and be an expert in a particular field. There was a lot of hard work, a lot of late nights, a lot of struggles along the way. But the harder you work in the early stages of life, the easier it becomes as you get older. If you think about when you go to school, what you learn the next year depends on what you learned the year before. For example, I use geometry in interior design. How do I figure how much fabric goes into a round pillow? You never know when you’re going to need those skills!”
Sopata says her natural leanings towards math and science help her go beyond the aesthetic into the highly functional and practical, something that sets apart her offerings for clients. “I’m very different from other interior designers I’ve met,” she notes. “It’s a need that needs to be filled. My clients are accountants and other people that want to know the how and why of interior design.”
Those clients have included Fortune 100 and 500 companies, large corporate office in 32 states (most of this work is done electronically). Individual clients range from condo owners, she says, up to multi million dollar homes. This October, Sopata will take over as president of her chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, a chapter which encompasses Illinois, northwest Indiana (including the Culver-Plymouth area), and several neighboring states, the third largest chapter of the Society in America. Sopata is now the owner and president of Interior Visions Designs, Inc., and has been quoted on NBC stations and publications around the country on the topic of interior design, and has been mentioned three times so far this year in the Chicago Tribune.
One great passion of Sopata’s is “green” design. She notes that over 30 percent of waste in landfills today comes from the construction industry, of which she is a part. She notes that green design is impactful on health, noting that many components in the interiors of homes contain Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs. “Think of the smell of a permanent marker, or the smell of paint. Sure, they go away in couple of days but in reality they hang out. Laminate and carpeting have tiny off gasses that add together to creates toxic cocktails. Americans spend 90 percent of our time indoors. But the air indoors is ten times more polluted than the outside, according to experts.”
There are “green” forms of carpeting, says Sopata, and a current trend in carpeting involves “up cycling” used carpet fibers to make new, preventing carpeting from winding up in landfills. There are also fabrics, she notes, made out of corn and other organic materials, VOC-free paints that perform well, and non toxic dyes.
“I believe it’s my responsibility, with the knowledge I have about the health and environmental aspects of interior design, to offer these options to client even if they don’t ask us.”
On June 10, Sopata will speak at the NeoCon World Trade’s Fair, the country’s largest conference and exhibition of contract furnishings for the design and management of the built environment, which will draw people from around the world. “I’m going to talk about green design basics, ‘designing green in a brown world,’” she says.
Throughout all this success as an up and coming interior designer, says Sopata, “I just think that there’s no place like home. I visit Culver on a regular basis, I hang out at the coffee shop, I go out to the Edgewater, have family parties at the beach. There’s just no place like home.”
And Chris, Sopata’s husband since 2005 and a biochemist for Abbott Laboratories, has come to appreciate the pace of Culver, even if it’s a bit of culture shock for the Chicago native.
“Growing up in Culver definitely influenced the person I am today,” Sopata explains. “I’m very friendly compared to big city standards. I smile and say ‘hello’ to people on the train. My husband says I shouldn’t! And I still believe in helping those who need your help, and looking out for your neighbor.”
Sopata also has an interesting perspective on small town life as a tool for appreciating diversity. “I think that growing up in a small town, I’m more accepting of others. In a small town, people like you are few and far between, so you make friends with people not like you. In big city, you make friends with people exactly like you. Oddly enough, growing up in Culver gave me more acceptance and diversity than if I’d grown up in Chicago. People think it’s the other way around, but I have a different perspective.”
“I think that just because you grow in a small town doesn’t mean you’re limited as to what you can do in your life,” adds Sopata. “The only limitations to who you are and what you become are limitations you put on yourself.”