Whatever you see can be an inspiration,” artist Lisa Tureson says, and a tour of her home and studio in Oak Hill, Virginia, illustrates the point. Murals of outdoor scenes covering the dining room walls were inspired by trips to Italy. The bark of a tree near the front door prompted a rough-textured painting underway in her studio. As a focal point in the study, a fluid abstract painting borrowed its glowing hues from fish swimming in a tank across the room. “Being alive is inspiring,” the artist asserts.
Tureson’s ability to turn any view or idea into an alluring piece of art has made her a prized source for custom commissions. Her work is shown regularly at Touchstone Gallery and the Washington Design Center’s AmericanEye in DC, and at Broadway Gallery in Alexandria and Great Falls.
She is best known for her peaceful landscapes, softened by clouds of mist and an aura of mystery. “That place on the horizon where you don’t know what’s around the corner intrigues me,” notes Tureson, who grew up near the water in Ocean County, New Jersey. In those formative years, she actively explored different types of art with her mother, an art teacher and interior designer. After a successful business career that sharpened her skills in problem-solving, Tureson pursued art full-time, first building a decorative-painting business that widely served the interior design community in the heyday of faux bois, mural painting, gilding and architectural coatings. About seven years ago, she turned her focus to fine art in mixed media. “I love challenges,” says the versatile artist.
Interior designer Barbara Hawthorn, who purchased one of Tureson’s paintings for her own art collection, has been commissioning pieces by Tureson for years. Recently, the designer requested a triptych of paintings based on Tureson’s mixed-media series titled Scribble. “You can tell Lisa exactly the effect you want, and she translates that onto canvas,” says Hawthorn.
While acrylic paint, canvas, and hardboard are the artist’s primary materials, she works in a broad range of media. “I’m a painter,” she says. “I’m also very curious, and I like working with plaster, collage, different textures.”
Hundreds of brushes are stashed below and atop the wheeled worktable in her studio, and in an adjacent storeroom. Another table holds samples of gilding with a metal leaf on glass, made in a process called églomisé. She treats glass in other ways too—dropping and shaping jewel-toned inks onto the surface, then fusing the image to the glass with a blowtorch or heat gun. Her designs on mirrors go a step further. After she etches and oxidizes the silverbacks of mirrors, those artworks become the tops for hand-forged iron tables, custom-fabricated at Salvations Architectural Furnishings in Silver Spring. A number of Tureson’s creations are available in print and sold through Z Gallerie and other retailers. “I’m a firm believer that art should be accessible to everyone,” she says.
Outside the studio, Tureson has found a way to apply her art for a larger purpose: volunteering with young patients in treatment at Children’s National Health System. As part of an art therapy program, she helps the kids create a gallery of art, which will be on view for the second year at the annual DC Design House (September 30 to October 29) and available for sale to benefit the hospital.
One day while Tureson was pulling off the tape that held a canvas painting to the wall, her eagle eye fell on the accidental patterns that occurred where the paint overshot the canvas. “There were so many interesting paintings within one little section of that tape,” Tureson recalls. She started saving and reusing the tape in mixed-media artworks. “The tape was always there, but that day I saw it,” the artist remembers. “All kinds of things reveal themselves if you just look.”
For more information on the artist, visit studioartistica.com.
Sitting in the living room of his gracious 1891 home, interior designer Josh Hildreth glances out to a crape myrtle in a corner of the garden. In that spot—high above a busy street in Wesley Heights—a well once stood. “The lure that came with the house,” Hildreth relates, “is that Teddy Roosevelt was a friend of the owners. He used to go riding in Rock Creek Park and would come by to water his horse at that well.”
Layers of history burnish every corner of this elegantly mellow home. Adapting it for contemporary living, Hildreth has introduced grace notes in harmony with its heritage. The blend of old and new reflects the interests of the designer—a lifelong devotee of the history of architecture and the decorative arts—and those of his husband, Rick Robinson, the chief operating officer of an association, who favors mid-century and modern design.
In carefully composed rooms, fragments of personal history mingle with antiques culled from auctions and house sales, along with modern art. A color-saturated portrait by contemporary photographer Tina Barney in the dining room stands atop a quirky 1930s Italian commode, inset with historical portrait engravings and flanked by 19th-century candelabras that Hildreth discovered blackened and in pieces at an estate sale. “What drives me is the pursuit of unlikely things that go together in interesting ways,” he says. “To design in a way that’s not predictable, that offers an element of surprise.”
When the couple bought the house six years ago, they realized it suited them perfectly. “We loved its history and how it had evolved,” says Hildreth. Known in the neighborhood as The Old Farmhouse, the property had been remodeled twice. In 1976, modernist architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen had removed the wall separating the double parlor, creating a great room with added light and views of garden greenery through a solarium across the back of the house. Twenty-five years later, a new kitchen was designed in the home’s original farmhouse style. On their first visit, Hildreth recalls, “Rick walked through the ’70s side, and said, ‘This is wonderful.’ I looked at the other side and loved it.”
While they left the layout intact, the great room was a major obstacle. “It had ’70s glamour, but felt oppressively narrow, like a bowling alley with a fireplace coming in at an angle,” Hildreth says. They ruled out removing the fireplace due to cost—a decision that proved fortunate. “Constraints are good because they focus you,” observes the designer, who recognized over time that the great room needed to be divided into two separate spaces and the fireplace provided that divide.
The formal great room occupies the front, anchored by tall, stately mahogany cabinets and a refined satinwood sideboard. The light-flooded back invited a more casual, family-room approach. To unify the spaces, all walls and ceilings were painted Benjamin Moore’s Marble White. That same creamy color, thinned with turpentine, lightened the reclaimed-oak flooring that Hildreth felt suited the home’s farmhouse past.
With shared light and outdoor views, the overall living area now feels like a large, welcoming garden room. Since the couple entertains often, Hildreth selected airy, lightweight chairs and small tables that can be easily moved around to handle groups of different sizes.
One 18th-century armchair with a sculptural presence holds special meaning for the designer. It once belonged to a member of the Buffalo, New York, family, for whom Hildreth’s grandmother worked as a housekeeper in the grand style of “Downton Abbey” after emigrating from Ireland. “She knew how to set a table to perfection, and developed an eye for furniture,” Hildreth relates of his first mentor, who took him to estate sales and taught him what was best. “I was the only six-year-old who turned plates upside-down to see if they were Limoges,” he remembers, smiling.
Hildreth has enjoyed visiting historic houses ever since. While a student at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College, he made pilgrimages to Mount Vernon and Monticello, historic Williamsburg and the great homes of Newport, Rhode Island. But, he states emphatically, he would not want to live in any of these. “They are too stiff and formal, too perfect,” he declares.
Seated in his warm, inviting sunroom, Hildreth looks approvingly at the cracked paint on a lacquered Chinese cabinet, at the chips on a centuries-old Persian vase. “Those imperfections give character,” he notes. In his view, what matters most is not the perfection of a room or the provenance of pieces, but rather “the people who live inside the home, and the experiences of those coming in and having great conversations there,” he says, adding a time-honored coda: “When you create a space, it is about more than creating static beauty within a room. You are creating a catalyst for memory-making.”
Tina Coplan is a Chevy Chase-based writer. Photographer Stacy Zarin Goldberg resides in Olney, Maryland.
INTERIOR DESIGN & CONTRACTING: JOSH HILDRETH, Josh Hildreth Interiors, Reston, Virginia.
RESOURCES
GENERAL Floors: Reclaimed random-width oak through cochranslumber.com.
SUNROOM Walls: farrow-ball.com. Sisal Rug: starkcarpet.com. Chandelier: 19th-century French bronze through weschlers.com. Lacquered Cabinet: 18th-century Chinese; tkasian.com. Carved-Wood Floor Lamps: Vintage Portuguese through darelldeanantiques.com. Cane-Backed Barrel Chairs: Mid-century through Maine Coast Exchange. Barrel Chair Upholstery & Sofa Pillows: raoultextiles.com. Sofa: ef-lm.com. Coffee Table: 19th-century French through freemansauction.com. Ceramic Elephant Garden Seats: Mid-century Italian: Brooke Astor estate through sothebys.com. Cast Plaster Tortoiseshell Sconces: westendantiqwuemall.com.
DINING ROOM Wallpaper: Old World Weavers through hinescompany.com. Chandelier: davidduncanantiques.com. Photograph over Cabinet: Tina Barney through sothebys.com. Rug: Bessarabian through dorisleslieblau.com. Cabinet: 1930s Italian through eburytrading.com. Dining Chairs: Vintage Italian. Chair Upholstery: Leather through mooreandgiles.com. Round Dining Table: 18th- century English through rogerwinterantiques.com. Silver Tureen on Table with Malachite Inlay: emiliacastillojewelry.com. China: Dodie Thayer through toryburch.com. Silver Flatware: Vintage Christofle.
FRONT GREAT ROOM Sofa: ef-lm through hinescompany.com. Sofa Upholstery: rosetarlow.com through hollandandsherry.com. Coffee Table: Vintage Phillip & Kelvin Laverne through wright20.com. Moroccan Pouf: Vintage. Leather Upholstery: mooreandgiles.com. Armchairs: Schumacher.com. Upholstery: peterfasano.com. Trim: samuelandsons.com. China Cabinet: 18th-century English through carolinefaison.com.
REAR GREAT ROOM Built-in Sofa: Custom by joshhildrethinteriors.com. Upholstery: champalimauddesign.com. Vintage Kilim Pillows: dransfieldandross.com. Orange Lacquered Stools: megbraffdesigns.com. Ottoman: schumacher.com. Ottoman Upholstery: peterdunhamtextiles.com. Painted Chest: 19th-century French through kevinstoneantiques.com. Mirror: 19th-century Italian, owners’ collection. Lamps on Chest: Tulipieres fitted as lamps through brunschwig.com. Rugby Chest: Vintage.
