Corpus Christi Caller-Times
Texas – Sunday Homes, Sunday August 9, 1998
Bright neon streams that intertwine and spiral, flowing into a river landscape on the hallway ceiling, capture a visitor’s attention upon entering the home of Laura and Tony Pletcher.
This original, electrifying feel runs throughout the home in both artwork and furnishings – the inspiration of award-winning Houston designer Kelly Gale Amen.
Amen’s unorthodox use of color, pattern and placement not only transformed the home eight years ago, Laura pletcher says, it opened the Pletchers up to new ways of seeing and living.
Take, for example, their art collection.
“All our artwork was dreamy and pastel,” Laura Pletcher says. No large canvases, no bold colors or images.
Then Amen swept in with his color wand, depositing 28 hues on their walls and ceilings, and adding more later.
“It was scary at first,” Pletcher says with a laugh, remembering how her nearly monotone house became so colorful. “When they started putting paint on the walls, we had obscene names for the shades, ‘nursing baby poop,’ and ‘Pepto-Bismol vomit.'”
But the Pletchers quickly came around as the rooms came together.
Taking the spouses on an art gallery trip, Amen asked each of them to pick out a canvas for the new rooms. Laura Pletcher chose a massive painting of a swimmer. Tony Pletcher picked a vibrant cafe scene.
At first, neither was thrilled with the other’s choice. But that changed too.
“I didn’t like the one Tony picked out, but now it is one of my favorite pieces in our home,” Laura Pletcher says.
Tony Pletcher says Amen opened him up to color and experimental art.
“Kelly taught me that I didn’t have to have a degree in art,” he says. “That I didn’t have to be a patron of the arts – though I was – that all I really needed to do was to look at art and see if I liked it and if it fit my budget.
“He taught us the best way to get into art was to find local artists that were just beginning their careers,” he says.
Over the last few years, the Pletchers, who are closely connected with the South Texas Institute for the Arts, have collected many up-and-coming artists as well as established Corpus Christi artists, including William Wilhelmi, Betty Mobley, Ed and Cornelia Gates and Barbara Riley.
One of the lessons Amen taught the couple was that art didn’t just hang on walls, Tony Pletcher says.
“Pieces of furnishings could be art, pillows could be art,” PLetcher says.
Amen-designed furniture, made from solid cast metal, creates sculptural effects poolside in the garden and in a dining area. His pillows, fashioned of contrasting fabrics such as leather with silk, and outlined with fringe, tassels, ribbons or ruffles, effuse personality.
“I want them to be toys, I don’t want a sofa of little pretty things,” Amen says. The pillows can be turned and twisted, pouffed and punched into a variety of shapes.
Change is essential to Amen’s philosophy, he says.
“I can’t stand a house that always appears perfect, as if no one lives there.”
Laura Pletcher says she would feel comfortable moving any piece of furniture or artwork into any room in the house – and with Amen’s help, she frequently does.
Amen calls it his “magic flip” – a technique that lets the owner see the home in a new way.
“We change the room, turn it upside down,” he says. A bedroom becomes a sitting room. A dining table moves to a new room, turning the dining room into the library.
Amen’s original concept for the house allows for continuing flexibility.
“A fabric maybe on one wall in one room and on a pillow in another room,” he says. “There is a subtle entwining of color and fabric and texture in a visual juxtaposition. If it’s good, if it works in one room, if you love it, it will work in any room of the house.”
“It makes something feel new, though it’s not new,” he says. “It lets the home become exciting again.”
