GETTING THE HANG OF IT
Displaying art in your home
The entry hall into Dale Mott and his partner’s seventh-floor apartment bursts with light even though there’s nary a window in sight.
Instead, three large art pieces on the walls surrounding the elevator that opens into the home confer the radiance — a bright yellow aerosol and acrylic canvas; a black-and-white silkscreen print with sparkling Mylar; and an aerial photograph of a beach scene. “The crowd welcomes and draws you into our home,” said Mott, pointing to the photo of the beach opposite the entry.
Art makes a home intimate and calm. And designing a home to showcase art enhances its beauty.
Some people hang pictures themselves and place elegant objects where it suits their visual esthetic. Others hire a professional to take the curatorial reins.
Tony Podesta turned to Olvia Demetriou, architect and cofounder of Hapstak Demetriou+ to design the space for his art collection.
When she walked into his house, it was clear it didn’t need repair, she said, so much as reinvention.
Once the walls were removed it became apparent that the floors sloped three inches from one end of the house to the other, which is unacceptable for hanging art.
He showed her the collection and she created “art blocking plans” to delineate each piece and where it would hang. This enabled her to define where plywood blocking behind walls would be needed to give Podesta, founder and chairman of the lobbying and public affairs Podesta Group, the maximum flexibility in hanging heavy pieces.
She installed a minimalist reveal along the ceiling — a discreet hanging rail — where art could be hung by wire instead of the traditional picture rail. She built custom niches within the walls allowing for the flush installation of video art.
And she designed a curved stair in the centre of the house, which is the most dramatic design element and offers a focal point around which all the spaces unfold. “It is, in itself, a sculptural piece — stainless steel and frameless glass spiralling upward the two storeys,” allowing for the display of large paintings, she said.
“My design vision for the house was to create architectural spaces that inspire but that also provide a neutral background that didn’t compete for attention,” Demetriou said. “I had to let the art shine.”
Mott also went the professional route, hiring decorator Nicole Lanteri when he and his partner moved from a small condominium to their apartment. The previous place was so small they didn’t have room to display their art.
“My instructions were, ‘We have all this art. Please make it work,’ ” Lanteri said.
“We sent Nicole thumbnails (of our art), told her what furniture we wanted to keep, what we needed to buy, and she went from there,” said Mott, director of strategic advancement for Arena Stage.
“The trick with a loft-like space is to make it feel like a home rather than a gallery and ensure the art isn’t overshadowed by design elements,” said Lanteri, echoing the same sentiment as Demetriou.
Lanteri embraced the white walls and didn’t feel compelled to cover them all. “Negative wall space is good because it gives other pieces in the room space to breathe.” She also knew their collection would keep growing.
One constraint was the dozen or so audio speakers pre-wired and installed on walls when the home was purchased. But instead of ignoring or pulling them out she treated them as sculptures and arranged artwork to hang alongside.
For example, on the wall opposite the kitchen, she incorporated white square speakers in a composition of photos, sculptures, prints and paintings, many in white frames. She created a figurative art wall, a sea of faces on a white wall.
To ensure that the art wouldn’t appear to be floating, she added a pale narrow curved walnut wood ledge beneath them. That ledge connected visually to the kitchen cabinets on the opposite side of the room and balanced the space.
Three white acoustic speakers and black-framed TV screen were hanging above the fireplace on a living room wall. “Our thought was to flush-mount the speakers so they’d disappear,” Mott said, “but Nicole did the opposite.” She removed the speaker covers and created a sculptural wall with the speakers and TV.
“Without covers they looked a little more industrial, like sculptures themselves,” Lanteri said. And they conformed to the style of the exposed ducts on the ceiling.
To finish the fireplace wall and make the TV less pronounced, she covered the wall in a dark graphite-hued grass cloth. “When you look at the wall in the light” — a street-facing glass wall is adjacent — “it turns from grey to green to blue to black. So the black TV frame blends in,” Mott said.
Mott and his partner wanted to lay a contemporary design rug they’d bought in Turkey on the living room floor, but it was too small. Lanteri anchored it over a neutral-toned sisal that bridged the caramel, russet, orange and red of the rug and the pale maple wood floor.
“She created a balance of colour and texture with our art, furnishings and space that we wouldn’t have known to do,” Mott said.
Lanteri chose the Kartell Masters chair for the dining room table. Overlapping branchlike arms and seatback make the chairs look like sculptures.
“The dining table sits in a glass corner of the apartment, which is always bright,” Mott said. “The fluidity of the chairs and the light fixture above are a perfect match.”
Nevertheless, electric lights in addition to natural light are critical in any design project.
Lanteri installed translucent light fixtures throughout the Mott home so that the fixtures themselves wouldn’t obstruct views of the surrounding space. She chose the Hope suspension light to hang over the dining table “because it catches the whimsy of the chairs and riffs off the elegant Liz pendants over the kitchen island,” she said. For The Washington Post