Articles
Our friends Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran have been creating the Mosaic Tile House in Venice California for over a decade. Both of them are accomplished painters and ceramic artists. In their early 60’s, they’re still crazy about each other in a way that’s truly inspiring. Cheri and Gonzalo go salsa dancing on Wednesday nights with the shoes and the twirly flared-out skirts and the whole nine yards. Cheri was married once before, or maybe twice, or, well, whatever – she got it right this time. Gonzalo had eluded marriage altogether until one day when they were bike riding in the San Gabriel Valley, they passed some odd little church that announced it did marriages once a week. They thought it was funny, and one thought led to another.
I remember watching them on their bicycle built for two one Sunday, Cheri in the back in her black spandex and hot pink streamers coming out of the handlebars and Gonzalo with his mysterious smile and twinkling eyes, pedaling for both of them along a dry, L.A. riverbed. Just then we passed a dusty Mexican rodeo, plunked in the middle of modest suburban homes – a rodeo complete with bulls and wild horses and men in big hats practicing moves with their lariats underneath a faded Tecate banner. Some might see Cheri and Gonzalo as unlikely a couple as bikers and cowboys, but somehow with these two, it works!
Theirs is the house where I go to mosaic a couple times a week when I’m in town. It’s an amazing oasis of color and tongue-in-cheek kookiness, with the outdoor hot tub framed by Watts Towers-like structures of color, glints of mirror and cheeky porcelain kitsch swirling in a sea of turquoise through the sky with lacy bits of chayote vine trailing behind like a verdant comet. They’ve built a huge space onto their house that accommodates both a ceramic studio and room for their large, wildly beautiful paintings. As artists, they often reference each other’s work. They riff off of themes and tangents until the creative energy vibrates with Cheri’s intense reds and Gonzalo’s saucy visual treatises. This individual and collaborative artwork covers absolutely everything that’s not nailed down – and some of the things that are including the bathroom ceiling and the kitchen table.
But the most inspiring of all to me is the relationship they have, the life they’ve built — quirky and brave, colorful and funny and solid as a rock. The Mosaic Tile House is the audacious geography of Cheri and Gonzalo’s partnership It is a partnership and a place that somehow manage to balance life’s absurdities with its abundant potential for creative expression. It honors what appears in our path and on our doorsteps each and every day — the things precious and mundane, quirky or profane. I leave their mosaic kingdom each time reminded that life provides us that rich soup so often, and it’s our decision to pass it up or lick the bowl clean. I’m more than grateful for the reminder
Cinder Hypki
The “Mosaic Tile House” on Palms Boulevard is a landmark that attests to Venice’s taste for the strange and colorful. The home is covered in mosaic tiles, as if a wave of bright shards had swept over the house, leaving it drenched in a kaleidoscope of colors.
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It was love at first sight. One day in 1992 Cheri Pann walked into NovaColor (a family owned paint manufacturing plant in Culver City) to buy paint. She said “I need something permanent and bright that doesn’t fade” and Gonzalo Duran said “I’m your man!” And to this day they are busily striving for something permanent and bright and non-fading.
Among the quiet homes in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, one particular house is covered wall to wall with the most unique composition of colorful tiles, statues, and art. Curated by couple Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran and opened for public tours in 1997, the Mosaic Tile House creates a-one-of-a-kind atmosphere, merging stained glass with clay to create whimsical furnishings that seem as though they have come straight out of a childhood daydream.