Mosaic Houses: Piece by Piece

From Westside Today
By Katie Grim

SANTA MONICA – KATIE GRIM reports on the mosaic trend that’s taking the Westside by storm. But this time, it’s not just picture frames and tabletops that are being jazzed up with the tile art – it’s houses!

The most unconventional of building materials adorn a little house in Venice: bottle caps, toy soldiers, shattered mirrors, broken tiles, empty wine bottles, buttons, ceramic figurines and more. In 1994, owners Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran decided to mosaic their front yard, a project that later spread to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, ultimately taking over the entire property, inside and out. The result of their artistic fancy is a stunning mosaic structure, reminiscent of the work of Spanish architect Antonio Gaudí, that looks more like an oversized sculpture than a home.

Just four miles away in Santa Monica, another couple that had not yet heard of the Venice house had a similar idea. After helping out with a mosaic project at her son’s school six years ago, Louise Farnam set aside her needlepoint and started tiling coffee tables and lamps. The mosaic bug caught on, and when her husband, Aziz, built a short garden wall in front of their home, he covered it in – you guessed it – mosaics. At the urging of their neighbors, they continued on from there and have since covered nearly the entire exterior of their home.

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