An Artist’s Colorful, Collected Home in Palo Alto | House Tour

Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Sandy. Welcome to my home in Palo Alto. Come on in. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, my name is Sandy Ostrow. Welcome to my home in Palo Alto, California. The house was originally a barn. So in 1910, it was built as a barn for the house next door, which was the first vet in Palo Alto. And in 1915, somebody bought the property and turned it into a house. And when we saw it, it had been a family house, and the woman was retiring, and she had raised her kids here. And we showed up with our children and a golden retriever. We didn't actually bring the dog in the house, but she also had two kids and a golden retriever. And so we had it for several years, and we love it, but it needed a lot of work. My kids are grown, and my husband and I decided we needed to repurpose the rooms and create a home that was going to be welcoming for the family, but incorporate an art collection that we have been accumulating over years. And so we hired a woman. Her name is Chantal Lamberto, and she was amazing. And it was really an incredible collaboration. Me, as an artist, have a particular aesthetic. I thought, if I'm going to work to unify this house and make it feel very cohesive, because it's a very eclectic space, I thought, if somebody can do that, they need to appreciate my aesthetic. And I thought she would be really good. Everything in the house is important to us and has meaning, partially through the collecting process, getting to know artists, but also just for our lives. And so we wanted to create a home where you open the door and you are just exposed to color and art and beauty, and it's warm and inviting. We wanted each room to feel very special, but to also talk to each other and to have everything just be cohesive. And I think we accomplished that. This is the living room, and this was originally a barn. The rug here is based off of a design. It was utilized, designed by Annie Albers, a very famous textile artist, which I love the texture and I love the patterning, and it helps kind of unify this whole room. It's an odd-shaped space to be kind of divided, to have people gather around. We had a bigger table made, glass, so we could see the rug, and it's a much wider table, so it spreads people out and we're using the space. Behind me, these shelves, all of this was original to the house. I'm not sure exactly when it was put in, but it could have been probably when the house was built. And the wood is redwood, but it's always been painted, so we repainted it and using these dark, deep, rich colors to highlight the items that we have collected over time. This is a very special ceramic piece by, it was a Gambone, and it's by, I think this one's Bruno. There's Guido and Bruno, and they were done in the mid-century 50s, 60s, 70s, and they're Italian, and it's just, I love this primitive, it's a very rustic type of pottery, and we have a few pieces we really love. These are some of my early plein air paintings, this one and this one, and this one as well, this is based on Tuscany. And then this is an artist, Bill Rushton, who is actually a friend of mine, we share a studio, and he's another Bay Area figurative inspired painter. And these are little ceramic birds made, Fred Yockel, he's a local artist. They're just lovely, he does a lot of animals. And then this is a glass piece that we've had just more recently. I like the embedding of the beautiful green and this dark surface. And then this is very, very special. Helen Park Bigelow made this, and it's a Japanese style of threads on a styrofoam ball. And Helen is the daughter of David Park, and David Park is a very, very famous Bay Area figurative artist. He was one of the founders of that genre, although I don't think he would ever like to have heard that. But it's a movement that came out of San Francisco Bay Area, and it was, it's very instrumental and influential, that group of artists and that style for a lot of painters like myself, and two and three generations beyond, they started working together, this group of three, in the 50s and before that, actually. And it was incorporating figurative elements and figures into a much more expressionist style of, you know, abstract expressionist style of painting that came from New York. So it was kind of emerging, you know, introducing figures into this really dynamic style of painting. And it's been very influential for painters now and, you know, all over the world. So, but it originated here in the Bay Area. So this is one of my paintings, and it's a figure, kind of immersed in the landscape. My paint application is very much of the Bay Area figurative, kind of dynamic, thick paint, impasto, and gestural figure. Very simplified, abstracted, and it's that, I love that abstraction. And for me, I want the figure to be a part of the landscape in a way, so it's not descriptive. My abstract paintings are now very, I mean, I started out with plein air, much more, you know, impressionist style, and now it's a more modern style of abstracting and finding the geometry in the landscape that kind of makes sense, and it reads a landscape. And the figure reads as, you know what the figure's doing, you don't necessarily know who it is, you might not know the gender, and I want to keep that very true to that, because I want my viewers and my, you know, collectors to find themselves in the work, and put