Art-loving world traveler settles into unassuming space with an eclectic spirit
“Grove Spirit” greets you at the front door. Part human, part creature, she’s an imposing sculpture of vines, wood, steel and an assortment of natural items that was made this year by artist Dixie Friend Gay.
She stands tall outside the front door of Ken Christie’s Rice Military home, an unassuming structure transformed into a dynamic home and gallery for the art-loving world traveler.
Indoors there’s another piece by Gay, the well-known “Red Goddess” sculpture featured in museum exhibits and captured in Kay Turner’s book “Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars.”
It’s a surreal piece, the form of a pregnant torso painted red and blended onto a tall, flat structure that holds it upright. Antlers spring from its top and small, partially melted candles sit at its base, where strings of beads form a puddle.
In Christie’s home, the sculpture resides against a brick wall, near a crucifixion piece mounted on an old iron ladder and near a charcoal-gray wall that holds three grim but quirky paintings by Arturo Rivera.
There’s a wall covered in red and another that’s ochre, and they’re both filled with an eclectic mix of bold art.
“Every piece, I have to feel something,” Christie said of the art he’s collected for years, here in Houston or during the time he lived abroad in Asia and Africa.
Art and life
A private contractor in the energy industry, Christie traveled to Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Korea over several years. Then he landed in Tunisia in 2007 and lived and worked there until 2014, after the Arab Spring, when it had become simply too dangerous to stay.
Those places were rich with art, food and culture, and he met people and found himself in places that most others never would. There were underground art galleries in Asia; and in Tunisia, he lived in a compound next to Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. During the Arab Spring, he never knew what might be around the next corner, and at one point, government soldiers were firing guns from the roof of his home.
But it was exciting, which is perfect for Christie, who says he lives on adrenaline and longs for adventure.
When he gets bored, he plans a TV series, sketches out plans for art exhibition space he wants to build in Marfa or works on GTherm, the new clean energy company he’s part of.
He loves art, pieces that are strong and bold — pigmentdrenched canvasses by artists who know how to grab light.
Even his home’s furnishings are dramatic: midcentury-modern pieces that individually are works of art.
Except for the four PK22 chairs by Danish modern designer Poul Kjaerholm, his living room could be mistaken for an art gallery.
Christie imagined this unusual 6,000-square-foot home when others called it a teardown. An empty warehouse, Christie knew what he wanted to do.
For design work, he called on Scott Strasser, who was a partner at what was then Strasser Ragni.
“It’s my little world,” Christie said. “It’s how I want to live. I like to be stimulated by sights and sounds and smells. It’s important for me to always live in a hyper-aware state.”
The first floor’s footprint is a maze of partial walls erected to separate spaces for an office, a bedroom, a bar. The remainder is a big open space that flows from living room/gallery to the family room, dining area and kitchen.
Mixed in with modern art are an old-style bronze once owned by John Mecom Jr. and a 16thcentury Japanese ceremonial suit of armor.
The spaces are punctuated with bits of whimsy: a colorful foosball table and two bright red chairs sit at the base of a staircase near a piece from Oleg Dou’s “Duza’s Tears” series. Works by Duan Jianghua, Rachel Gardner, Caroline Levy and Sharon Kopriva are elsewhere.
His family room is filled with midcentury furniture that Christie picked out himself, a luxurious Jean Paul Gauthier sofa, a Le Corbusier chaise longue and a more current Bertoia Diamond chair.
Just beyond is a large round dining table surrounded by six Ludwig Mies van der Rohe tubular Brno chairs Christie picked up, and an Italian spiderlike chandelier dangles more than a dozen lights downward.
Then there’s the suit of armor, which dates to the 16th century, a museum-quality artifact that Christie bought via phone during an international auction.
Its materials and detailing are incredible, from the ornate helmet and mask to the layers of protective fabric and materials on its torso.
Almost pulsing to life is Lu Zhengyuan’s lifelike “Heart,” an oil on canvas in the back of the room, next to a carved amber urn that takes on an ethereal glow under light.
“It’s hard to stop looking at it, especially when it’s been lit up,” Christie said.
Inside and out
When Strasser first saw the building, he saw bones, beautiful bones: brick walls, bar joists. “The bones of the place were so beautiful, I didn’t want to get rid of them,” he said.
As a whole, the home is a study in contrasts. There are bold bursts of color downstairs and then plain white spaces upstairs. A structure of plain brick walls and then a wall of nothing but glass.
“Everything was about contrast. The new against the old, the color against the white, introvert and extrovert. Each move is a purposeful contrast against the other thing,” Strasser said.
Because the building has a zero lot line, there was no opportunity for a yard. Strasser recommended peeling back 15 feet of the roof, then installing that big glass wall in back. Now, light can flood in and a row of river birch trees has a place to grow.
Big round circles of stone and soft black gravel line the ground, some of both reaching indoors. Though the glass is a clear dividing line, the faded look of the outdoor circles and stone make the indoor-outdoor connection apparent.
That glass wall didn’t exist in the initial design work, but Strasser reconsidered how the space would live, since there were no windows at all.
“We had completely designed the thing, and I walked up to Ken one day and said, ‘I know this is beyond where you want to spend but it’s just too internal.’ Downstairs was 100 percent internal. I said ‘We need something to bring light in and keep you from feeling closed in.’ ”
There was also the issue of the art, which ranges from sculptures to paintings, photography and other works. Strasser hadn’t seen a single piece of it when he planned the gallery space.
“If you know somebody collects art, you have to assume it’s going to change, so you have to treat it like a gallery or a museum that rotates art,” he said. “I looked at it as creating a gallery where art and furniture are what he’s showing.”
And the rest ...
There’s more to Christie than art and work.
A native of Canada, he still occasionally visits his family’s farm in Alberta and has begun frequenting Marfa, too.
He recently bought 25 acres on the edge of the small desert town and he plans to build an artists’ retreat and exhibition space. He’s been jotting down ideas and will pull Strasser back into this new project, too.
A more pressing project is the GTherm clean energy startup company that is launching. Already they are is raising $30 million in capital and has Siemens signed on as a collaborator.
Christie says his company’s methods replace fracking, and he said they’re getting ready to start work on their first field in West Texas.
Visits to Los Angeles are part of bringing another project to life — the “Creators and Collectors” TV show, in which each episode tells the story of someone who’s made their dream a reality. They include Hill Country artist McKay Otto, Manready Mercantile owner Travis Weaver, and Million Air CEO Roger Woolsey.
They’re stories about reaching for seemingly impossible dreams and how years of effort finally reached success, he said.
In every project, every travel stop, Christie collects new friends. Eventually, he finds a way to connect them.
“I like to bring all these amazing creative minds together from every walk,” Christie said. “I like when they meet each other and have new bonds and friendships. It’s cool to me to introduce kindred souls together.”