making magic in spaces
// project: pied-à-terre
by kendall morgan
Dallas-based designer Alice Cottrell makes magic in spaces of every size and every style.
The very best interior designers have honed their aesthetic into something instantly recognizable—regardless of architecture or a particular client’s taste. And, with her use of oversized furniture and love of epically patterned walls, Alice Cottrell has perfected her luxurious mix. One that looks just right wherever she employs it—be it a Turtle Creek townhouse or a modernist Marfa hotel.
Before she ever took on a private client, the native Houstonian mastered her methodology in New York as a hotel designer, including (funnily enough) a stint working for a firm that created all of Donald Trump’s properties in Atlantic City.
A graduate of Texas Christian University, Cottrell returned to her home state in 1990 to work for Wyndham Hotels. Post 9/11, the economic downturn meant her bigger jobs
// project: glam fam abode
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project: marfa hotel
were on pause, but a serendipitous offer from a friend led her to an entirely different part of the industry.
“I designed a restaurant for a friend, and she said, ‘I don’t have a hostess, will you help me fill in for a couple of weeks until I find somebody?’ I said sure, and ended up helping her for a couple of years. That’s how I started getting clients. When people see your work when they’re dining in the restaurant, they already have a connection to the type of work that I do.”
That eatery was chef/owner Tracy Miller’s pioneering Deep Ellum bistro Local. Cottrell’s warm mix of industrial with mid-century modern garnered her fans from the moment it opened its doors in 2003 in the historic Boyd Hotel. Today, Cottrell continues to office out of the top floor of the very same century-old building on Elm Street.
Though working in residential wasn’t an ultimate goal, Cottrell found she took to it like a duck to water, employing the tips and tricks she garnered over 20 years in the commercial realm.
// project: glam fam abode
// project: glam fam abode
FALL IN L VE WITH TIMELESS
CONTEMPORARY FOLLOW US
“The one thing I absolutely LOVE about residential is, when I was working on a hotel towards the end, there would be 30 people giving their opinion on one color board,” she laughs. “They can’t decide what they want for lunch, much less what color would work for 15 years. In residential, it’s a snap—there are four people max who have an opinion, so that was a dream right there.”
Cottrell developed a hyper-organized system that starts with Post-it® floor plans and ends with organized three-
ring binders that hold every detail of a client’s project. By moving a piece of furniture via sticky note, she can avoid the cost of creating a CAD drawing while making sure every piece has its proper place.
“If we don’t like a chair in the master bedroom, we peel it up and move it over the guest bedroom,” she explains. “I don’t want people to buy anything they don’t absolutely need. We’re really mindful about the space and flow of how much furniture to put in the room.”
// cobalt homes | nimmo architecture
// project: bachelorette pad
// project: creative duo’s townhouse
Cottrell loves small spaces—her apartment is a dainty 750 square feet—but she is equally fond of oversized furniture. She tends to anchor her rooms with lavish sofas covered in stain-resistant commercial fabrics by A. Rudin in Los Angeles or Kisabeth in Fort Worth.
“I’m known for big custom sofas,” she says. “I want everyone to be really comfortable when they get home
at night. Everyone who can afford an interior designer works really hard, and I want them to be able to sink into a down-wrapped sofa when they get home.”
The designer tends to prefer her furniture to speak softly, to let a client’s art, book collection—or even the walls— have their conversational moment.
// project: jetsetter’s apartment
// project: bachelorette pad
It wouldn’t be untoward to say Cottrell never met wallpaper she didn’t like. From Andy Warhol murals by the Brooklyn-based Flavor Paper to more demure designs by Hermes or David Rockwell for Maya Romanoff, the designer makes the most of an accent wall or guest bathroom, yet functionality is always top of mind.
“The commercial-grade vinyls are so good in powder baths when you have a lot of little kids peeing it up on the walls. With a lot of our jobs, the clients have grandkids, so you have to be mindful. With Flavor Paper, you can wipe it clean with Windex!”
This mix of beauty and practicality has her client base returning to her year after year. Because she doesn’t take jobs just for the money, she has built deep relationships that endure as families change and grow through starter abodes to second homes to smaller, empty nester spaces.
“We grow to be part of the family. I know that sounds trite, but people actually say, “Do you want to come over for Thanksgiving?’”
When Cottrell defines her work as durable,
contemporary, timeless, and elegant, one has to agree with her. By avoiding trends while embracing color and comfort, her work is ready-made to withstand the test of time.