themselves in the work, and have it resonate for them personally, rather than me giving them all that information. So this is a piece I did right after the remodel, and I did it for this space. I obviously wanted to get some of the patterning and colors that make this room feel so warm and special. Here are two paintings, both of artists that are no longer living, they are definitely part of that Bay Area figurative genre and movement. This is Henri Vierme, and he passed away, it was maybe 10, I don't even know, 10 years ago, but there's an artist named Richard Diebenkorn, and he was a contemporary of his, and he painted, he did beautiful work, very reminiscent of that simplified geometric landscape, he did figurative work as well, but he's kind of a little under-recognized, which I think is really not, he should be much more recognized as part of that Bay Area figurative. And this is Terry St. John, who I did meet, I bought this at a show at Dolby Chadwick Gallery, where he's represented, where I am too, and I just love the pairing, and you know, this is that dynamic, figurative, expressive paint application too. And this is a work by Kim Frosian, she's a friend of mine, a contemporary, a peer, and I think one of the best of our generation Bay Area figurative painters as well. I have several works of hers that we will see. And this is, these are geometric works by Keith Wilson, another friend, and this is a Cenadese Scavo glass. It's got this surface that looks like you just dug it out of the ground, which we love, and Cenadese is the house in Murano, and there are very few, there's only seven houses left doing glass and glass blowing. We were lucky to go, we had a whole tour of the factory, we had a whole tour of the, all of their showrooms, which were amazing, just full of chandeliers and glass. And then one of their styles is this Scavo that we really particularly love. This is a real piece of the Golden Gate Bridge. There's an artist in San Francisco whose father, I think, worked on the bridge, and at one point they took a bunch of pieces of the bridge off to renovate it, meant a long, long time ago, and they were just sort of junked, these pieces, and he, I think, through his father had access to it, and he's still, he's still making art. You can, I forget, I can't remember his name, but he, you can get a piece of the Golden Gate Bridge, and this was a little bookend that we picked up. So this part of the house was kind of unused, and until we got the carpet to pull things out, open things up, and then building these beautiful shelves to hold the art books. And, you know, we've, we, we love the books. We use this library all the time, and then, you know, we wanted to make it beautiful. These are more of that, the Cenadese glass, and this was a gift on our anniversary. It was a surprise. I think it was the sixth, or we're coming up to our 40th, so I think it was our 35th, and my husband got these two pairs, so that was really exciting and special. And this is another Kim Frosian work, and so is this. So she did, she does, she's kind of known for her, her figurative work, but she also did a lot of landscape. She's done many different styles or, or subject matters, but she's really an amazing painter. These are very special. This is an abstract work done later in the life of an artist called Theophilus Brown. He was also part of that Bay Area figurative movement, and he's known for his figures, usually male figures, and this was an unusual piece, and I just, I just love it. I just think it's so, you know, graphic, and, and it's still painterly, and it's partially collage, a painted work on, you know, glued on. So, and then this is a very well-known collage artist named Matt Gonzalez, who's also a friend, and he, he lives in San Francisco. He's a San Francisco artist, and he does beautiful collages, usually monochrome, you know, single color, and, but you can see all the detail of the work. The tiles in the fireplace are from fireclay, which we have been buying tile for, from them for, for a really long time, and now they've gotten really fancy, but they used to have a, just a factory in Mexico and also in San Jose. I used to go there, and I knew all of them, and I would pick out these decorative tiles, you know, they're all hand painted. The, the body is, is, you know, even hand painted and glazed, and, and then the fireplace, we, it's, it, this provides the heat in the house, because as a barn, it didn't have central heat. Our house does not have central heat, so when we, we bought the house, the fireplace was cracked because there had been an earthquake, so we took down the fireplace, and we put a gas insert, and this, this heats this whole space beautifully, so that's our, that's a very functional fireplace, and it's, it's all iron. It's really beautiful, and this chair, this is really fun. I went to high school, Palo Alto High School. My kids went to Palo Alto High School, and they used to run, or they still do, have a flea market, and one time, we were out at brunch, and we walked over to the, the parking lot of the high school, where they do, and you know, a couple times a month, they do a flea market, and there was this, and we also have a table, and they are, it's all hand painted. It's called painted patchwork, and the woman had brought it to this flea market, because she had been, she had been a student at Palo Alto High School as well, and so it's a, she took antique chairs, and she would create