KITCHEN Woven Rug: Hella Jongerius for maharam.com. 19th-century Swiss Table & 19th-century Italian Chairs: paulbert-serpette.com.
LIBRARY: Wallcovering: kravat.com. Chandelier: 19th-century carved alabaster from Italy. Rug: 19th-century Oushak. Drapery Fabric: katieridder.com. Trim: samuelandsons.com. Sofa: Antique. Sofa Fabric: Mulberry Home through leejofa.com. Yellow-Wood Chair: English Regency. Chair Cushion: rosetarlow.com. Side Table: 18th century French through sothebys.com. Coffee Table: Owners’ collection.
MASTER BEDROOM Wallpaper: farrow-ball.com. Ceiling Stencil: studioartistica.com. Ceiling Fixture: davidduncanantiques.com. Sconces: visualcomfortlightinglights.com. Sconce Shades: Custom by Madina Upholstery & Drapery; 703-455-3627. Rug: Custom by mitchelldenburg.com. Fabric for Draperies, Bed Alcove and Bed: pennymorrison.com for evansandsheldon.com. Fabrication: gretcheneverett.com. Shades: conradshades.com. Bed Linens: timothypaulhome.com. Burl Veneer Slant Top Desk: 18th-century English. Print over Bed: Peter Doig through phillips.com.
Of the 50,000 fabrics on the market today, each one may react differently when hung at a window—a fact noted with unruffled professionalism by Gretchen Everett, the Washington area’s couturier of draperies and shades and a go-to source for the region’s top designers. She and two associates recently lifted the curtain at Everett’s offices and workroom in Silver Spring, Maryland, for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to create impeccable window treatments.
Everett singled out a fabric they had just handled. It combined a very loose weave between two panels of linen. “It is a gorgeous fabric,” she began. “But when you hold it up, the center part will be longer; it will drag on the ground while the other parts will be an inch off. That may be fine, but everyone needs to realize it.” To eliminate any guesswork, a sample was prepared to show how the finished drapery would look.
Designers rely on Everett for that level of expertise and care. “When there’s a unique situation and I’m wondering, ‘How do you do that?’, Gretchen is up to the challenge,” says veteran interior designer Kelley Proxmire.
Everett and her team have confronted many challenges during 18 years in business. They have fashioned draperies that hang as straight as plumb lines from three-story heights. They have angled curtains with soundproof linings to follow the slope of a basement ceiling, wrapping the space in silence for an at-home podcaster. Working with interior designer Jodi Macklin to revive historic Evermay in Georgetown, they fabricated all the window treatments, upholstery, and bedding for the 12-bedroom mansion. “Every drapery, every duvet cover—anything that went through that workroom was perfection,” Macklin says about Everett’s team effort, finished in seven months.
A visit to the light-filled back workroom reveals a calm, clean and orderly atmosphere; sewing machines are not, as expected, up front. Instead, four seamstresses stand at padded worktables, hand-sewing or carefully stapling fabric to a wood board that will hold a window shade. They each learned their craft in different countries—Cambodia, Ukraine, Honduras and South Korea. A fifth from El Salvador works part-time, hand-stitching pillows in custom sizes and fabrics. Off-site in Gaithersburg, an upholstery studio completes the company’s collaborative services.
The skilled seamstresses hand-stitch pleats and side and bottom hems on all curtains and draperies. Everett compares this refined detailing to “the hand-sewn tailoring of a fine men’s suit.” One recent project took that impeccable styling further: In several rooms of a home, white-linen Roman shades and draperies were hand-stitched in contrasting gray thread, then finished with embroidered crosshatching at the corners. “It came out so beautifully,” beams interior designer Erica Burns, recalling the results.
Everett’s team also eases the process by ordering custom hardware from different sources to fit existing windows and styles. Five years ago, she introduced her own distinctive line of hardware in chunky acrylic from Argentina and in English brass that’s polished or plated in nickel, rose-gold copper or custom finishes. “I like pure, clean designs with some heft,” she explains, then slips together a curved bracket and weighty rod strung with elongated rings. “It’s like a piece of jewelry.” The streamlined designs are scaled up to create coffee tables made of clear acrylic slabs often cantilevered over a brass base. “Fabricating the parts from scratch makes it easy to adjust the size to fit specific jobs,” Everett adds.
Every part of her hardware and furniture is produced and finished to exacting standards in small American shops. This quality control was tested when the British design firm David Collins asked Everett to adopt her acrylic rod design in a striped pattern, alternating clear and black sections. She sent the first effort back to the local fabricator when glue marred its perfect connections. After the glue was dyed black to blend in, the elegant final product appeared in the London designer’s room at the 2016 Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York City. Tiffany & Co. also tapped Everett to make a curtain rod for its Prague shop, which, she says with a chuckle, “brings home the fact that it looks like jewelry.”
Sharla Keslar, vice president of the hardware line, leads the way to the back of the workroom to show how it all comes together. Keslar’s detailed preliminary drawings indicate the placement of double sets of rods and ring drops, so that “the drapery panels and sheers will hang at exactly the same height and the bottoms of the panels will line up,” she points out. Keeping jobs on track, senior project manager Tara Lowe takes measurements on site and double-checks dimensions of finished draperies and other details documented extensively in project notebooks.
Before any fabric is cut, each bolt is carefully inspected on a special light-box machine in the workroom. “Twice in the last two weeks, 80 yards of fabric for a huge living room was found to be full of flaws,” Everett notes. The job was stopped and the client picked another fabric.
Everett hails from a family of sewing experts in New Orleans. “Both my great-grandmothers had sewing shops during the Depression,” she relates. Her mother sewed the clothes for her five daughters, who all became excellent amateur seamstresses. All, that is, except Everett, who followed a different muse. Graduating from college with an international relations degree, she worked first in the fashion industry. Then she transitioned to a furniture company before apprenticing for two years with a drapery designer in Georgetown and starting out on her own.
“I knew from day one that I didn’t want a commercial assembly line,” she says. “I had worked in high-end clothing and approached it the same way, with attention to details. That kind of care comes from hand-sewing, as in couture.” It’s also necessary, she says, when working on hand-printed and hand-blocked cottons and linens that can exceed $150 a yard.
She emphasizes the importance of trained artisans to maintain that level of quality. “The way they treat and handle fabric is a very Old World skill set. It’s a dying art. We have to value that; we have to value our craftsmen,” Everett asserts.
Reflecting on her years of top-tier production, she adds, “There’s not a day I walk through the door that I don’t think about how I love making something beautiful. It is cool to see what we are doing come to fruition.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase. Gretchen Everett's custom draperies and other products are available through the trade only. See gretcheneverett.com.
Taking a break from her busy schedule, Maggie O’Neill sits behind the desk in her second-floor studio overlooking DC’s fast-changing Shaw neighborhood. Along the walls, paintings and prints from her celebrated Washington monuments series lend a cheerful sense of place. The Lincoln Memorial—in buoyant colors and bold strokes—is dusted with falling snow. Against a blazing backdrop, Uncle Sam’s iconic recruiting image is rebooted with the words “Love Trumps Hate.” Three commissioned works depicting Union Station’s grand concourse wait to be finished.
O’Neill hopes to find more time to paint. It has become a small part of her dynamic career path in art. Since starting out 15 years ago painting murals and decorative finishes for luxury homes, her business has boomed. The company that began as O’Neill Studios has evolved into Swatchroom (swatchroom.com), a complete-service firm that creates all aspects of interior and occasionally outdoor installations, from art to furniture and lighting.
“People ask whether I consider myself a designer or an artist first,” O’Neill begins. “I always say, artist. The design side was born out of wanting to make art constantly.”
Her imaginative energy has transformed 22 restaurants and nightclubs around town into singular environments, from the ornate interiors of Capitale nightclub to the clean, international style and indigenous woven textures of Sakerum, a new Asian-Latin fusion restaurant. “Our goal is to create a 360-degree experience,” says O’Neill. The company has also designed a handful of residences and hundreds of smaller projects. “What we do best,” she adds, “is help develop a concept from start to finish.”
That happened when O’Neill walked into one of her first restaurant-design presentations seven years ago. “I carried in a painting of Lincoln and a pile of pennies,” she remembers. That audacious moment led to the stellar, stately Lincoln Restaurant, which reflects an inventive aesthetic based on the explosive colors and everyday materials of pop art. A million pennies covered the floors and still panel one wall; its glossy red doors were powder-coated at an auto shop. “Who would have thought back then that artists, rather than designers, would be the inspiration for a site installation?” O’Neill asks.
She discovered a smooth transition from painting to creating three-dimensional designs. “Playing with other materials besides paint became totally natural for me,” she says. Following the large Lincoln paintings she made for the restaurant installation, her splashy portraits of Theodore Roosevelt added to the exuberant mix at the restaurant Teddy & The Bully Bar two years later. Seventeen other local artists also produced spirited takes on aspects of Roosevelt’s life. Displayed around the dining room, six wooden animal heads stand-in for less savory taxidermic trophies, representing Roosevelt’s passion for hunting. Cheeky post-Victorian photographs adorn the restroom walls. And a ceiling light James Kerns of Corehaus repurposed from a 30-foot-long plumbing pipe visually divides the bar from the dining room. The rough fixture diffuses a “steam-punk look,” as O’Neill calls it. All parts of the design corral historic and contemporary styles around the presidential theme.
Today, Swatchroom draws on a database of some 50 regional artists and craftspeople. Handwork, O’Neill has found, “imbues a space with soul, an intangible experience that machine-made goods can’t match.” Salvaged or ordinary materials used in uncommon ways add another dimension. At Twitter’s DC office, Swatchroom formed a “Hashtag Flag” installation out of 7,000 laser-cut feathers. For a bachelor’s all-new condo, wooden lanes from an out-of-commission bowling alley were bleached and reclaimed as a kitchen island. “I geek out over materials,” the artist says. “If I found mattress springs, I’d wonder how I could use them.”
