Mount Dora set to settle ‘Van Gogh house’ flap
Council to consider agreement tonight to keep painted walls
The artistic debate over a Mount Dora house painted in the likeness of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” — is it beautiful or hideous? — may rage on. But the question of whether the headturning paint job remains is about to be decided.
City Council members tonight will consider a settlement agreement that the homeowners said will allow the painting to stay, ending a protracted code-enforcement dispute that caused a stir on social media and became an offbeat tourist attraction in a city known as a haven for artists.
Homeowners Lubomir Jastrzebski and his wife, Nancy Nemhauser, said the settlement calls for waiving more than $10,000 in fines, removing a lien on the home along Old U.S. Highway 441, a couple of blocks from downtown, and allowing them to complete the painting on two remaining walls of the house.
Early this year, the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has won victories before the U.S. Supreme Court in cases championing individual rights, took up the couple’s cause in a federal lawsuit alleging, among other things, that their First Amendment right of free expression had been violated.
Though happy with the agree-
ment, Jastrzebski, a physicist who emigrated from Poland in the 1970s, said Monday the couple feels frustrated that the process reached this point.
“I almost felt like being in communistic Poland, where the rules were being made up by officials on the fly,” he said. “I couldn’t believe something like this could happen in the United States of America.”
Mount Dora would not provide a copy of the settlement agreement, saying it had not been completed yet and therefore was not subject to public-records laws. Reached by phone, Mayor Nick Girone declined to comment until today’s meeting.
Jastrzebski said the city could have spent its money more wisely than by fighting wiser than to fight them.
“The city spent an enormous amount of money on legal fees,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be better to spend the money on first responders?”
Also today, Mount Dora will consider forming an advisory board of citizens to develop a new sign code throughout the city. This is part of the settlement as well, according to the city agenda item. The city cited a violation of the sign ordinance in ordering the home be painted in a solid color.
The yearlong donnybrook was featured on NBC’s “Today” show, while a Change.org petition to save the painting has received nearly 12,000 signatures. Among comments on the petition are those lauding its beauty and others stating they enjoy driving past the home.
In February, a federal judge halted the $100-per-day fines the city instituted on the property, which by then had totaled more than $10,000.
The dispute began last summer when the couple decided to paint a wall in front of their home in the likeness of “Starry Night” — one of Van Gogh’s bestknown paintings — as a way to “relax” their adult son, who has autism and loves the Dutch master’s art.
They taught the 25-year-old to say “take me to the Van Gogh house” if he ever wandered off or got lost, Nemhauser said.
“We wanted to give him a tool to alert people of where he belonged,” she said.
After being told the wall — which originally was labeled “graffiti” — had to match the rest of the home, the couple decided instead to pay to have the rest of their home painted like “Starry Night,” too, Nemhauser said.
Then, after a September hearing, a magistrate ruled in favor of the city and ordered the home must come into compliance.
As the $100-a-day fines piled up, Nemhauser said she feared they would lose the house.
If council members approve the settlement, the couple said they probably would finish the house soon, but it would depend on their painter’s availability to work in the heat.
“Our history in dealing with the city is that anything could happen,” Jastrzebski said. “We think the city should embrace this as art and use it to help in their promoting themselves.”