these designs, and we got this probably, I would say, 30, 30 years ago, and, but we still, you know, we had to fix it a couple times. Somebody sat in, and it broke one time, but it's great, and it's so, it's just so, such a nice conversation piece, and I think it just ties in, again, the patterning that we love, and the layering of different colors, so I like the rich colors. So part of the remodel that was very important for us was to incorporate the art in our, our home that we've been collecting for, for 25 or more years. I'm a professional artist, and I, I'm an oil painter. I started out painting plein air, mostly plein air landscapes. I, in a French impressionist style, I became very interested in the California painters of landscape, and then more modern painters. In the mid-century, California and the Bay Area specifically, San Francisco, including Palo Alto, there's a group of Bay Area figurative artists, so I also was doing a lot of figure drawing, and along the way, I started incorporating figures into my work, and very influenced by the Bay Area figurative painters, and in our collecting, we have focused on California art, and then some others outside of the Bay Area figurative, but still very connected to figurative art. We wanted to have a place where each piece could be showcased, and we like layering, and we really like texture, and we love patterning, and color, and I use a lot of color in my work, so that was important to have a place that reflected our aesthetic, and when I feel, when I walk in the house, I feel like it is so us. Everything in the house is something that's really important to our lives, and to us. So my husband's birthday's in November, and I never know where to get him, so years ago, I decided, so I gave him, so art, because we both love art, and this was a long time ago, so I bought him a painting for his birthday, but of course, it was a painting I loved, and I wanted, so kind of every year, we have done that, where he's expecting a birthday gift, and he knows it's going to be a painting, or a piece of art that you know, that I love. Often, it'll be something maybe we've seen together, but we've got some really wonderful pieces, and it's been fun. It's been a really fun kind of little tradition for us, and then we also, for our anniversaries, we'll sometimes do that, so sometimes we'll surprise each other with, you know, a big box in the mail or something. This is the dining room, and we didn't change the space in terms of size, but we had to get a new dining room table, so this table was custom-sized and made perfectly to fit here without the leaves, so it doesn't look too small or too big, and then there are leaves underneath that we can expand, but Chantal had that designed for us, and I love the dark oak. Again, it's that, you know, kind of grounding and really nice feel, and this is a runner that I made using vintage Mary Mecco fabric, which I have a whole collection of, and then over here, we have just some things that we love, you know, on our shelves. This is Brigitte Kurt is a painter. She is one of my first teachers. She is a landscape painter, and I learned how to paint impressionist landscapes from Brigitte. I worked with her for many, many, many years. This is one of our newest pieces, and it's from Frank Auerbach. It's a drawing. It's a head. It's hard to see, but Frank Auerbach is an incredible painter in England. He's from London, lived in England, and he recently passed away. It's a really beautiful piece, and this is Gerald Turner, and he was one of the outsiders, which is a group, kind of a plein air painters. He also recently passed away, and I've gone out painting with him, but this is a scene. He does these kind of city scenes. I think this might be Benicia around the Bay Area, and he was a great guy, really, really great guy, and it was fun to paint with him. This is another Henri Vierme, and you can see he's got the nice, beautiful brush strokes, and I love the colors of this, the abstracted figure, and we've had this for a number of years, and then this piece over here, this is Cornelia Schultz, and she was the director of the Davis Art Department at UC Davis for a number of years, but she was the first woman, and she also, she's, I think she's in her 80s. I recently met her, but she's done all kinds of work over her career. She was a great teacher. I've met her students in the past, but this piece, you can see the paint is just, I mean, it is like, you know, it is sticking out at least an inch, maybe more, and she cuts her own wood, and then she does, and this is probably one of the few abstract pieces we have, but I love her work, and I love this piece. This, this is the first of the, of the Scavo, Cenedese, Murano glass pieces, the red, and it's, it's, that was the first one we got, and I think in 2010, we went to Venice, and we just love them, and so we sort of, we have this one, and then this is another one we've collected, and then this is the most recent one that we got when we were in Venice just recently in, in February. We went to Venice before we went to the Olympics, which was really cool, and then one of my very, very favorite artists in the world is, is Nicholas Destal. He was Russian, raised in Paris, had a tragic early death, and he painted, well, early, you know, early 19, I don't know, 1940s, 50s. I just love his work. He does, he does a very, you know, this abstract geometric kind of landscape, and again, he uses thick paint. I got