O’Neill’s enterprising career is grounded on a classical foundation. She earned a master’s degree in fine art at the University of Georgia’s program in Cortona, Italy, where she worked with construction crews restoring frescoes.
“There was such respect for work made by hand,” the artist says about life abroad as an artist and craftsperson. “Restoration was revered for the academic acumen required, the knowledge of chemistry and the ability to execute what you were thinking. That motivated me a lot when I moved home.”
Born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, O’Neill returned to the area and began to paint portraits, baby furniture, murals—“whatever it took,” she recalls, to make a living as an artist. Meeting people in their homes led to requests for work on different projects; she learned to make lighting fixtures and lay tile. “My portfolio of services and abilities grew, and what I wanted to make kept growing until taking over an entire space became an option.”
Four years ago, O’Neill co-founded Switchroom with architect Warren Weixler. The company has expanded to 14 full-time employees including architects and designers with backgrounds in interiors, graphics, carpentry, sculpture, digital fabrication, and branding.
Now 39, O’Neill is eager to pass on her hard-won knowledge to others. “If anybody has to be a starving artist, it’s unnecessary,” says the entrepreneur, who with her brilliant blue eyes, flowing blonde hair and direct manner projects self-assurance.
To help women artists, O’Neill has organized super-fierce, a traveling exhibit introduced last fall at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It brought together high-earning women artists in a program about support, mentoring and giving back. O’Neill donates a portion of sales from her limited-edition prints to local charities.
She is grateful for the mentoring she received from chef Jamie Leeds, owner of Hank’s Oyster Bar. One of her few female commercial clients, Leeds sets an example of success in a mostly male field. An upcoming Hank’s location at The Wharf on Maine Avenue is among seven projects now underway at Swatchroom. The firm also anticipates adding international projects in the coming year.
Still, O’Neill is determined to set aside more time for painting. Stepping over to her worktable, she pulls dried acrylic paint from a palette and holds the colored shape up against her rendering of a Gibson Girl—a beloved image from the turn of the last century. The commissioned head is embellished with gold-leaf tresses. Pursuing her own muse, O’Neill has started to create variations on a Gibson Girl theme. She intends to use the congealed colors as three-dimensional waves of hair in the new works, which will also be painted against a background of recycled bingo cards gathered by the artist at a Knights of Columbus hall in DC. She is thinking about other college possibilities, too.
In the gallery downstairs, portraits of two contemporary women, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, are the latest in O’Neill’s “Social Currency” series. Their likenesses are painted over enlarged photos of $100 bills. O’Neill hopes to complete this personal series (which she considers politically charged) with illustrations of other iconic women overlaid on scans of beautifully ornamented international currencies.
The artist has excluded her own paintings from Swatchroom’s recent installations, preferring to promote artwork by others. At the moment, however, she takes a different tack, thinking out loud and smiling, “Maybe I’ll push for a new project about Hillary.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase.
When a couple previewed an early model for the dream home they had commissioned architect Donald Lococo to design in Alexandria, at first the wife was alarmed. “The flat back of the house looked like a square box,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is too stark.’”
Lococo also remembers that moment. “They didn’t want a house with the feeling of an office building,” he recalls sympathetically. “It had to have life, movement and contrast.” All of which he was confident the finished home would possess.
Now, after living there for two and a half years, the wife happily acknowledges a change of heart. “What’s not to love?” she asks. “It’s a beautiful home for a large family. The kids welcome their friends here. We entertain. And every room is used.”
The expansive, 11,000-square-foot residence checks all the boxes on the family’s wish list. They had hoped for a spacious home that would also be cozy—a welcoming plan that would afford privacy for a household with four children, two cats and, recently, a beagle.
“We wanted the feeling of an English country estate that would blend into the neighborhood of older stone houses on the front, and a California party house in the back,” says the wife, who owns a wellness spa and grew up in the rolling countryside of southern Pennsylvania. The husband, an executive at a defense-contracting firm, asked for a Miesian design in the modern style of pioneering architect Mies van der Rohe.
Lococo integrated those requests into a nimble, double-faced design. Along the street, a romantic carriage-house view includes a rustic stone façade and front porch sheltered by a wide-roof overhang. Angled to one side, a driveway leads to a stone courtyard and two garages detailed with charm.
In contrast, bold, simple forms rise on the back. The central living space and perpendicular wings open to a serene, rectangular courtyard. “It’s a minimalist aesthetic of grid and glass,” Lococo explains. “It’s architecture intended to be modern, but not sterile.”
Strong lines are tempered by textured cedar-board siding in varied widths and thicknesses that cast changing shadows. Cool panels of glass are offset by contrasting warm earth tones. Also breaking up the flat planes, valances holding speakers and light fixtures project above doorways in a rhythmic sequence. “The design is a balancing act between the traditional front and Miesian back,” says Lococo.
A dual landscape plan complements the home’s architectural poles. Visitors approach the residence through a layered English cottage-style garden, while at the back of the house and garden, spare geometries dramatically emerge.
“A very modern landscape transforms the rear of the property,” says Bob Hruby, who designed the outdoor plan. Three rectangular spaces at ground-floor level and a broad lawn below complete the straightforward concept. “The courtyard was imagined as a clean green carpet, like an outdoor room,” Hruby says. In fact, after moving in the owners hosted their first party—a candlelit, 80th-birthday celebration for the husband’s mother and 30 guests—on that flat emerald plane.
Extending the wings of the house outdoors, a gravel terrace and bosque of columned hornbeams adjoin the guest bedroom on one side. Drifts of perennials and grasses in a raised bed opposite “soften the many hard angles of the house,” Hruby notes. On the lower level, a broad lawn was left open as a recreation area for the children, ages eight to 18.
The garden’s changing vistas extend to a barrier of evergreens—tinged in autumn with the fiery hues of maple trees—that screen the back of the property. A panoramic view of architecture merging into the landscape can be seen best from the master wing and balcony, or from the children’s bedrooms along the second floor.
Large glass apertures open up silent interactions among family members across the house. “The transparency allows the family to be together visually, or decide not to be,” says Lococo.
The mother agrees. Standing in the kitchen and looking up to her youngest daughter’s room, she says, “I find it comforting in our large home to be able to see her from down here.”
Soft sheers cover the windows throughout, and blackout curtains can also be drawn on the windows above. Interior designer Christine Philp of Palindrome Design, who was enlisted to decorate the interiors, ordered a total of 390 yards of the gauzy fabric.
Openness from room to room also posed special challenges for the designer. “In a way, the house is like a large dollhouse, and you’re looking into it,” she says. “We tried to get everything to look beautiful from a lot of angles.” Working closely with the architect and clients, Philp selected a palette of neutrals that flows easily inside out.
Placing the owners’ art collection where it could be seen and enjoyed was an important consideration. The first work of art the wife ever purchased—a seven-foot-wide painting in rich atmospheric colors by Fred Kline—is visible from the kitchen across the courtyard. “I look at that painting every day and still love it,” she beams.
Art is also displayed in floor-to-ceiling shelves and cabinets built into the family and living rooms. Lococo designed box shapes within the larger units to repeat on a smaller scale the forms and grid of the structure itself.
All in all, the wife’s initial alarm has turned to admiration. “The design team took our nontraditional concept and created exactly what we wanted,” she confirms. “They embraced and realized our vision for the home.”
Writer Tina Coplan lives in Chevy Chase. Photographer Maxwell MacKenzie is based in Washington, DC; photographer John Cole is based in Silver Spring.
ARCHITECTURE: DONALD LOCOCO, AIA, Donald Lococo Architects, Washington, DC. INTERIOR DESIGN: CHRISTINE PHILP, Palindrome Design, LLC, Alexandria, Virginia. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: BOB HRUBY, ASLA, principal; NICK RIES, project manager, Campion Hruby Landscape Architects, Annapolis, Maryland. BUILDER: MURRAY BONITT, Bonitt Builders, Alexandria, Virginia.
RESOURCES
GENERAL Stonework: rugostone.com. Window Treatments: knightsbridgeinteriors.com. Upholstery: dcarlohomeinteriors.com. Windows: thesanderscompany.com. Outdoor Lighting: progresslighting.com.
LANDSCAPE Hardscape Construction: Quarry Aquatics; 410-365-1168. Planting: evergrolandscaping.com.
LIVING ROOM Coffee Table: caracole.com. Matching Back-Less Sofas: roomandboard.com. Bolsters: romo.com. Arm Chairs: mgbwhome.com. Rug: Owners’ collection. Abstract Metal Sculpture on Coffee Table: cb2.com. Framed Art on Shelf Wall: Bull by Adriano G, "Nightmover" by Jordan McKay; “Blue” by Glenn Kessler; “Black Blanket” by Nicole Lococo. Occasional Tables by Sofas: duralee.com. Wing Chairs: vanguardfurniture.com. Wing Chair Fabric: calicocorners.com, vervain.com. Abstract Art by Wing Chairs: “Feel” by Eduardo Guelfenbein.
FOYER Metal-Framed Console: vanguardfurniture.com. Hand-loomed Indian Wool Rug: owners’ collection. Art over Console: “Wyld Stallyns” by Julia Dault. Stairwell Sculpture: “Clearing” by Lisa Williamson.
DINING/SEATING AREA Dining Chairs & Coffee Table: mgbwhome.com. Table: Owners’ collection. Light Fixture: dulleselectric.com. Wallpaper: yorkwall.com. Rug: starkcarpet.com. Sofa: mgbwhome.com. Sofa Fabric: calicocorners.com. Drapes: duralee.com. Art in Cabinetry Niche: John Matthew Moore.
KITCHEN Cabinetry: wood-mode.com. Countertops: Monte Carlo quartzite through rugostone.com. Bar Stools: vanguardfurniture.com.
