Cheri and Gonzalo of the Mosaic Tile Home Specific Their Love for Every Different One Tile at a Time

On an unassuming residential road in Venice Seashore, California, nestled inside a row of homes that look similar to some other, there’s a glistening, gleaming, resplendent mass referred to as the Mosaic Tile Home. It’s clear from the sidewalk that one thing magical is brewing on the opposite facet of a spiky, mirror-and-tiled lined fence that faces the road. What that may be, precisely, requires a deep dive into the ceramic property. 

Whereas the Mosaic Tile Home is open to most by way of self-guided Saturday afternoon excursions at $20 a pop, I’m fortunate sufficient to search out myself personally escorted in regards to the kaleidoscopic grounds by none apart from the girl of the home herself, Cheri Pann. She and her husband, Gonzalo Duran, have lived at 1116 Palms Boulevard since March 1, 1994, once they purchased the home in its unique, ho-hum state. A grainy picture of the pre-tiled iteration of the home is displayed in a plastic body on a tiled bistro desk on the entrance of the entrance yard. The unique home seems pedestrian and quaint, painted in what seems to be like a lightweight moss shade with purple trim. Whereas different consumers may need merely thrown on a contemporary coat of paint or executed a little bit of landscaping work and referred to as it a day, Cheri and Gonzalo had different concepts. 

“We purchased the property to construct our artwork studios,” Cheri tells me on the prime of the tour. She has rust purple hair and a giant grin she flashes on the finish of most sentences. “Then we began tiling it instantly.” After 29 years of nonstop tiling, the Mosaic Tile Home is now a veritable fortress of prismatic marvel, with fully tiled pathways, archways, partitions, benches, and sculptures all through. 

Cheri slowly leads me by way of the entrance yard, her delicate voice bouncing in regards to the shimmering constructions with the sunshine. I comply with in awe. “I make all of the tiles you see,” she says proudly. “Gonazalo makes the blue and white ones as a result of his main in artwork faculty was illustration, and he likes as an example quotes; they’re all over the place. However largely I make the tile after which he units the tile and makes the shape.”

Cheri and Gonzalo are each skilled fantastic artists: Cheri’s labored in paint for the final 63 years, whereas Gonzalo makes a speciality of portray and setting up automaton sculptures. “I’ve a Grasp’s in Superb Artwork from college, in order that’s what units this home other than people artwork,” she says. “All the things’s executed by way of the eyes of painters. That’s what we each do, primarily.” Neither Cheri nor Gonzalo had any actual expertise in mosaic tiles earlier than they began tiling their home collectively, however nonetheless, they felt compelled to take action. 

The extraordinary love that’s shared between these two artists radiates from every tiled element, from the love letters to Cheri that Gonzalo has painted onto his illustrated tiles, to the hearts patterned all through the property, to the numerous different tender moments embedded into the design. I ask Cheri how she and Gonzalo met. “He was working at [Culver City paint shop] Nova Colour, the place I used to be shopping for paint, and I reached over-the-counter and began kissing him,” she says instantly. “And right here we’re, 31 years later! So it pays to achieve over-the-counter and kiss somebody.” I giggle nervously, replaying the current interactions I’ve had with the shopkeepers on the artwork retailer in my neighborhood. 

“I assume on your technology, it’s actually exhausting to satisfy individuals; it’s a must to go surfing,” Cheri continues, her ideas unspooling gently as we stroll. “However, see, I’ve to let you know: there’s any individual proper in entrance of you, and it’s a must to simply remember while you buy groceries, while you’re doing something. I met him whereas he was promoting paint, for goodness sake. It took a very long time although, as a result of he was a confirmed bachelor,” she admits. “It took him seven years to maneuver in. We’d already constructed the studios and the whole lot. I’d already been married twice although, so I didn’t care.”

Cheri guides me down a pathway to the facet of the home as I haplessly take photographs that don’t even come near capturing the encompassing splendor. “I get a kick out of sitting down and watching individuals discover and have a lot enjoyable,” she says of individuals like me visiting her Mosaic Tile Home for the primary time. “Typically it’s youngsters, however largely it’s grownup {couples}. It’s additionally good for me to get to have a look at it by way of any individual else’s eyes.” When she and Gonzalo first began internet hosting excursions again within the mid ‘90s, they’d have about 15 to twenty individuals come every month. However because the creation of Instagram a couple of decade in the past, that quantity has climbed to 50 to 150 guests a month, all funneling by way of throughout a three-hour window on Saturdays. 

When company arrive, they will take a print-out of options to search out across the grounds, together with an elephant with a rooster on prime, a flying man, an iguana, a panda, and, one in every of Cheri and Gonzalo’s newest additions, a dragon. However in any other case guests are inspired to discover in no matter route they’re pulled, selecting their very own journey. “I prefer it,” Cheri says of getting strangers in her house. “I allow them to discover, after which they get what they get from it. However I’m at all times blissful to reply questions, no downside.” 