to go to a show of his, a huge retrospective in Paris a few years ago, and we went, and it was just thrilling, and then I was gifted a book that had this print in it, so I had to have it framed for my, for my collection, and then this is one of my, it's a, you know, early of the figures in landscape and kind of working on that embedding and incorporating that humanity and, you know, figure into a, you know, abstracted landscape, but it's getting that humanity and just having that whole connection and connection between nature and us, but again, not descriptive, and these are two artists. These are friends. This is another Jerry Turner, and this is Bill Rushton. Again, they're a lot of plein air work. We used to paint outdoors a lot, and these are, from some of the plein air, plein air work we did, and then this piece is very special. This was a gift when I got my husband his birthday present, and his, the artist is Nathan Oliveira, very, very famous, especially here, well, in California, but all over, all over the country, and kind of the next generation of Bay Area figurative from the original group, and again, you see this incredible gestural figure, work on paper, ink on paper, but it's just so expressive and beautiful. This is the kitchen, and we had done the kitchen a few years before this most recent remodel. We popped out this little eating area, which was great because we didn't have it before. We actually redesigned this space. We chose a marble, which everyone said is going to have patina, and you're crazy to choose it, and I'm like, that's what they do in Europe, and so we're using marble, and we love it, and it does look, it has patina every time we get lemon juice or something on it, but it's just great, and then I think I was the first person, not the only, but the first person to buy an orange Viking stove, so we kind of re, we kind of designed colors around the stove. These are all Moroccan tiles, and I love the little embedded, you know, they're mosaics. What Chantal recommended is to paint the floor rather than, we didn't want brown and orange because there's so much orange in here, and this was such a brilliant idea to paint it rather than, you know, we didn't want to tile it, so this is the floor. This is the wood floor, and we just, we got an artist in here, and she painted the blue and the white checks and, or squares, and then over, over here is two of my landscapes, abstract landscapes, and this is a Henry Verme work on paper, and with the little, I love the little coffee, I think that's a beautiful abstract coffee mug, and then on this side is a painting that I did a long time ago, and when we put the, when we redid the floors, and I was pulling out some old paintings, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be great, so this is, I think this is, this is quite old, but I think it's so fun, playful with the squares on the floor, and this is the family room. This is, the windows are similar to the living room, but you can see that the trim has been painted dark rather than light, and this is a room we chose to wallpaper. Again, they're very similar in a lot of ways, but this room has a special feel different from the other one, because we added the wallpaper, and when you have a dark around the frame, it kind of brings the outside in, which is really, which is lovely. Over here is another painting. This is a, this is a still life by Henry Vierme. Again, I was mentioning he's, he's, he's kind of under-recognized, but this is such a beautiful, moody, neutrals, you know, kind of value study painting, and we, we absolutely love it, and then this is a sculpture by an artist, and also a friend named Michelle Greger, and she, she does these figurative, beautiful ceramic pieces. This is fun. This is from Greece in Crete, and we, it's a, a type of clay from that specific area, and this artist, it was like generational artists who would make these, these vessels in an Etruscan, like the, from generations. His grandfather was a, a clay, a potter, and, and it's this black clay, and so we brought that home from a trip to Greece, and this, this painting is, or this drawing is also very part of the whole Bay Area figurative movement. Paul Wanner is a, he was one of the painters that, in that periphery of Bay Area figurative painters, and his partner was Theophilus Brown, and this is his work, and both of them have passed. I got to meet Theophilus Brown at a show where I bought this piece, which was really exciting, because I have admired his work, and then these are all Kim Frosian paintings. Again, you know, you can see her simplifying the figure and using these beautiful colors. This is our newest, newest painting, and it is Emilio, Emilio Vallalba, and he's a friend, and you can see you've taken this impasto. He's a, he's a great painter, great figurative painter. He teaches, and his work is at Dolby Chadwick Gallery as well, and anyway, she, he's, he's just wonderful, and, and that's, that's, it's Rub, it's, it's Peter Paul Rubens, who's a painter, so that's a portrait of, of Ruben. He calls it Ruben, and this is a ceramic piece by a woman named Karen Shapiro, who is, is, she makes, it's, this is made out of ceramic, and she replicates things, and she's a friend. She's from the north coast, and you're in Mendocino or Mendocino County, and, and this, this niche is interesting, because it was, we don't know why it was here, and I used to just have a cabinet in it, and, and Chantal designed