MASTER BEDROOM Fabric on Headboard & Bedding: larsenfabrics.com. Console & Bedside Tables: mgbwhome.com. Sconces: horchow.com. Drapes: knightsbridgeinteriors.com. Armchairs: leeindustries.com. Armchair Upholstery: larsenfabrics.com. Ottoman: Owners’ collection. Carpet: starkcarpet.com.
WASHINGTON, DC
Porcelania: East Meets West Cross MacKenzie Gallery, November 10 to December 8
Walter McConnell’s monumental assemblage of porcelain figurines—comprising Buddhas and more cast from molds found in hobby shops—is one of the contemporary takes on traditional clay techniques by four ceramic artists in this show. McConnell’s towering constructions can also be seen at the Freer Sackler exhibition "Chinamania" (through June 4, 2017). Steven Young Lee’s masterful porcelain meltdowns are presented at Cross MacKenzie, as well as at the Renwick’s "Visions and Revisions: Renwick Invitational 2016" (through January 8, 2017). 1675 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; 202-337-7970; crossmackenzie.com
Suzanne Caporael: A Progression of Prints Addison Ripley Fine Art, December 10 to January 21, 2017
Inspired by the fields, lakes and rivers near her home in Upstate New York, Suzanne Caporael’s art has evolved from literal representations to pared-down, flattened scenes that distill a lyrical essence. Her work is traced through prints and a few paintings spanning 30 years. 1670 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; 202-338-5180; addisonripleyfineart.com
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Everything Became Nearness and All the Nearness Turned to Stone Hemphill, November 11 to December 23
Blending Western abstraction and Persian art, brilliantly hued paintings reflect the dual cultural experiences of this Iranian-American artist. Meticulous ornamentation based on “Tazhib”—the art of illumination—contrasts with explosive passages of pigment, referencing both personal and socio-political conflicts. Ilchi is currently an artist-in-residence at the Arlington Arts Center. 1515 14th Street, NW; 202-234-5601;hemphillfinearts.com
Michelle Peterson-Albandoz Long View Gallery, December 1 to January 8, 2017
Growing up near forests in Connecticut and Puerto Rico, Michelle Peterson-Albandoz’s art celebrates the aesthetics of wood, which has always fascinated her. She has assembled hand-sawn wood into patterned wall pieces. Installed side-by-side, these three-dimensional artworks may cover an entire wall. 1234 9th Street, NW; 202-232-4788; longviewgallerydc.com
Rachel Farbiarz: A Different Country G Fine Art, October 29 to December 10
DC-based artist Rachel Farbiarz examines current events through extensive drawings combined with collage elements using historical source materials from books, journals, newspapers and magazines. Measuring from 11-by-14 inches up to 48-by-60 inches for an epic tableau, Farbiarz’s intriguing art acknowledges the repetitive persistence of current struggles. 4618 14th Street, NW; 202-462-1601; gfineartdc.com
Chiaroscuro: a collection of works by Ognian Zekoff Artist’s Proof, December 7 to January 8, 2017
These larger-than-life oil paintings depict the human body in photographic hyper-realism. Bright light, deep shadows and rich, monochromatic tones heighten the sense of drama. Subjects appear to reach beyond the frame, overwhelming lines between illusion and reality. Born in Bulgaria, Zekoff lives and works in Canada. 1533 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; 202-803-2782; aproof.net
MARYLAND
Art/Craft/Design, Create Create, ongoing
Create is a new gallery that presents works by nationally recognized, Eastern Shore craft artists: Rob Glebe (metal), Patti and Dave Hegland (glass), Bob Ortiz (wood furniture), Marilee Schumann (ceramics) and Faith Wilson (painted floor cloths). Works by guest artists rotate; jewelry makers are featured in December. Changing wall pieces are curated by Carla Massoni, whose nearby art gallery is also in Chestertown’s historic district. 113 South Cross Street, Chestertown; 410-870-9808; createartcraftdesign.com
Landscapes Into Art C. Grimaldis Gallery, October 27 to December 22
Varied visions of the landscape are shown by 10 artists from the Mid-Atlantic region. Dating from 1980 through 2016, these oil and watercolor paintings feature Henry Coe’s traditional views and colorful interpretations by Baltimore native David Brewster, alongside those of younger artists who continue to expand the landscape genre, as in Eleanor Ray’s charming miniatures. 523 N. Charles Street, Baltimore; 410-539-1080; cgrimaldisgallery.com
VIRGINIA
Chris Stephens: Sight Lines Haley Fine Art, December 8 to January 10, 2017
In this debut exhibition of his abstract oil paintings, Chris Stephens—known for his sweeping views of Virginia's Piedmont region—applies a similar palette of vibrant colors embedded in strong geometric patterns. 42 Main Street, Sperryville; 540-987-1000;haleyfineart.com
Prison (Re)form Workhouse Arts Center, through December 31, 2017
Gathered on the grounds of the former Lorton Prison, five sculptures bear titles such as “Memory” and “Escape.” The large-scale works in bronze, steel and wood memorialize convicts and suffragists once imprisoned in the surrounding historic buildings. The sobering themes of these sculptures are intended to encourage contemplation about past and current prison conditions. 9518 Workhouse Way, Lorton; 703-584-2900; workhousearts.org
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase.
Driving east on Richmond’s 295 bypasses, the pace noticeably eases exiting onto Route 5. Along the winding, tree-shaded road, cyclists travel on a parallel path headed toward Williamsburg. Turnoffs lead to Virginia’s grand plantations that grace the north bank of the James River.
On the historic byway, one enduring farm in some ways mirrors centuries past. Acres of corn and bales of hay line the long drive to its white antebellum house, where a visitor approaches the entrance through massive columns and stairs sweeping up to a broad porch worthy of a movie set.
Owner Dianne Nordt—dressed casually in a jersey shirt, black pants, and flats—opens the door. For six years, she has been weaving ultra-soft blankets by hand, using wool from Merino sheep she raises on the property. She smiles and immediately asks, “Would you like to see how the loom works?”
Leading the way to a nearby room, Nordt sits down at one of two imposing wooden looms and steps on a pedal. Holding a boat-shaped shuttle that carries the yarn, she yanks it across an opening of taut wool threads. The stillness is broken by the clackety-plunk of wood harnesses rising and falling as they capture the thread. “Treadles control the harnesses,” she explains, “and the harnesses control which warps threads go up and down to make the pattern.”
Nordt pulls on a central beam, or beater bar, that moves the newly inserted horizontal thread (weft) down through the vertical strands (warp), which are strung like a harp. She then throws the shuttle device in the opposite direction, repeating the motions. It’s a rhythmic sequence dating back thousands of years.
“The act of weaving is peaceful, repetitive and tedious,” says Nordt. “For some reason, that appeals to me. I like dyeing the wool naturally using plants. I like the challenges that come with the mechanics of a loom. I like having a finished product that I can sell and that’s creative to make. I like all the steps,” she adds with a laugh, “except bookkeeping.”
With her pet collie by her side, Nordt heads out to check on the first part of the process: her 40 sheep. Past a wooden bridge arching over a ravine, the sheep barn was rebuilt of rough-cut oak after a fire four years ago. “I’m just going to put the sheep in the pasture real quick,” Nordt begins, explaining that the grass they eat is supplemented with feed and “all kinds of minerals. I want to be sure the wool quality is really good,” she says. “And if the sheep are healthy, they produce a lot of wool.”
Every year in February, a professional arrives from New England to shear the flock by hand. He completes the task in just four hours. On the barn floor, trash bags are filled with raw fleece that was rejected as too dirty to send to the mill in Michigan, where the wool is washed and spun into yarn.
The usable fleece returns from the mill wound on cones and grouped in natural shades of creamy white, brown, gray and black. “Those colors are the basis of each blanket,” says the weaver. “The palette is very neutral, with vegetable- or plant-dye colors added in as accents.”
The wool is then wound into loose skeins and immersed in dye baths extracted from plants such as blue indigo, orange-red madder root or yellow smartweed, which Nordt finds along the road. Dried leaf matter may be combined with the bark of Osage trees or black walnut shells, also gathered nearby. She strains the liquid through a colander before submerging the wool, which remains in the bath for periods ranging from 20 minutes to overnight, depending on the color. Nordt uses the stove and sinks in the home’s original ground-floor kitchen for this process. “We want to keep it separate from the family kitchen upstairs,” she says.
Once washed, dried and wound again onto cones, the wool—in an ineffable spectrum of roses, corals, and robins-egg blues—sits on shelves in the loom room, ready for use. Nordt favors restrained patterns with just a few stripes. “I feel simplicity shows off the wool best,” she says. The blankets measure 50 by 70 inches for a throw, or 50 by 35 inches for a baby blanket. Two part-time weavers help Nordt complete eight to 10 blankets each week. Over this past summer, her teenage daughter earned extra money as a studio assistant.
Nordt and her husband, an orthopedic surgeon, discovered the 400-acre farm 17 years ago. After months of consideration, they moved there with their three children, trading downtown Richmond for the rural life of Charles City County. For the weaver, it was almost like returning home. She grew up outside Charlottesville, traveling between the farms of both sets of grandparents. “One had an apple orchard, the other raised cattle,” she remembers. “My dad taught horticulture at the high school.”
Attracted to the city, she attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond as a fashion-design major but found that “something about the fashion business didn’t appeal to me. It’s all about disposal and trends.” Through the university’s craft department, she discovered a loom and learned to weave. “By the time I graduated, I knew I wanted to have a sheep farm,” she says. When her dad offered to buy her a car at graduation, she recalls, “I told him I’d rather have a loom; it’s the one I weave on now.”
Though the loom went into storage while her children were small, she never lost sight of her goal. In 2005, the first sheep arrived on the farm. Soon after, she remembers, “I took the kids down to the 17th Street Farmers’ Market to sell yarn.” She began selling blankets online in 2010, and two years ago started exhibiting at craft shows. In April, Nordt won the First Time Exhibitor Award at the 2016 Smithsonian Craft Show.