“Just like you walk into Local, you can’t say it’s the ‘80s or the 40s; I want my jobs to feel like you don’t know what decade it is.”
photography: steven karlisch + casey dunn
credit: gary hatch + stylist: russell brightwell
// alicecottrellinteriordesign.com
// project: glam fam abode
JANUARY 21 ‑ MARCH 4, 2023 AT KIRK HOPPER FINE ART 1426 N. RIVERFRONT BLVD, DALLAS • KIRKHOPPERFINEART.COM
CHARLES FIELD FROM THE FIGURE INTO THE LANDSCAPE
by cinzia
MAPS FROM A HYBRID REALITY
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valiant, 2022 mixed media on canvas
Yuni Lee at Ro2 Art by Cinzia Franceschini
Ro2art opens in their newest gallery space on Bataan in the Tin District with the vibrant and energetic large-scale paintings by Yuni Lee are much more than abstract works of art. They move beyond the pictorial gesture, the expressionistic and sentimental use of color, and the purely formal intention, to capture collective paradigms of
concontemporaneity. The patterns selected by the Dallas-based artist in Mindscapes unfurl on the canvases, repeating and interrupting, merging to create intricate networks. They embody a distinctive aspect of present-day reality: the interconnection between nature and technology.
// regium (royalty), 2021 mixed media on canvas
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imperium, 2022 mixed media on canvas
// maris
(sea), 2021 mixed media on canvas
In this series of 14 paintings displayed at Ro2 Art Gallery, Yuni Lee manages to create a visual bridge between natural and human-constructed worlds. The diversified shapes draw on both the repertory of organic elements and technology. Stylized forms of flowers, branches, fruits, and leaves blend with the cold geometry of circuit boards, microchips, and electronic devices. Lee juxtaposes abstract and instinctive forms with rigid programmed designs through a rhythmic and playful approach; she mixes colorful brush strokes with modular grids, revealing the interdependent relationship between natural and artificial structures. All in one glance.
Mindscapes is a refined work of assemblage: piece by piece, like an interlocking puzzle, it composes hybrid landscapes in which nature and technology are more and more synchronized. Considered as a whole, the solo exhibition questions the hierarchies between humans and the environment. It invites us to consider a more harmonious and balanced interplay between the parts. It is a sensitive wake-up call to be more aware of the anthropic impact on nature.
scintilla (spark), 2021 mixed media on canvas
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silver gate, 2022 mixed media on canvas
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Yuni Lee realizes the entire exhibited body of workbetween 2021 and 2023, prompted by urgent ecological issues. However, the recent series also demonstrates the refined technical skill of this emerging mixed-media artist. Her large-scale paintings combine different techniques and materials, with a surprisingly multidisciplinary and multimodal approach: from painting and photography to experiment with printmaking and drawing techniques.
Not only that but Lee’s mindscapes are also hybrid landscapes in terms of cultural references. Lee, born in South Korea and educated at the University of North Texas in
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radix (root), 2021 mixed media on canvas
Dallas, manages to mix Western and Eastern visual traditions, creating profoundly multicultural artworks. Her paintings draw on Korean folk art, particularly Minhwa, characterized by simplicity and purity of forms. Like these traditional itinerant artists, Lee composes a repertory of natural shapes and stylized botanical forms, in which explosive spots of color are juxtaposed with graphic and linear marks, typical of printmaking style and engravings. Lee’s ornamental patterns echo Korean visual imagery and blend with
// felicitas (bliss), 2021 mixed media on canvas
traces of abstract and modernist art, creating a distinctive cultural syncretism.
Among the many remarkable pieces on display at the Ro2 Art, mention must be made of the monumental Aurea Lux (Golden Light). The giant painting stands out due to its golden background and extended format. The organic pattern merges with pixelations and checkerboards that hint at the digital world, composing a kind of imaginary map. Whether a glittering decorative frieze reminiscent of Klimt-style mosaics, or a monumental conceptualplanisphere, Aurea Lux (Golden Light) opens up to multiple influences.
The most interesting and innovative aspect of Yuni Lee’s artistic practice is precisely her spontaneous ability to synthesize and integrate. Organic and geometric, natural and technological, and traditional and contemporary elements merge to create hybrid landscapes, which do not lose the fragments of their individual identities but create a new one together. Mindscapes are mapping -genetic? geographical? - of an interconnected world with a constantly changing DNA. Yuni Lee’s ‘maps’ of blossoms and circuitry have the potential to render this articulated complexity in a single image: a unified, symbiotic environment in search of its new internal balance.