all of these cabinets, you know, these drawers, and it has the same lines, and you know, that were seen in the living room. This is actually a different green color, but it's close, it's a little greener than the one in the living room, but it just, it just, again, it's like the, the room, it all flows so beautifully together, and I love how she had these floating shelves, so we can see beautiful things. This is a Turkish artist. He teaches it in Istanbul. I, I never met him, but I bought this online, and we had a little correspondence, which was really fun. This is Charles Sheeler. He's, he's a pretty well-known, very well-known artist, cityscapes, cityscapes, and this is my son, Scott. He's a, he's a painter, too, and he does beautiful, very, you know, kind of very, a little more edgy than me, and, and modern. I love his work. He's really, he can draw like, like, he's just amazing. That's actually him. That was a picture of him in high school, and these are early plein air paintings, very, very early of mine, and then we have, oh, another, an M&M. This is also ceramic from Karen Shapiro, and then I knit this little comforter, a little blanket, and again, more Kim Frosian. This is a work on paper, and two works on paper, you know, more figurative work of Kim Frosian. This piece right here, a woman, Heidi Endemann, over many years, she paints flowers from a particular country. This is Ethiopia, and then around it, she always does this script of the country, and she's done, I know she's done 80 paintings of varying sizes of, not 80 different countries, but let's say there's probably a giant one of this, or smaller as well, but around it, it says, I painted this because I can, and I need the money, and she does it in whatever script, so she's got a good sense of humor, but she's a beautiful painter, and as we move into the guest room, this is a Frank Lobdell work on paper, and it's an ink drawing, and he, again, one of the Bay Area famous artists, and we just love this piece. It's a, you know, the figurative work, all ink, there's so much variation in tone on this piece, and then you have those strong triangular lights, which is just so beautiful, but to have this piece, we were thrilled when we found this one. This is a fairly recent one that we've gotten. This is the guest room, and one of the things with the remodel is repurposing the rooms, and this was a, my husband's office. It was very dark, and we wanted to turn this into a guest room rather than an office, because our stairs are very steep, the rise, and then the step is narrow, so all of our parents are in their 80s and 90s, so when they come to stay, it's really difficult, so we wanted to have a nice guest room that is on the bottom floor. The wallpaper was a huge stretch for me, but I totally loved it, and Chantal, we talked a lot about, you know, I mean, with a small space, is it going to be too much, but I think it's just so inviting, and so beautiful, and warm, and just so playful. All the windows we've had replaced, because a lot of them were, we had some dry rot, and you know, they were old, and then this, this comforter was handmade, both hand embroidered and hand quilted by my grandmother on my mother's side, and I was really close with her. At the time, I didn't do any needlework or any, she did a lot of needlework, she did a lot of, I don't know, knitting and everything, and I never did that, and I never learned to do that from her, but now I do all of those things, and I'm just so happy to have this. I think it's beautiful, and then this is a Edith Truesdale painting, and she's significant because her, she was the aunt of David Park. I was mentioning before about David Park's daughter. Well, this was the aunt, and she taught David Park, this very significant artist, how to paint, and she, so she, he went and lived with her for a little while, and when people see her work, they always think, oh, she paints like David Park, but it was actually the other way around, so, and then here's a little grouping, a little salon grouping of my plein air from all different periods and different scenes, so this is a Sea Ranch scene. We spend a lot of time at Sea Ranch. It's on the north Sonoma coast in California, and this is, these are the trees that we see all the time. They're cypress trees, and these are all local places. This is the abstract bay lands. This is the California hills. Again, this is our San Francisco bay and hills in the winter when the backdrop, all these hills are very purple and blue looking. Anyway, I love having this, these natural, you know, nature on nature, and that layering that Chantal and I really worked together to create. This is our guest bathroom, and this was a hugely difficult one to remodel for the contractors, because it's just, to get it to code, we were down to like the quarter inch. We had to eke out some space in a closet behind here, and nothing was plum, and it was really ugly, so it's a fully, you know, full bath and shower, and our guest room is around the corner, so it's really nice to have everything here, and the tiles are from Morocco. We wanted them to kind of blend in and really read beautifully with the entryway tiles, and then there's tiles that go up the stairs as well, so I think this just, I just love these tiles so much, and they're all hand-done, even the all the white ones as well. The painting is by Vivian Flesher. She's a San Francisco artist, and it's a work on paper, and then there's a little