The family farm includes a small orchard, an old brick silo and a stable with four horses. Two hundred acres are leased to farmers growing crops.
Despite the workload, Nordt conveys an ethereal calm. “I feel like I’m from another time, related to a shepherdess,” she muses. Looking out across the James River from the home’s boxwood garden, she continues, “In this day and age to be a weaver and raise sheep, it’s such a basic thing to do. I like making things with my hands. I like starting from the beginning and doing the process to the end. It all comes from here. It’s so natural and sustainable.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase. Dianne Nordt’s blankets are available at Virginia’s Waterford Fair, October 7 to 9 (waterfordfoundation.org/fair); at the Philadelphia Craft Show, November 10 to 13 (pmacraftshow.org); and through nordtfamilyfarm.com.
The painting of an unfurled flag is nearly complete. Artist Carol Rowan picks up a small brush and applies a fine line of blue, carefully delineating the soft folds and faded colors of the timeworn Stars and Stripes. Rowan brings a similar intensity to her portrayal of other sites burnished by time—the weathered boards and shingles of an aged wood barn, the subdued shine on a 1952 Willys pickup truck, the whitewashed surface of a historic lighthouse bathed in sunlight.
“I love old Americana,” says Rowan. With her penetrating gaze, slim frame and upright bearing, the artist could be descended from the stalwart figures in Grant Wood’s archetypal painting, “American Gothic.”
Rowan’s art respectfully revisits terrain from a shared past. It also pays tribute to her own roots in New England. Her father’s family arrived on the shores of Gorham, Maine, in 1648. In “Before She Blew Down,” a detailed graphite drawing, she reimagines the ancestral homestead as it might have been.
These days, the artist divides her work between two studios: one in her Woodley Park townhouse and another in the mid-19th-century home that she and her partner bought in Nobleboro, Maine. “I love going there,” says Rowan of this farming community located one hour north of where her family first settled. “The light is fabulous. The quality of the air is amazing. I like painting and drawing the barns, fields, coast, boats—the entire place.”
Along the Benjamin River in Brooklin, Maine, where the country’s premier wooden boat builders are clustered, she discovered a bounty of classic sailing dinghies that resurface in her paintings and drawings. And it was in the barn beside her house that she found the flag depicted in her current painting.
Rowan’s reverence for the outdoors came about when she was growing up in Rowayton, Connecticut. “We lived in a very small house, so I was always outside on my bike, playing tennis or swimming,” she recalls. She also played the cello, practicing on weekdays and for three hours on Saturday mornings from the age of ten. By the time she reached high school, Rowan was a cellist with the celebrated Norwalk Youth Symphony.
“I learned discipline from my dad, an organist, who practiced every night after coming home from a full day of work,” she says. She also remembers going with her mother, an English teacher, to the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and staring at a Pollack painting “forever. There was so much energy in that painting,” she says. “I knew in the fourth grade that I would become an artist.”
After graduating from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Rowan gave up other activities to become a full-time artist. She traveled all over the country, drawing views of gardens, monuments and venerable buildings on Ivy League campuses. She made intricate drawings in graphite, exclusively using Derwent pencils from England. In 1993, she won the Graphite Award from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The precision and complexity of her drawings, she believes, “came completely from the discipline I learned growing up.”
After 20 years, Rowan moved on to oil painting. “It’s so much harder when you add color,” she says, observing, “Oils take hours, days, sometimes weeks to dry. I’ve spent months on a painting.” Most of her work measures two to four feet; her largest painting, depicting a lobster boat in Maine, spans 80-by-74 inches.
In recent years, Rowan has begun to paint in a looser style, using rapidly drying gouache, sometimes in combination with a pencil. She has traveled for months at a time to Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, finding inspiration while sketching and photographing subjects for reference.
One upcoming outing she’s looking forward to, she says, “is a drive to look for old trucks with my dad.” That excursion continues a long-ago tradition of visiting junkyards with her father. “I love the classic trucks—not the ones that are fixed, shined and perfect,” notes the artist, who expects to paint more of them. “Old things have so much more class and character.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Find more on the artist at carolrowan.com or through the galleries Artist’s Proof in Georgetown (aproof.net); Carla Massoni in Chestertown, Maryland (massoniart.com); and Haley Fine Art in Sperryville, Virginia (haleyfineart.com).
When the prospective owners of a property in Bethesda first saw the small rambler sitting awkwardly on its site, they didn’t even bother to go in before buying it. They didn’t need to. “I wasn’t worried,” the wife remembers. “It was a nice location.”
Two years later, the rambler had come down and the couple, relocating from Chicago to be closer to their children and grandchildren, had moved into their idyllic new home, nestled in a serene setting. Having lived in a handful of other homes—including one on Lake Michigan—the wife says, “This is absolutely my favorite house of all. No contest.”
Before building, she and her husband had clear ideas for this next stage of their lives. “I wanted a feeling of spaciousness and a sense of the outside when you’re inside,” says the wife, an artist. She requested the convenience of one-floor living with lots of natural light, but also wanted privacy. After playing an active part in planning the house, she acknowledges that at the start, “I had no idea at all what was going to be here.”
Architect Stephen Muse took up the challenge. While he has won many awards for adapting designs to their surroundings, he found little worth adapting here. “Wherever possible, we try to work with the house,” he explains. “But this one was in a bad spot, with a big circular drive and a pool in a shape not known to man,” he explains. “It had everything we didn’t need.” The architect’s central question became, “How do you put a house that is open and contemporary on a standard suburban lot and still give owners the privacy they’re looking for?”
His answer is a U-shaped plan that places main-floor living spaces around a central courtyard framed on two sides by pavilions. The courtyard is now the peaceful focus for gardens that have transformed the property into a private haven screened from neighbors. The pavilions enclose the kitchen/family room and the wife’s painting studio on one side and the master bedroom and bath on the other, followed by an outdoor pool. Along the front, second-floor bedrooms for visiting family and an office for the husband, an economist, overlook the courtyard and pavilions, all aligned in an orderly sequence. “It’s a simple, rational floor plan,” says the architect. “I like rational and disciplined.”
Landscape architects Lila Fendrick and Doug Stookey collaborated early on to help position the house on its hilltop site. They created a level parking court and integrated distinct plantings all around, from massive hollies at the back to a rain garden near the street. Layers of evergreens buffer views to neighbors, realizing Fendrick’s vision of a park-like setting that she describes as “a little woodland with big trees all around.”
As in the house, simple, straightforward lines define the gardens. “Deceptively simple,” Fendrick comments, noting that “a lot of thought went into paving patterns and planting materials to make it organized and perfect.” The parking court, for example, is elegantly paved in bluestone with dark-gray granite edging; it also doubles as a basketball court. Along the home’s glass façade, Fendrick planted a row of sweetbay magnolias because, she says, “they’re not particularly dense, so light comes through and there’s still privacy.”
Strong vistas link the house and gardens. On the main axis from the living room, the restful back lawn leads to a seating terrace and ends at a solid stone wall, softened by sheets of water spilling over it. Muse designed the honey-hued wall and a matching outbuilding behind the pool for function as well as beauty. Wisteria climbs along a trellis rising from the structure, which neatly hides a generator and pool equipment.
The architect considered the house from every angle. “I was very concerned with views from the house out to the garden, and through the house,” he says. Instead of an entirely open two-story entrance, he added architectural interest by exposing structural beams from the second-floor hall to the front wall. The beams form a linear shelter along the edge of the living/dining area. Looking down from above, they appear to project beyond the exterior wall, taking the form of wood outriggers supporting an outdoor trellis. Stainless-steel rods cast changing patterns of light and shadow onto the oak floor.
The trellis provides sun protection on the front, in much the same way that large roof overhangs shield windows on the back. The overhangs and narrow bands of windows that lift up the roofs and the pavilions themselves were inspired by Prairie-style architecture originating in the Midwest. “We wanted to give the house a personal form for people from Chicago,” says Muse. “The spirit of the project comes from the owners.”
Interior designer Jodi Macklin organized furnishings around a neutral palette of mid-browns and grays—“very light, clean and airy,” she says, “so it wouldn’t detract from the architecture.” Transitional pieces in the living and dining areas and a relaxed sectional in the family room are understated and minimal, following the owner’s preference for less rather than more. Everything, says Macklin, “had to look good, but also had to function. We were trying to be very mindful of the grandchildren.” She points out that all upholstery fabric was treated for durability, and reachable accessories are made of unbreakable metal or plastic.
White walls set off bursts of color in the owner’s paintings. Her favorite colors—blue and purple—appear in the paintings and are picked up in floral prints on living-room cushions. The hues reappear in the perennial garden’s blooms outside her painting studio.
“We love living here,” says the wife, who views her new home also as an art project. “There’s an element of sculpture to it. It’s beautiful in a quiet way,” she observes—especially at dusk when automatic astronomical timers turn on, and all dimensions of the unified house, garden and interiors are bathed in light.
Tina Coplan is a Chevy Chase, Maryland, writer. Photographer Maxwell MacKenzie is based in Washington, DC.
ARCHITECTURE: STEPHEN MUSE, FAIA, principal, and ERIC HURTT, AIA, project architect, Muse Architects, Bethesda, Maryland. INTERIOR DESIGN: JODI MACKLIN and MELISSA HAENDLER, Jodi Macklin Interior Design, Chevy Chase, Maryland. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: LILA FENDRICK, principal; DOUG STOOKEY, project landscape architect, Lila Fendrick Landscape Architects, Chevy Chase, Maryland. LANDSCAPE CONTRACTOR: Chapel Valley Landscape Company, Woodbine, Maryland. BUILDER: GEORGE COLLINS, Peterson + Collins Inc., Washington, DC.
