Crazy for Color
Nanelle Wehmann mixes daring hues and bold artwork in her whimsical home
Sanibel-based arts patron Nanelle Wehmann approaches nesting a little differently than the rest of us. She’s seen each home she’s renovated as an art installation. Wehmann makes inspired decisions on flooring, furnishings, interior and even exterior paint colors. Her personal art collection— several decades’ worth of adding at least one modern piece annually—gives her plenty of eye-popping choices for each space she tackles. Thus, no room in Wehmann’s home is without several surprises, and boring simply isn’t in her design vocabulary.
“I’ve redone about 20 houses, and this is the fifth one on the islands,” she says from the electric coral hues of her living room, near the island’s east end. After many years of owning residences on Captiva Island and the Blind Pass area, Wehmann decided to make her most recent move somewhat of a downsize. “It only made sense to do something smaller, without the landscaping and the upkeep.” She was also intrigued by the convenience of being able to get off the island quickly.
Certain themes are trademarks of this dynamic native Oklahoman. “I’ve left a little trail of black-and-white checked floors across the country, in various mediums as I worked up to marble, as my income increased,” she says, smiling. Indeed, her current home wows visitors with its turquoise entryway, grounded with black-and white-checkered floors and a massive multicolored blownglass chandelier above.
Wehmann is all about color. Jet-black wooden floors
make everything pop, from coral walls to vivid sofas. Even the interior of the elevator to the garage is a bright red and contains art. No space was ignored when Wehmann was conceiving her latest tour
de force. And her home’s exterior is in keeping with its theme of color: She took a nondescript beige house at the back of a tasteful but sedate neighborhood and painted it pink.
“When I showed the color swatch to the painter, he said, ‘Do you have a homeowners association?’ and, luckily, I don’t,” she explains. “I did hear that in the beginning, some of the neighbors called this the Pepto-Bismol house,” Wehmann adds. “One day I actually took a bottle outside to compare, and that product has a lot more blue in it. This house is a true pink.”
Of her many previous homes, she notes, “They’ve all been different colors. For me, I get an inspiration for new colors I want to try. And then I need to see a space where I think they might work, to be inspired to do a new space. I worked my way from really small houses to really big spaces, and now I’m going the other way.”
Her latest house was chosen for its ability to adapt to large art. Wehmann actually dry-walled over a few windows, to create wall space for larger pieces.
She didn’t use an architect this time; on previous homes, she’d employed one for renovations.
The color that figures prominently inside is coral. “I sort of went wild with it,” says Wehmann. “I’ve never done that before, using the same color in as many rooms as I did. It sort of amazed me that all the art looked good against it.” Messery Painting did the exterior and interior, and spray-painted the kitchen cabinets black. Local artist Janet Vince handled the specialty painting—the elevator interior, and silver paint on the master bedroom walls. The guest room is dramatic black. Even the laundry room is turquoise.
Once you get over the deliberate shock of each room—which are all incredibly well put together—Wehmann’s sense of humor makes itself evident via décor choices and smaller pieces of art, such as William Wiley’s “I Hope You Learned Your Lesson.”
The living room’s large neon flag hangs beyond a recent quirky acquisition that ended up taking center stage. “I’m usually pretty good about ordering things from magazines,” she says about the 6-foot ostrich-feather lamp she spotted in Architectural Digest. “But when this lamp arrived, it was a HUGE crate and I couldn’t just shove it in a corner.” The unintended showstopper—gilded base and all—is now the first thing you see upon entering.
The whimsy extends from room to room, but strikes a great balance between serious design and fun stuff that simply makes people smile. There’s also a distinct cultural variety to the objets
d’art. “I traded houses for over 20 years with a doctor from Paris, and there was an African gallery near his apartment, where I found several pieces,” Wehmann says while pointing to a bold tribal sculpture in the kitchen.
Those African and French pieces seem right at home with modern art Wehmann began collecting in her 20s. “Very soon after I got out of college, I was living in Kansas City and working for AT&T,” she explains. “When I first started collecting, I bought one piece a year with my company match.” Her collection represents two distinct regions: New York artists
she collected while in Kansas City, and Californian pieces she bought while later living in San Francisco.
Her first acquisition was a Roy Lichtenstein, followed by other great choices in the 1960s and ’70s: Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, Warhol. Surprisingly, Wehmann already owned two Rauschenbergs before moving to Captiva; she later became friends with the artist. “Bob came to the Aquarius party at my last two homes,” she says of the infamous annual birthday bash she hosted for many years.
The purple den is Wehmann’s favorite room. “It’s so clubby,” she muses, and she’s right. Floor-to-ceiling shelves are filled with art books and curated objects: small robots from Paris, Day of the Dead tchotchkes, Jeff Koons’ balloon-dog bookends, and sculptures from Oaxaca, Mexico. While these treasures delight the eye, a sectional in deep jewel tones invites a longer stay. The den’s tray ceiling has LED lights that can change colors, “but I just leave them on red,” says Wehmann, “because I like it the best.”
What does downsizing look like for an islander this colorful? “Well,” she admits with a laugh, “I sold my cowboy boots, my tap shoes and my disco ball.” What she kept, however, is as eclectic as she is: a Chinese armoire from ABC Furniture in Delray Beach, Florida; a Victorian sofa that used to be her mom’s (now covered in fuchsia silk); and Indian furnishings and sculptures from Mogul Interior in
Fort Myers. A few regional artists’ works are also mixed in.
Wehmann recently designed the interior of companion John Madden’s condo on Sanibel’s West Gulf Drive. Madden just donated a substantial collection of his own to the University of Denver. The pair enjoy gallery-hopping in New York. Meanwhile, dogs Zoey and Scarlet take it all in stride, but will Wehmann tackle another home? “I’m getting sort of interested in doing one more,” she says, making a coy face. “We’ll see.”