painting around the corner that is my, it's an abstracted landscape. One of my favorite things about this house is a general vibe of when you come in, and this is what I, we like to have visitors, we like to have, you know, we like to have dinner parties, and it's when people come here, I watch their reactions, especially if they've never come, and they are, you know, their eyes open wide, and it's not, you know, very little beige, nothing wrong with beige, but it's a very warm and welcoming feeling, and I love, and both my husband and I, we love eclectic spaces. We like old houses, so when we first moved in, we knew it had good bones, but we knew it'd take a long time to kind of get it to where we wanted it, and in fact, I don't think we would have had the same vision back then. This is, it was best that we waited, because now, because we looked at the whole house, and again, it was creating a flow. If you walk around, each room has something special, beautiful things to look at, and each room is special, but they are all connected, and part of the remodel was about doing that, having, you know, like picking cabinet faces that were similar to the ones behind me that were the original ones, and they're redwood, and, but when we added cabinetry, we echoed that, so it would feel cohesive and unified. At the same time, because each room had, you know, each room is very special, too, so I think my most favorite thing about the house is just the warmth and the invitation to come in and look around, and I love it when people ask about particular paintings or things in the shelves, you know, what is that, because everything is important, and everything has a story. This is our entryway, our foyer, and what we did here significantly was just darkening the floors, and that makes this rich kind of, you know, grounding backdrop on the down low, and we did specifically to match these. These are original tiles, and I think they were made into it also in San Jose at a factory in San Jose, but I'm not sure. We didn't have any extra, so when we did the remodel, it was like, save the tiles here because we don't know if we can replace them or anything like that, and we love them. We redid the, all the banisters. Everything was kind of surprisingly colonial when we bought the house. I'm not sure why, because the front of the house, it's very Mission Revival, and that was what it's called, but in any case, these are much more Mission, and we, you know, had it designed. Chantal designed that, and it's all, all of the banisters are new, and then these over here in the foyer, so you walk in, and you will see, you would see the big painting over the fireplace, and then you see these. These are very, you know, obviously bright, and I would say moody. There's that geometry, the impasto, and the artist is, he just recently passed away. He was at 99, and he was a good friend of mine. I'm still friends with his wife, Alona, and he is one of the significant painters in California, collected all over the world, Ryman Stapprans, and he, we got this piece first, and it's, it was done, so this one's from 58, and this is from 1960. Over here on the other side of the foyer is a collection, a salon style little grouping of paintings of two of my figure paintings. They're oil on, on, this is on panel, and this one's on paper. In my work, I like to use thick and thin, and smooth, and rough, and palette knife, and brush, and all of these different things to create texture that move your eye around, and so it's very gestural, you know, it's almost like you could turn it over, and it would be an abstract painting, so I'm really conscious of, you know, pulling in abstract work, figurative. I'm really, really on the fence. I like to stay there, so I really love being in that, that gray zone between abstraction and, and representational, or, or descriptive, and then this is Kim Frosian again. You can see she's a master of getting the gesture, and the figurative, her line work, her calligraphy is just absolutely so expressive, and these are all from live models, and that's where she, she really excels. She's incredible, and then over here, this is one of my favorite groupings, because again, this is kind of an odd space, so Chantal found this perfect size cabinet, just creates this kind of base for this salon wall, and again, Chantal, Chantal and I put everything on the floor. We had, you know, all the artwork. We just would grab stuff, and we just created these little groupings, and this is a woman, Michelle Caton, who I used to paint with. I haven't seen her in years, but I mean, I'm not sure if she's even painting, but she, she and I would paint together, and many, many years ago, and this is also her work, and then my two figure pieces, and then this is a gouache of Kim's, Kim Frosian again, and her figure drawings, again, more of the figure drawings, which I just love her, the gesture she gets. As we go up the stairs, we have a little grouping again of paintings, which are perfect on this dark wall. You know, we were not sure about doing these rich colors, but I mean, it's just so great. It actually, I think, just makes the house look so warm and inviting, but these paintings obviously just pop, so this is one of my figure in a landscape, and again, it's like incorporating the figure as almost as it's, as if it's the trunk of the tree, and then this is a, an artist. She is from Carmel, and she's an older woman, and I, we found that at a flea market or