RESOURCES
LIVING/DINING ROOM Sofas & Small Armchairs: thebrightgroup.com. Sofa & Dining Chair Fabric: hollyhunt.com. Long Pillow & Chair Fabric: donghia.com. Coffee Table: johnbooneinc.com. Rug: floorcoveringresources.com. Dining Table: oldtownwoodworking.com. Dining Chairs: artisticframe.com. Art by Dining Table: Custom by the client. Pendants: illumininc.com.
KITCHEN/FAMILY ROOM Sectional Sofa: montauksofa.com. Fabric: cowtan.com. Armchair & Fabric: roomandboard.com. Rug: floorcoveringresources.com. Coffee Table: walkerzabriskie.com. Chandelier over Dining Table: verellenhc.com. Dining Chairs: mcguirefurniture.com. Bar Stools: suiteny.com.
OUTDOORS Patio Table & Chairs: dwr.com.
BEDROOM Bedstead & Pillows: everettdesigns.com. Coverlet: legacylinens.com. Bench: davidedward.com. Bench Fabric & Armchair: donghia.com. Carpet: starkcarpet.com. Floor Lamp: Owners’ collection.
MASTER BATH Cabinetry: Custom by petersoncollins.com. Countertop: Thassos through marblesystems.com. Fabricator: unitedstatesmarbleandgranite.com. Floor & Shower Walls: Calacatta tile through usmarbleandgranite.com. Shower Floor: architecturalceramics.com.
Cool light filters through 20-foot-tall windows in painter Barbara Januszkiewicz’s Arlington studio. Light falls on gray walls and gleaming pipes, on concrete floors and towering easels of gridded steel. In this silvery atmosphere, her brilliantly colored paintings stand out.
Luminous hues flow across the large canvases in transparent waves. They wash over one another, interacting and becoming richer. Against these huge color fields, tiny specks of concentrated pigment shimmer on the surface like reflected sunlight.
“The whole composition is a statement about color,” explains the artist, her hands moving to emphasize thoughts with the energy seen in her brush strokes. “This is about relationships, about the placement of potent colors and the canvas sparkling through. I want the eye to dance across the canvas, but direct you, too.”
It’s a tall order. A single brush stroke may sweep over six feet. Januszkiewicz paints in wide motions, standing on a scaffold between ladders and using a massive brush that she adapted from a broom. She executes each movement with authority. “If I’m not committed and I stop, it doesn’t work,” she says.
After finishing a brushstroke, the artist steps down. Every painting begins with some idea for a composition, but “there’s always creative decision-making throughout the whole process,” she finds, and time to consider more than the science involved. “There’s a moment of awe when you watch the colors dry and become lighter.”
One step rarely changes. “Most of the time, I never go back,” she says. “I leave my brush mark and move on.” A painting measuring six-by-five feet often includes only five brush strokes, completed over several days.
Januszkiewicz’s command of the process gives little hint that her current style is a new direction. “It represents the culmination of everything that happened before,” she says. Januszkiewicz, who grew up in McLean, studied painting under Chinese watercolor master Mun Quan at Florida’s Jacksonville University and for three decades was an established illustrator, winning awards for watercolors depicting everyday objects in a lively, pop-art style. For the past 15 years, she has taught adult watercolor-painting classes at the McLean Project for the Arts and served as an adjunct professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design.
Her change in direction resulted from a serendipitous meeting that came about after one of her classes. When Januszkiewicz mentioned the Washington Color School—a nationally renowned art movement of the 1960s—an eager student asked for directions to the school. “I realized there was a need to document the only significant art movement to come out of Washington, DC, before everyone who remembered it was gone,” says Januszkiewicz. So she decided to chronicle the Color School by making a film, which is still a work in progress.
The project began five years ago when she started interviewing collectors, students and others who had known artists in the group. One of those people was Paul Reed, the Washington Color School’s last surviving member, who lived just three miles from Januszkiewicz’s studio. On her first visit, she remembers, “Paul Reed asked me, ‘If you’re making this movie, why don’t you try to paint in our style?’” That style required using thinned acrylic paint that penetrated into, or stained, the untreated surface of a canvas. “I am a watercolor artist, a paper girl,” Januszkiewicz thought. She told him she wasn’t interested. But he set up a canvas, and as she describes it, “He showed me how different artists dripped, poured and jabbed with the paint.” That first attempt, she remembers, “was a disaster.”
Reed gave her 100 yards of unprimed duck canvas from the 1960s. When she returned with another effort, he exclaimed, “‘You did it!’” she recalls.
“I already was a colorist with watercolors. I knew about staining and transparence on watercolor paper,” she points out. “My expertise was with a brush. When you pour, there’s no control. I paint on canvas exactly as I do on paper.”
Reed became her mentor. “He pushed me in the right direction to change my materials and technique,” she says gratefully of the artist, who died last year at age 96.
Reed’s influence came at a time when, Januszkiewicz says, “I was bored painting things; I was bored with exactitude. I was ready to do something different, to take a risk.” Now, she continues, “color is a passion; painting is a passion. I owe it to him, because he made me grow.”
She tries to guide her students at the McLean Project for the Arts along a similarly satisfying path. “I tell them, ‘Go out and find your own voice.’ I knew what my mine was, and I’m coming back to it.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Michelle Couraud is a photographer in Alexandria. “Color Chords,” an exhibition of paintings by Barbara Januszkiewicz and other artists working in the style of the Washington Color School, will be presented May 24 to July 10 at Northern Virginia Community College; call 703-323-3159. For more information, visit barbaraj.info.
Paring down possessions to simplify life is a goal that’s far easier to imagine than to achieve. But for one couple, newlyweds in their 70s, starting life together meant starting over in flawlessly streamlined style. Instead of combining two households in the usual way, they divested themselves of all their furnishings, saving only selected art works. “It was an opportunity to start fresh and build a dream home,” says the wife. “We decided to be minimalists. We didn’t want to carry old baggage. It’s a metaphor for us.”
That resolve led to an unexpected adventure after the couple bought a row house on Capitol Hill. “Something about the house felt really good, but I thought we couldn’t move in as it was,” recalls the wife, whose interests and executive career focused on the arts.
Remembering photos of a modern residence that had caught her eye in a newspaper article, she called the architects. Janet Bloomberg, co-founder of KUBE Architecture, answered the phone. Bloomberg met with the couple, and a conversation began that still continues.
“We just connected,” says the architect. It was the start of a two-year collaboration she describes as “a creative, glorious process.” Most of KUBE’s clients, attracted by the firm’s edgy style, live in the city; still, Bloomberg discovered that the wife and her husband, a psychiatrist, were different. “It’s very, very rare to find people so willing to let us do our thing and so willing to take risks,” she says. “They really had a modern design in mind.”
The owners originally considered renovating only the home’s first floor with a new kitchen and master suite. However, once all the problems and needs were discussed—including oddly proportioned rooms and a desire to age in place, respectively—different ideas emerged. “We always worked as a team exploring options,” Bloomberg says of the process.
No one could have predicted the outcome. A pure interplay of geometric parts, the design strips away nonessentials with refined precision. “I love, love, love it,” beams the wife about the house, where she and her husband were married during construction. “Every time I walk in, I feel a peace, a calm. It feels so Zen-like.”
The plan centers on a pristine kitchen facing an airy, two-story living/dining space and a walled garden, accessible through a glass wall along the back. Behind the kitchen, a hidden storage area forms the home’s service heart. It encloses the former galley kitchen, now a walk-in pantry. It also conceals a powder room, a closet, stairs to the basement and an elevator, accessible through sliding walls along halls on either side. “It looks like they live with nothing because everything is put away,” Bloomberg explains.
Also overlooking the garden, a contemporary loft leads to private quarters on the second floor. The media room below creates an intimate space. Its white walls and black-steel accents provide a sleek backdrop for the single pop of color from a lipstick-red sleep sofa. It also places the focus on the owners’ eclectic art collection, including a mixed-media work on paper by Joan Miró hanging in a gilded frame beside a shapely sculpture made of pencils by Federico Uribe, and across from a striking Cambodian sculpture.
This blend of austere comfort and urbane luxe appears on a grand scale in the living/dining space. With many stunning views from which to choose, the wife often settles on a counter stool in the Italian Pedini kitchen, which she calls “central command.” An avid cook, she is drawn to the spot for food preparation and more; it also serves as her office. “I just want to be here and look out into the garden,” she says, eyeing that serene oasis bordered by Capitol Hill rooftops.
The living and garden areas become a single space for entertaining, especially in the spring and fall when exterior glass walls slide open. “We had very specific ideas from the architecture about ways to extend the interiors outdoors,” says Bloomberg, who collaborated with landscape architect Kevin Campion on the exterior aspects of the project. Both living and garden areas reflect each other in size and material palette.
A glass-and-steel dining table and seating bench, designed by Bloomberg, were duplicated as a matched pair and placed inside and out. Ceramic flooring flows between. “We wanted to weave the tile into the concrete slab on the patio,” she explains. And steel, supporting the interior loft and framing the glass wall, takes on decorative qualities in the garden. Sculptural panels on the back wall, a fountain and planter edging are formed of Corten steel, which weathers outdoors. “We all like materials that change over time,” says the architect.
With a background in commercial architecture, Bloomberg delights in combining “raw versus refined” materials in unexpected ways. KUBE was an early adapter of Viroc, a common building material, for use as a decorative surface. Taking advantage of the cement board’s practical water resistance and rugged look, Bloomberg applied it on the indoor/outdoor banquettes, inside a shower—and even as a headboard in the master bedroom.
Beyond this inventive detailing, she notes, “We don’t like to use too many materials. It’s pretty much steel, glass, brick and tile.” Every line and every connection have been carefully edited. “If there’s something I can remove, I take it away,” the architect observes, adding with a broad smile, “and the owners felt the same way.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase. Greg Powers is a photographer in Arlington.
ARCHITECTURE: JANET BLOOMBERG, AIA, KUBE Architecture, Washington, DC. BUILDER: Housecraft, LLC, College Park, Maryland. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: KEVIN CAMPION, ASLA, Campion Hruby Landscape Architects, Annapolis, Maryland.