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ro2art.com
// aurea lux (golden light), 2021 mixed media on canvas
The Dallas Architecture Forum is for everyone who wants to experience inspired design. The Forum presents an award-winning Lecture Series that brings outstanding architects,interior designers, landscape architects and urban planners from around the world, as well as Symposia, Receptions at architecturally significant residences, and Panel Discussions on issues impacting North Texas.
dallasarchitectureforum.org
Educate Experience Enjoy
Engage
by Hardy Haberman
Part sculpture, part architecture, a space that has a visceral effect on the visitor, the Interfaith Peace Chapel at Cathedral of Hope is the final work of architect Philip Johnson. Its curving walls and roofs offer no straight lines and in some ways is disorienting. That was intentional. It feels almost organic, yet very substantial and both inside and out is has a grace that leaves visitors in awe.
Intended as a space for people of all faiths, there are no outward symbols of religion, yet when one enters the main hall you are overwhelmed by the feeling that this is someplace special, someplace sacred. Unapologetically modern the peace chapel pushed the boundaries of construction. With no right angles each structuralmember was different and had to be designed by computer to match the asymmetrical curves of the interior and exterior.
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2022 MEMBERS
Carneal Simmons Contemporary Art
Conduit Gallery
Craighead Green Gallery
Cris Worley Fine Arts
Erin Cluley Gallery
Galleri Urbane Marfa+Dallas
Holly Johnson Gallery
Keijsers Koning
Kirk Hopper Fine Art
Laura Rathe Fine Art
PDNB Gallery
Pencil on Paper Gallery
RO2 Art
Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden
Cunningham Architects of Dallas worked in collaboration with Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects to finalize the plans and supervise the project. Completed in 2010, the 8000 sq. foot chapel was created from a hand crafted model made by Johnson and structural details were engineered by Thornton Thomasetti. The
project was originally to ba part of a great cathedral which would join the chapel and built in the same style. It remains unbuilt as of now.
Johnson said, “when you work for God, you have to elevate your sights. There is only one client who can
give you that feeling.” The Peace Chapel embodies that sentiment as it’s interior naturally draws the eye upward toward the soaring 46 foot ceiling and asymmetrical skylight.
Light plays an important role in the building and sunlight paints changing images across the interior walls. There is even a skylight in the floor of the entranceway that illuminates the lower level. Designed to be ecologically responsible the building has a LEED certification and
utilizes every saving lighting throughout.
The space has become a popular venue for not only faith based groups, but for individual and corporate events Comfortably seating up to 175 people, the main hall can be reconfigured for banquets or special seating arrangements. Weddings, memorials and special concerts are often booked into the space and the building has additional meeting spaces in the basement that work well for smaller groups.
The Interfaith Peace Chapel sits on the campus of Cathedral of Hope, the largest predominately LGBTQ congregation in the world. Across a plaza from the chapel is the main Church feature another Philip Johnson design, the bell wall.
It was designed as a memorial to those who have died
from AIDS related causes and serves as the entranceway to the main church sanctuary.
The chapel and Cathedral of Hope are located at 5910 Cedar Springs Road in Dallas.
// interfaith peace chapel
MODERN SPACES 1717 Arts Plaza #2307 // $3,750,000 5846 La Vista Drive // $1,499,000 8906 Forest Hills Blvd // $1,200,000 4765 Chapel Hill Road // $3,500,000 FAISAL HALUM c: 214.240.2575 fhalum@briggsfreeman.com LORI ERICSSON c. 214.235.3452 lericsson@davidgriffin.com KEVIN MCGOVERN c. 214.649.4446
JACOB MOSS c: 214.335.1719 jacob.moss@compass.com
kevin.mcgovern@compass.com
listen to the podcasts >>
ART: Kevin Vogel ARCHITECTURE: Bernbaum/Magadini
REALESTATE: Faisal Halum
// minotti brasilia bed, airy and elevated from the ground, the sports a large wooden equipped headboard that embraces the padded part of the bed available. sminkinc
// the whale, the largest living animal in our time, is being honored. available. softicated
// graphic wave shaped stool available. victoria-maria
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WALKING TOURS
Discover the Arts District + Fair Park Tram Tour
Ad Ex
SHEPARD FAIREY + GABRIELLE GOLIATH
Dallas Contemporary
MARK DI SUVERO: STEEL LIKE PAPER
Nasher Sculpture Center
MOVEMENT: THE LEGACY OF KINETICISM
Dallas Museum Of Art
PHOENIX RISING: XU BING
Crow Museum Of Asian Art
I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: ART AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN
The Modern Art Museum
CHARLES TRUETT WILLIAMS: THE ART OF THE SCENE
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art
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