a, a little art sale, and, and then this is Kim Frosian. She did a series of paintings that are portraits of numbers, and you won't get it right away, but if you look closely, it's the number 32, and she's done many. This is probably the most abstract, and we, we love it. We were, we were like, oh my god, it's great, and so when we were putting all the art back in the house, it was just such a perfect placement, and then the tiles, these are the same tiles from fire clay that we have in the, in the, over around the fireplace, and we have this beautiful pop of color at the top of the stairs. These were original to when I, we moved in, but we changed all the knobs to be kind of a, you know, a little oversized. It was just kind of a nice design touch, and this is a painting, Michelle Caton. She was a friend of mine, and beautiful oil painting. She does beautiful figures, kind of in modern landscape, I mean, modern architecture, and then this painting over here, this is another Edith Truesdale, who was the, the aunt of David Park, and taught him how to paint, and it's a barn that I guess they would, they would visit, and here we are in the, in the primary bedroom, and this was always the primary, but we moved the bed around, and we just kind of reorganized the furniture. We rehung the art, and this time, kind of focusing more on photography, black and white, and this is an artist in Florida. My husband's from Florida, and there's this guy in the Everglades, and he literally is in the Everglades, Clyde Butcher, and he goes out in the, I don't know, waders with a big thing over the, you know, his camera, and takes wildlife, and mostly nature, you know, photographs of the Everglades in Florida, and so this is one. I think it's very beautiful, very serene, and we wanted kind of a serene feel. Picking the paint colors, you know, again, it's a, it's, it's not beige, but it's not, not beige either. It's kind of this, I don't know, and a really lovely, calm color, and over here, and a few more photographs, a couple more photographs by Paul Kozol, who, he is a photographer in, on the North Sonoma Coast, Gualala, California, and he's a friend, and beautiful, beautiful nature photography, and usually in black and white, but also color, but just beautiful, and these are scenes that are very familiar to me at Sea Ranch. This is a very special chair, so my, my dad's mom, my, my nana, had needle pointed this, this chair, and I don't know, she probably did it in the 50s, who knows. It was tired, and it was a picture, it was like a rose on maroon background, a yellow rose, and I don't know, I never loved it, but at the same time, sentimental value, and I appreciated the handwork. It was a needle point, and Chantal would see it, and she said, oh, we should, we should refresh the chair, and I agreed, yes, the wheel was broken, we needed to refinish it, and she said, well, how about re, re, reupholstering it, and I was, I was really, really reluctant to reupholster it, because I was like, oh, it's sentimental, so over time, I was thinking about it, and I thought, you know, she's right, so I told her, I said, okay, Chantal, if you can find a fabric that is like an Alicia McCarthy painting, and she is, she's a San Francisco artist, I think she's in Oakland, and she is, she does these almost like plaids and stripes in really bright colors, so Chantal goes away, takes the chair, and she surprises me with this chair, and she designed it, it is reupholstered this black and white fabric, graphic fabric, and then she designed and had the upholsterer put the brickbrack, I think it's brickbrack, and ribbons in these beautiful designs and these beautiful colors, and I, I love this chair so much, and it just makes me think of her, and it kind of was like the synthesis of our collaboration in the house, because she gave it to me right before we moved in, and the whole friendship that we've developed in collaboration is just really special, and this is kind of like the epitome of that whole, or the culmination of all of that, and this is another portrait of a number for a significant birthday that my husband and I shared last year, and Kim Frosian again, and this is another Clyde Butcher of the swamps in the Everglades, here's a couple cigar boxes that I've painted, and I used to love doing that, and again another of the Clyde Butcher, and Chantal had this, this cushion, this reupholstered, and there's this lovely leather, and I said, I want a bright color, but nothing too dramatic, and I think it's just such a pretty touch of orange here, and then over here, we, we got a new bed, which I, I didn't want anything really fussy or fancy, and so we found this, and then I made this quilt for, for the bed, and it's all, it was machine pieced, I spent a good portion of a, I don't know, many months piecing it, and it's all, each square is different, and again, it's just, it's all linen and cotton, and then I'm, I have been hand, I'm not even done, I'm almost, there's a couple pins left, I just have to do the bottom, but it's all hand quilted, so I've spent the last, I don't know, six months just doing the hand quilting, and it's the first one I've ever done, kind of reminiscent of my grandma, and I think she would be so proud, and I think she would love it. She liked color as much as I do, and then another felted rug, which I liked having the round shape here, it was kind of like with all of this, you know, squares and rectangles that I have incorporated into