As first impressions go the searing landscape and ethereal warning issued by artist Whitney Bedford is a stirring welcome. In the Vero Beach entry where her work hangs, the message is clear: The art and artists within are fellow inhabitants, or close to it. “Whitney has been quietly doing strong work for a long time and is someone I’ve collected for probably 20 years, but this was the first time she’s gone to this scale so I got very excited,” says the homeowner, who bought the trio of ink and oil panels specifically for the floating entry wall in her family’s second home. “This piece is about growth and decay. It speaks to climate change—it’s got incredible punch and interest. I kind of love that it’s the first thing you see when you come in.”
Past the entry into the living room, Bedford’s potent introductory remarks shift into heady conversation, thanks to a shimmering bindis mirror in the living room by India-based artist Bharti Kher. An imposing Rashid Johnson collage speaks assuredly from a chartreuse dining room wall, and in fact, at every turn, the home’s fluid living spaces pulse with radiant, unabashed expression. For this New York–based collector and her husband—she, an art school–trained former graphic designer and longtime trustee of the Brooklyn Museum, who also serves on the boards of arts nonprofits Creative Time and Pioneer Works; he, a businessman and art lover; and together, serious collectors for the last two decades—it’s all about “the creative aspect…that conversation between art, design, and space,” says the homeowner. “These pieces speak to me,” she says of their collection focused largely on contemporary and abstract works by women and artists of color. “We’re big believers in social justice and social change, and living with this art reinforces those ideas.”
First, though, they had to reinforce, or rather, reimagine, the home’s layout to better meet their desire for open spaces for entertaining, ample walls for art, and an easy, livable retreat where their four adult children, soon to be starting families of their own, would have plenty of privacy. “We were drawn to this house for its big double lot,” she says of the home in the Windsor community, but an oddly angled pool and catawampus wings off the rear of the house swallowed much of the property, obfuscating the flow. Architect Hope Dana of Platt Dana Architects reconfigured the pool area into an inviting courtyard—and a stage for a monumental tile commission by Wisconsin-based artist Michelle Grabner—and added new guest quarters above the garage. Dana opened the floor plan and built loggias to extend outdoor living space on every floor. The overhaul gives “a sense of the outside even when you’re inside....The flow is very porous,” says the architect. “The house doesn’t feel grand, even though it is. It feels intimate.”
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Interior designer Ellen Hamilton of New York–based Hamilton Design Associates built on that sense of intimacy to further prep a fluid canvas for contemporary art. “We’ve worked together on previous projects and developed a shorthand,” says the homeowner. Hamilton drew her Florida-meets-Milan inspiration from her clients’ Italian heritage “but with a 21st-century flair.” To wit: Italian walnut cabinetry and terrazzo floors, with custom stuccoed walls that suggest a gently aged patina. Fornace Brioni tile in the kitchen and the owners’ bathroom adds artful graphic dimension, as does Gucci laminated wallpaper on a guest room wardrobe. “That was Ellen pushing the envelope. Instead of traditional closets she said let’s do something cool, and she knows I have the appetite for that,” the homeowner says.
What Hamilton didn’t know, however, throughout the two-year process of designing the home, was which art pieces her client was selecting and where those works might end up. The owner didn’t exactly know either—the large Johnson (the one piece Hamilton saw prior) and the Bedford piece were the only ones she’d prepegged, because of their size. Others she pulled from storage or other places because they would come alive in Florida’s light. “It’s so different from New York or anywhere else; it begs to have high-impact art and color,” says the owner. “I love the creative aspect of curating the art we live with, but I don’t think of art as decor or needing to go with the decor. We buy pieces that move us, and then it’s fun to figure out how it all works together.”
Which made installation day fun, especially when the owners’ art delivery truck arrived concurrently with Hamilton’s furniture selections. “We were absolutely blown away as we watched those pieces come off the truck,” says Hamilton. A Hassan Hajjaj portrait was hung in the breakfast nook, where it seems to have inspired the kitchen’s yellow and black tile, but no. The dining area salon wall—a collage of portraiture and other “smalls”—came together seamlessly and harmoniously with Hamilton’s sleek banquette and Ulivi Salotti chairs. A Svenja Deininger abstract was hung in a guest bedroom, where it sings against Hamilton’s hushed rose palette. “The surfaces of her paintings are so amazing, and I love her use of color,” says the homeowner. “It felt made to go in that room.”
Well, perhaps, but not by overt design or simple luck. Call it fate by conversation, by being intuitively in sync with one’s co-collaborator. “The art is such a self-expression of my client, our muse,” says Hamilton. “It’s only fitting that the design mirrors that simultaneous expression.”
Featured in our September/October 2022 issue. Interior Design by Hamilton Design Associates; Architecture by Hope Dana; Consulting Architect: Hoos Architecture; Landscape Design by Hoos Architecture and Aiello Landscape; Photography by Thomas Loof; Styling by Mieke Ten Have; Written by Stephanie Hunt.