We come across a person quietly tiling one of many home’s already tiled walled. “That is our unimaginable employee Gerardo,” says Cheri. “He’s been with us for 15 years. He works right here full-time. Gonzalo reveals him which tiles, and he’s the one who truly places the tiles on the wall now.” Every section of the home incorporates a fastidiously thought of amalgamation of porcelain oddities, scavenged doo-dads, and pre-loved tchotchkes. A curvature of espresso mugs loops into the sky to my left, inexperienced glass bottles melted flat in Cheri’s kiln swirl in a sample of concentric circles beneath my toes, and a big caterpillar bench protrudes from one of many partitions.

Cheri excitedly brings me to a small mirrored field that’s been constructed into the wall by the caterpillar bench. “That is going to have sneakers in it,” she explains. “We already had some sneakers in it, nevertheless it received moist from the entire rain.” She then ushers me into her studio to point out me the alternative sneakers in query. “The one time I’ll take individuals contained in the studio is that if they actually present curiosity in my loopy work,” she says as we enter a big room crammed with tables lined in tiles in varied phases of manufacturing. “However most individuals don’t even have a look at the work. They’re not non secular; they’re simply very private. Individuals don’t know methods to cope with that.” Two of the partitions in Cheri’s studio are lined in a sequence of brightly coloured portraits— one wall options work solely of Cheri, and the opposite is simply Gonzalo. “These are all Gonzalo, from hair to no hair,” she says along with her greatest smile but. 

A menagerie of miniature shoe collectible figurines is displayed on one in every of her work tables, which shall be positioned within the mirrored field within the wall. Like most of the constructing supplies utilized in the home, these sneakers had been a donation. Individuals carry gadgets to Cheri and Gonzalo for his or her mosaicing, generally even in truckloads. “Social media works rather well in that means too,” says Cheri. “You may say ‘I would like this’ and also you’ll get 400 items of it.” In addition they supply provides from the 99 Cents Retailer and Goodwill. 

By means of a door behind Cheri’s studio is Gonzalo’s studio, the place she and I discover him hunched over a workbench whereas carrying a metallic face masks and utilizing a sparking mechanical device. He greets us kindly, however is just too centered on the duty at hand for rather more than that. “Gonzalo will work on a challenge for a bit after which simply transfer onto the following,” says Cheri. “Males are so completely different from us. Haven’t you observed that?”  

We transfer on to the again of the yard past their two studios. Cheri reveals me her sizzling tub that’s shrouded in a cover of tiled arches. She makes use of it each evening. We head again within the route we got here in, the place Cheri factors out a wall that depicts characters and scenes from Alice in Wonderland. As my tour with Cheri winds down, Gonzalo ambles out of his studio. He insists on taking a particular picture of me in a strategically positioned shard of a mirror. He tells me precisely the place to face, and positions my iPhone in entrance of the tiny mirror simply so, in order that he has the right angle to snap the image. “Now you’re a part of the city,” he says. “Hey, that’s a pleasant ring,” he provides as he arms the telephone again to me, little doubt assessing how he’d have the ability to incorporate the aquamarine stone on my finger into his subsequent challenge.  

The Mosaic Tile Home is greater than a home, and much more than a murals: it’s a journey, a bodily encapsulation of Cheri and Gonzalo’s love for each other, and their love for each other as artists. And for now, a minimum of, that journey continues, regardless of operating out of actual property. “He has extra concepts, and I say, ‘Effectively, I don’t suppose there are numerous partitions left right here,’” Cheri says. She explains how they’ve consulted with architects previously who’ve instructed them that they will’t tile above a sure portion of the home’s facade, so all they will do is paint. “We’ve to maneuver and begin with a brand new home,” Gonzalo jokes. Or is he?

Cheri and I’ve accomplished our loop of the grounds and discover ourselves again within the entrance yard on the base of an orange tree. A girl walks by the home’s entrance gate on the sidewalk and compliments Cheri on her stunning house. I ask her what her neighbors make of what she and Gonzalo have created. “Effectively, they prefer it, however virtually nobody on the block has seen the home,” she says. “They’re not drawn to mosaic tile; they take it with no consideration. Even the neighbors on both facet of us hadn’t come right here till lastly they visited final yr.”

“I’ll go to you anytime,” I inform her. And I imply it. It’s time to go, however I don’t need to go away. The Mosaic Tile Home is an escape from actuality; a magical realist dream world concocted by two abundantly beneficiant spirits united by their love of artwork, one another, and an insatiable want to maintain creating. “We had no clue that this was what this was going to grow to be— and that we’d nonetheless be obsessive about it,” Cheri says, reaching as much as choose one of many completely ripe oranges above her. I thank her for her kindness, and for therefore intimately opening up her house and coronary heart to me. “Yeah, somewhat too intimate, huh? However I’m a sharer. Cheri the sharer.”