RESOURCES
THROUGHOUT: Steel Fabricator: metalspecialties.biz. Custom Millwork & Cabinetry Fabricator: Mersoa Woodworking; 240-994-9192. Custom Glass Fabricator: showerdoorking.com.
DINING AREA—pages 144, 145: Light Fixture: usa.flos.com. Dining Chairs: cappellini.it. Indoor/Outdoor Tables & Bench Design: kube-arch.com. Table & Bench, Steel Fabrication: metalspecialties.biz. Table, Glass Fabrication: showerdoorking.com.
ENTRY—page 146: Custom Cabinetry, Design: kube-arch.com. Cabinet Fabrication: Mersoa Woodworking; 240-994-9192. Sliding Doors: slidingdoorco.com. Calligraphy Scroll: Wang Jin-huai.
MEDIA ROOM—pages 146, 147: Rug: crateandbarrel.com.
LIVING/DINING AREA—page 147: Porcelain Tile Floor: stonesource.com. Rear Windows & Sliding Doors: solarinnovations.com. Coffee Table: Gae Aulenti through lumens.com. Couch & Swivel Chairs: ligne-roset-usa.com. Rug: crateandbarrel.com
KITCHEN—page 147: Cabinetry: pedinidc.com. Corian Countertop: countercollective.com. Stools: sohoconcept.com. Cooktop, Oven & Dishwasher: bosch-home.com/us. Hood: bestrangehoods.com.
UPPER LOFT AREA—pages 150, 151: Egg Chairs: Arne Jacobsen through dwr.com. Pendant Fixtures: techlighting.com. Rug: crateandbarrel.com.
Master Bedroom—pages 150, 151: Chair: Pierre Paulin through apartmentzero.com. Bed: tempurpedic.com. Wall Lights: artemide.com. Tapestry: Josep Grau-Garriga. Rug: cb2.com.
Master Bath—page 151: Floor Tile: stonesource.com. Faucets: hansgrohe-usa.com. Mirror Lights: steng.de. Whirlpool Tub: produitsneptune.com.
GARDEN—pages 148, 149: LED Lighting: illuminc.com. Dining Chairs: janusetcie.
Some artists shape clay into dazzling objects, each one unique. Others put the material into practical service, producing art in multiples. Down-to-earth potter Mea Rhee enjoys creating beauty for the everyday. With graceful motions, her hands form plates, jars, bowls, casseroles, mugs and more for the table and kitchen, repeating patterns again and again. “I like knowing that when one of my pots goes into someone’s home, they’ll use it and get pleasure from using it,” says Rhee. “That’s extremely rewarding to me.”
In its harmony and simplicity, Rhee’s work reflects the origins of functional pottery in early Asian cultures. The balanced contours, muted tones and subtly glazed surfaces of her pieces evoke the earth itself, the source of clay. “There are no extra details, no colors you wouldn’t find in nature,” says the potter, comparing her tactile objects to “the smooth, polished surface of a river stone.” And, as in a group of stones, no two of Rhee’s handmade wares are ever identical or predictable.
Standing in the basement studio of her Silver Spring, Maryland, home, the potter surveys a half-dozen finished dessert plates. Stacked on wooden shelves and spread out on a worktable, each plate measures eight inches across. And each is gently decorated in broad patterns of white slip on dark stoneware. “I love to see the pieces together like that, all the same, but different,” says the potter, sounding like a proud mother discussing her offspring.
Rhee takes a businesslike approach to her art. She travels to a dozen shows each year, from street art fairs in the mid-Atlantic region to DC’s Smithsonian Craft Show, taking place from April 21 to 24. She documents every sale and bases future production on those numbers. And she establishes a monthly work schedule and sticks to it.
On a typical day, Rhee makes an average of 30 pieces. She can recite from memory one of her daily to-do lists: eight small jars with sculpted elephant accents, two sets of three nesting bowls, 21 five-inch-wide plates.
It takes her a single day to hand-build or throws those pieces on a wheel. When the clay is dry the following day, she trims, assembles and finishes them. “I try to vary the workday for health and safety reasons and for anti-boredom,” she notes. “I have it all mapped out.” Five weeks are planned in advance; then the schedule repeats. According to her records, Rhee produced more than 2,000 objects in 2015.
The potter credits this orderly work regime to her first career: After graduating from the University of Maryland in 1992, she worked as a self-employed graphic artist for 20 years. Her first and only class in ceramics came soon after graduation. “I took up pottery purely for recreation,” she explains. “It slowly took over my life.” Rhee now produces about 40 different designs, ranging from three-inch bowls to “showier” 16-inch platters carved with imagery of fish and herons.
In the process of teaching herself pottery, Rhee also discovered the ceramic traditions of her Korean heritage. “I didn’t know what a rich history it is,” she says. “Koreans pioneered so much of what modern ceramics is today. On some level, I’m trying to pay tribute to that.”
She also credits her lineage for understanding the science of working with clay. Her parents—one a software engineer, the other an electrical engineer—expected Rhee and her three siblings to study physics, chemistry, biology, and math when they were students at Paint Branch High School near Burtonsville, Maryland.
“A lot of pottery is engineering and science and math,” explains Rhee, proceeding to identify the chemistry in glazes, the physics in throwing clay, the fluid dynamics involved in drying clay and the thermodynamics at work in the heated environment of a kiln. “It takes a lot of engineering to turn a lump of clay into a functional object that’s durable.
“It’s 100 percent suited to me,” she continues, reflecting on the satisfaction she’s derived from a career in pottery. “I’m aware of how lucky I am.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase. Mea Rhee’s pottery will be on view at the Smithsonian Craft Show from April 21 to 24. For more information, visit goodelephant.com.
One recent afternoon, artist Julie Wolfe was between projects. Her paints and pencils put away, she had arranged a beguiling vignette in the second-floor studio of her Capitol Hill townhouse. Two new oil paintings hung on a wall behind others grouped flat on the floor. Teetering in between, a column of colorful books punctuated the bold hues of the paintings, while the gentle curves of an antique settée set off abstract geometries in the art.
“I like putting things that are practical into a visual form that is beautiful,” said the artist. She was referring to one of the paintings, loosely based on an unlikely source—DC Transit’s Metro map. But her message about combining beauty and purpose might easily have applied to the inviting arrangement in her studio. Or to her recent water-bottle installations in Washington and Berlin, Germany.
For those displays, Wolfe collected water, vegetation, and sediment over three years, mainly from waterways around DC including the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers, as well as in Berlin. Filling glass jars with the samples, she added organic and toxic chemical compounds, plus colored pigments, producing a rainbow of hues. The luminous jars stacked in rows take on the brilliance of art glass.
“Beauty draws people to find that I’m making a strong statement about the environment,” says Wolfe. Viewers who take a closer look-see changing compositions of plant and animal extractions in varied stages of decomposition. “Each sample shows how toxic chemicals and waste that might get dumped into the waterways react over time,” Wolfe observes. “It shows the damage that’s being done or can be done to our environment.” [The DC installation can be seen day or night through a lobby window at the southwest corner of 17th & L Streets, NW, through December 31, 2015.]
Wolfe extends the links through the many facets of her art. In some cases, she mixes water from the samples with water-based painting materials such as transparent watercolor, opaque gouache, and ink. Algae grown in the jars or in her garden is distilled as a natural pigment for painting. Video documents the movement of organisms inside the jars; separate moments are captured in still photography.
Wolfe sometimes combines oil paint with natural pigments ground from the silvery-gray mineral hematite, or from malachite and lapis lazuli. The materials cross over to gemstones used in the metal jewelry she also fabricates in her studio. These refined, sculptural pieces have been sold at Barney’s for 20 years.
“I like to connect everything, to show how one thing influences another,” says the artist, who sees these links as part of systems, whether ecological or language-based. The roots of those connections run deep.
Growing up in Houston, Texas, Wolfe remembers happy journeys with her brother and father, a biologist, as they explored the countryside in search of snakes, lizards, and bugs. She was fascinated with water, loved to fish, and recalls “collecting bottles of water with little tadpoles in them”—an early sign of her affinity for water samples.
After graduating with a degree in fine arts from the University of Texas at Austin, Wolfe worked as a book designer. She credits that experience with her love of words and graphic approach to design. One current series combines both. As a surface for painting, the artist uses mellowed pages removed from old books. Words extracted from the text inspired a lexicon of personal symbols, the basis for each design. “It’s spontaneous, intuitive. It’s whatever shape, whatever color comes to mind,” Wolfe explains about the creative process. Lines, dots, and arrows connect the abstract elements. In one group, 48 pages from a single book have been hung together in the grid formation.
Wolfe prefers to start with a reference point, as she did with the books, rather than face a blank canvas. Her paintings in oil or acrylic, typically five feet square, often show circles or other forms in sharp relief against an obscured background. A sense of depth and dimension, of one shape floating on another, arises from the flat surface. That illusion, Wolfe points out, relates to the real, yet tiny landscapes in her water jars.
Reflecting again on that exhibit, the artist confirms the importance of aesthetics in the firmament of her work. She emphasizes the power of art to promote discussion, political expression, and social change. Noticing pedestrians accidentally happening upon her display among DC office buildings, she observes, “Even if people don’t know what an installation is, they read the posted signs and start conversations. They learn more about art, and they see that it can be so many things.”
Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Greg Staley is a photographer in Washington, DC. For more information on the artist, contact Hemphill (hemphillfinearts.com; 202-234-5601) or visit juliewolfedesign.com.
If ever Cinderella came back as a house, this enchanting beauty would be it. Once upon a time, not long ago, this same dwelling sat on the market looking drab and dreary in DC’s Forest Hills neighborhood. No one recognized its potential—that is, until Ann Roddy and Jill Johnson came along. They realized it would take all the powers of their longstanding interior designer, Nestor Santa-Cruz, to bring the home’s charms to light.
