Designed to evoke the look of decorative tile, this piece transformed a functional staircase.

Created during the 2020 Covid quarantine, this project was done — in part — to keep creating while public life, galleries, and events were on pause. During that season, I began reimagining my home as both a home studio and a personal exhibit space — a place where art could still live, evolve, and be experienced (via my social posts) even in isolation. 

Months before Covid began rapidly spreading around the world, my husband and I had traveled to Las Vegas. While he was attending a conference, I explored some of the more out-of-the-way areas around the Strip. After walking down a flight of stairs at the Fashion Show Mall I happened to look up and see that the risers were each painted a single color, creating a stacked rainbow, I was transfixed. Those risers, along with another painted staircase in the area, inspired me to someday paint a stair riser mural. That “someday” came sooner than expected, as the 2020 quarantine happened mere months after we returned home. I had the supplies and plenty of time on my hands, so I began the process of exploring what to paint and how I was going to do it.

Though the Vegas stairwell inspired me, I wanted to create my own design. The concept for the Faux tiles comes from years of travel and an affinity to the colorful patterns I first discovered in pottery found in shops around Tuscany during trips to Italy in 1997 and 2001. Other influences from Italy included mosaic tile found in many of the ruins, with the ones in Pompeii being particularly fascinating. Later travels to Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and Greece expanded my attraction to include similarly decorative architecture, pottery, tiles, and patterned surfaces in those countries. Prior to developing the art concept for this project, I researched Italian, Greek, Moroccan, Spanish, Mediterranean, Mexican Talavera, and some Islamic tile patterns.

I found the ornate and colorful decorative patterns in purples, greens, oranges, blues, and yellows against a gleaming white background particularly appealing, and decided that palette would work best in the hall with the vivid yellow I had planned to paint on the walls of the stairway and the upstairs hall.

Initially, I thought about hand-drawing patterns — inspired by a Zentangle workshop I had taken in 2017 — for each individual square “tile,” but a friend suggested using stencils to make the process easier. After creating an assortment of Zentangle, Zendala, Mandala, and border patterns to practice and build my muscle memory, I decided to heed her advice and work with patterns cut into plastic. The first stencils I tried were pre-cut versions, which allowed me to experiment before investing in additional materials or equipment. Using those stencils, I tested a few different paints before choosing acrylic paint pens  — including Uni Posca and Pebeo markers — for the project. Since this was my first project of this kind, practicing on canvas helped me refine my color combinations before selecting the final mix.

In total, I used 34 stencils to create 124 colored patterns, repeating select favorites in different colorways. I also custom-made stencils to keep the 6" x 6" patterns evenly spaced, centered, and aligned, even though the bottom two risers were different in height and length from the others. Once I had chosen the final mix, I digitized the designs to plan the placement of each pattern and color combination from top to bottom. Using acrylic paint pens, I then hand-painted the individual tile patterns across the risers, turning the staircase into a rhythmic, color-filled installation.

To complete the transformation, I painted the entire stairwell and the upstairs hall in a vivid yellow, replacing the original dull off-white so the architecture itself would carry the same brightness and energy as the riser mural. 

The finished staircase became more than a decorative feature. It became part painted installation, part living portfolio, and part reflection of a time when making art at home became its own way of moving forward.

Title: Faux Tiles
Size: [(3.33' * 0.5625" × 13 = 24.35'] + [(4.29' * 0.5625') =
2.41'] + [(8' * 0.5625" = 4.25"] = 31.26 sf
Site/City: Main St. Benson, NC. 
Medium: Acrylic marker & interior latex paint.
Date: April 2020 - September 2020.