Phoenix Patrick
The art is largely abstract (“I need to put the geometric next to the organic next to the floral”), works by Carol Anthony, Simon Nicholson, and Robert Vickers sharing wall space with a mirror wrapped in the kind of frame one associates with Old Master paintings and a pair of big tole birds that Olsen placed on either side of the stove hood. “My pseudo-narrative is that the house was renovated in the 1940s,” Olsen explains of a fiction that gave him permission to combine granny fabrics with café-society special effects—such as the white trompe l’oeil drapery (created by decorative artist Agustin Hurtado) that seems to ruffle the guest room’s walls—an Art Moderne chest of drawers, and vinyl roller shades that have been finished to match. “I like to take things to the edge of crazytown,” Olsen says, “but still keep it comfortable and warm.” Pearson painted the motif of the guest beds’ coverlets onto the floor, so it appears as if the red-white-and-blue printed linen-cotton has flooded the room, entirely obscuring the original floorboards.
In Olsen’s own bedroom, Pearson dappled the white walls and ceiling with colorful painted checks, kinetic accents that were inspired by the bedspread and bring to mind Piet Mondrian’s 1940s masterwork Broadway Boogie Woogie.