“It was truly hideous before,” Roddy says bluntly of the outmoded 1950s split-level they first encountered. Still, it held some appeal. “We were looking for a more open floor plan and fewer stairs than in our Colonial house. And from the description, it sounded like a lot of space.” The large, finished basement promised an extensive play zone for their three children, ages 10 to 13. Having worked with Santa-Cruz on two earlier houses, they were ready to consider another renovation. “We thought that with Nestor’s help, we could definitely turn it around,” explains Roddy, the founder, and director of an elementary school chorus program.
Enter Santa-Cruz, as if packing a magic wand. “I walked through space and knew what needed to be done,” he remembers. “We would not need to move anything major. All the assets were there.”
Within three months, the family moved in. The original floor plan remained. Yet throughout, a serene sense of comfort and elegance had emerged.
“It’s always a balance between visual and physical comfort; though, I admit, often the visual part wins,” says Santa-Cruz, who heads his own interior design firm. With a master’s degree in architecture, three decades as an interior designer and a lifetime studying design history, he is recognized for his ability to align classic principles and contemporary design. “Every building has assets and negatives,” he says. “If the assets are not very good, we need to turn them around.”
His solution seemed simple: Enlarge all windows and doorways to open up the house to light and nature. Gone were the small, awkward aluminum windows and shutters dotting the red-brick façade. In their place, large wood-casement and nearly full-height windows bathe the house in light. Interior doorways were raised, widened and in some cases moved, creating symmetry and stunning vistas through the main living spaces and accentuating the high ceilings on the main floor.
“This is a modern house from the ’50s,” explains the designer. “But before, it was just a series of rooms—not successful as a modern house where the rooms flow and open up. Now that’s possible, while still keeping the concept of the individual, separate rooms.”
The dining room also changed dramatically. Once “dark, claustrophobic and sad,” Santa-Cruz recalls, it is now an inviting space at the center of an enfilade sweeping from the living room in the front to a screened porch and garden in back. The year-round porch and an adjoining pantry are the only additions to the home’s footprint.
In the dining room, Santa-Cruz blended casual and formal elements with unexpected touches. Philippe Starck Ghost chairs mingle with Directoire-style seating covered in luxurious velvet. Overhead, a Mondrian-esque ceiling treatment accents the architecture—a custom touch that required only a can of Benjamin Moore gold paint. Paintings of nude figures, two by sisters Cynthia and Leslie Packard, are grouped on the wall in an unconventional placement. “Even though the female form might be considered more appropriate in a bedroom or private quarters,” notes Santa-Cruz, “I thought ‘these women’ would be spectators, like the classical female figures in Salvador Dalí’s Surreal and enigmatic landscapes.”
The owners are delighted with the transformation. Roddy, who calls the living room “a special jewel,” observes, “The light is magnificent there and on the whole first floor.”
They are also pleased that Santa-Cruz was able to slip their existing furnishings into new positions. “We used everything we had,” cheerfully reports Johnson, a retired nonprofit director.
Trust between the designer and his clients helped foretell the happy ending. When Roddy first requested built-in bookcases in the living room, Santa-Cruz hesitated. He wanted to preserve the few remaining walls for art, yet he relented. “Now it’s cozier,” he concedes. “I’ve learned you have to listen, and it will make the project better.”
Similarly, it took some convincing when the designer recommended bleaching oak floors to brighten the house. “We’ve always had ebony floors and adored them,” says Johnson. “But Nestor was right. His ideas really stand the test of time.”
Even though the project is complete, the designer returns regularly as a friend. “When I’m in this house, I think I’m on vacation in L.A. or the Hamptons,” he beams. “It has urbanity and casualness, and a connection to the exterior. It’s also a Washington house that respects its locale.” Reflecting on the transformative magic of renovation, he continues, “Is this a small house, or is it big? It fools you. This isn’t about size. You don’t need to tear down a house and build a big house. This is about how the character can be achieved without destruction.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Photographer Angie Seckinger splits her time between Potomac, Maryland, and Spain.
INTERIOR DESIGN: Nestor Santa-Cruz, NCIDQ, IIDA, LEED AP, Nestor Santa-Cruz Decoration, Washington, DC.
After a two-year renovation, the Renwick Gallery reopens on November 13 with refreshed interiors and a contemporary craft exhibition sure to astonish and delight all ages.
Across from the White House at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, the majestic building has been completely renewed for the first time in 45 years. Its infrastructure has been updated and its elaborate plasterwork painstakingly restored and discreetly repainted in shades of gray with gilded highlights. Reopening the doors of this Smithsonian branch “marks the perfect moment,” notes Betsy Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, “to rededicate ourselves to understanding, collecting and exhibiting American craft in the 21st century.”
The inaugural exhibition takes an exhilarating leap in showcasing the dimensions of craft. Called “Wonder,” it fills the building with massive installations created from mundane objects: Index cards stacked like stalagmites. Sewing thread strung in floor-to-ceiling veils of color. And insects arrayed as a shimmering wallcovering.
Curator Nicholas Bell invited nine artists—Tara Donovan, Gabriel Dawe, Jennifer Angus, Chakaia Booker, Patrick Dougherty, Janet Echelman, John Grade, Maya Lin and Leo Villareal—to participate. “The many facets of wonder underpin the reasons they have elected to create art,” Bell writes in the exhibition catalogue, “to prompt reactions among viewers that hinge on surprise, awareness and, crucially, awe.”
A sense of awe was also intended when the building opened to the public in 1874 as Washington’s first art museum. Designed by architect James Renwick, Jr., for the collection of banker William Corcoran, it was the original Corcoran Gallery of Art. As a reference to that era and the structure’s French Second Empire style, Parisian architect Odile Decq was commissioned to design a new carpet for the grand staircase. That flowing, fiery-red rug now greets visitors entering the revamped Renwick Gallery.
Opening celebrations will include a ribbon cutting and open house on November 13, and a family festival on November 14. Tickets for an evening of craft beer, craft activities and more on November 13 cost $25 online. “Wonder” continues through July 10, 2016. americanart.si.edu/renwick
In the incandescent light of Trevor Young’s paintings, the tender is the night. Past the shimmering surface of his polished art, isolated buildings and distant roadways inhabit an unsettling landscape, where high- and low-voltage currents charge the nocturnal stillness.
Painting on the dark side comes naturally to Young. In early evening seven nights a week, he turns on his music playlist, thumbs through selected art books for inspiration and shifts into painting mode. “I’m a true night owl,” says the artist, who continues working until 3 a.m. and often later. “There’s something uplifting about the mind at night. It’s a creative time. There are no windows in the studio. I don’t think of the world outside.”
Young’s workspace occupies the second floor of a commercial building in downtown Silver Spring. Like the artist’s paintings, his studio—with paint-splattered easel, bins of oil paints and brushes and no WiFi—is a throwback.
“Painters are so dedicated to something so outmoded,” Young says unapologetically, adding, “There’s no way to explain to someone drawing on an iPad what it feels like to squeeze paint onto a palette. It’s not about image-making. It’s about the sensation of painting. It gets in your DNA.”
Striding across the room, he points to one of a half-dozen paintings in various stages of completion. It depicts a mid-sized glass building glowing from behind bare, dark trees. “It’s the new Museum of African American History,” the artist says of the image, explaining that in preparation he took some 200 photos during all phases of the building’s construction. He found the perfect moment, one wet night around 1 a.m. “It was super-cold, ” he recalls. “People were working. The light was warmer inside and cooler on the outside. It pulsed.”
The artist’s real work started then. To intensify the central light, he experimented with a new technique: applying semi-transparent layers of liquid gold and silver pigment. He reshaped and moved trees up front, forcing viewers to look through open branches before seeing the radiant focal point.
On a recent visit to Young’s studio, that painting was almost finished. He headed to another that had been in progress for a year. A hefty 60-inch square, the image showed a gray airplane, its mammoth frame resting like a beached whale. “I saw an airplane in a dark hangar in my head,” he explains. “I had to work out a way to make it exist.”
While the painter starts out each evening with a strategy, reaching the end goal can be elusive. “I’m looking for dynamic space, an intensity, a mood, if I can find it,” Young says. “I’m moving forward and hoping something happens. Sometimes you move past it; you lose the intensity, and you have to do it again. There’s no sentimentality toward it.” To meet the challenge, he has layered as many as five paintings on a single canvas.
For the past few years, Young’s art has followed a formal rulebook, minimizing space, color and light. He has recently introduced trees, rain, even a sunrise. And the bar has been raised for drama.
The artist himself—with swept-back black hair, a five-o’clock shadow and penetrating eyes that never rest on any spot for long—is a figure of dramatic intensity. He could be cast as the passionate artist in a film-noir movie. In fact, the painter credits those classic films as an influence on his work. They share a mood of mystery. And Young has started to include high-contrast light and shadow, a hallmark of black-and-white cinema.
In his own story, too, Young could be a player in one of those films, pounding the funky streets near his studio for almost his entire life. Raised in Takoma Park, he attended school in Silver Spring and took summer classes with the legendary painting teacher Walter Bartman at Glen Echo. Between early college years at the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduating from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he took time off and set up a studio in his parents’ basement.
During that period, he often painted on location in a parking garage on Silver Spring’s Bonifant Street—at night under fluorescent bulbs (“great light,” he says). Twenty years later, Young found himself back on that street searching for a studio. He bumped into a man who recognized him from those long nights painting in the parking lot—on the same street where his studio is now located.
That parking garage, a gas station in Kensington, a diner in Detroit and other drive-by spots have been transformed into American archetypes through Young’s luminous art. “Night is my favorite,” the artist confirms in sparkling tones. “I love working at night: how it looks, how fast-food restaurants glow. There’s a potency that doesn’t happen during the day.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. For more information on the artist, visit trevoryoung.net or contact Addison/Ripley Fine Art; addisonripleyfineart.com.