the house, I like having these passages of, you know, a round or, you know, oval shape, and this is our, our lovely little balcony off of our prime, off of our master bedroom, and this, this was part of the original, when it converted into a house, this was here, and I one time had somebody knock on the door, said, oh yeah, I lived in your house when it was a commune in the 60s in Stanford, this older woman had come by, and there used to be a staircase that would go right up here, it's, it's, you could never build this now, no one, it's not to code, no one would ever let you do that, but it, it was, it was fun to hear that story, and we love it, we come out here and we'll have coffee or a glass of wine, and it's got a beautiful view, we have a creek across the street, so it's quite lovely, and this is the primary bath, and this was an important, this was so important, because our bath, it was absolutely hideous, and this door is new, we had, we, we put the door in, because you used to go through an old walk-in, you know, kind of a walk-in closet around and come through this way into this small dark bathroom, so the window was here, but everything was dark tile and, you know, probably done in the 80s, so having this, you know, beautiful vanity and this beautiful stone, two sinks, and this, this is the same Moroccan tile, and these are all little mosaics that are fit together, and they come, you know, and so they come on 12-inch squares, super thick, this was very hard to install and to cut, and they just did a beautiful job, it's a different color wave, but it's the same pattern, and we just love this bathroom, and here we have a painting by Randall Sexton, who I, I, I studied with him a little bit, and he was a bit of a mentor for a while, and he passed away a few years ago, but he was a beautiful painter and a really, really lovely person. This is my, my sewing room studio project room, and this room was my daughter's room, and so when we went to remodel this room, we wanted to have a place for her to come and stay, and, you know, we didn't want to get rid of her bed, but I really needed a place to sew and do, do the projects that I like to do, and so Chantal designed this storage, which is, I mean, so beautiful and so functional, so I, every basket is a project, and then this nook bed, so Heather can come and stay, and there's a little storage down there, and it's got this really adorable little niche and light, and it's almost a queen size, it's like a double size bed, so it's just great, so we have a little more, you know, area to sleep, but it doesn't take up the whole room, and so then we have a nice big work table. I keep my sewing machine here most of the time. This is an artist, he does collage, Michael Cutlip, and he, I just thought, I just love the colors, and so it's all cut paper or torn paper, and then this piece right here is another Suzanne Fraser, and again, it's a print, and she does such a great job of layering, so you can see it's almost like translucent, like, almost like tissue paper over, but it's actually a print, and then the rug, this is a felted rug by Peace Industries, which was based in San Francisco. It's been, it's an Iranian technique of felting the rug, and they have, you know, very modern designs, but a very old-fashioned technique. We have a few of these, and they're just, they're just such fabulous, beautiful, functional rugs. It's all wool, obviously, and hand-dyed, and here is our upstairs guest bathroom, and this was interesting because the door, the way they constructed this, the house on this side, there was this little niche, and for some reason, somebody had put in all hollow core doors in the house, and we had all the doors upstairs replaced, and this one was a little trickier because we had to have this little niche taken off, and this bathroom was made, I selected the tiles all from fire clay at their, they had a boneyard in San Jose, so over the course of a year, I collected all of the tiles, and we kludged together, and this was done before this remodel, but we put it all together. I wanted these little accent tiles, and around the window, and then in the shower, but Chantal wanted to update this, and kind of bring it to the, kind of have it fit in with the rest of the house, so we got the new mirror, and sconces, and then painted these. These are the original cabinets from when we first bought the house, so we never changed them, but she painted this dark black, and then found this black and white wallpaper that just really makes this such a cozy little, you know, bathroom, and we just really love it, but it was fun to have like the mix of the old tiles, and put it all together, and then have, you know, have her come in, and put in the more modern sconces, and window, and then use the dark black. Home for me is a place where friends and family can collect and feel at home, feel welcome, feel comfortable. As much as we have, you know, art and things that we find that are, you know, maybe beautiful, and maybe considered precious in some ways, we always wanted to have that comfort, and it, you know, casual, it's not a welcoming, you know, family, friends, dinner parties, just collecting people. I also love having a space, you know, home where I can come in, and, you know, be by myself, and, you know, I appreciate everything that we've done every single day, every time I walk in, so this is really truly our home. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.