Sonoma-based artist Kathryn Clark surveys a wall of her studio where a hand-stitched assemblage of pale-gray fabric swatches is affixed to a board with pearl-headed push pins. “Homage to Democracy,” as the work is called, is splashed in the light, and Clark, a self-described activist, is contemplating her next move.

The piece will become a 7×7-foot translucent tapestry representing both a map of Washington, D.C., and what Clark sees as the disintegration of government by the people, one cotton-organdy city block at a time. Clark arms herself with densely detailed city plans tattooed with colorful legends, bolts of cloth from one of San Francisco’s few remaining fabric stores, and a list of heady books that illuminate the smoldering social and political fires of the 21st century — predatory lending, demagoguery, money laundering, war-time refugees. From these sources, she produces large-format fabric works that express with quiet urgency the corrosive effects of the world’s most insidious threats, both visible and clandestine.

“There is this chipping away at our Constitution that happens daily now,” she says, gesturing toward what is the first in a series of quilt works that will include cities like Kyiv, Caracas, Hong Kong, Budapest, and London. “I offer a geopolitical perspective on politics through maps of cities where democracy is flailing.”

Clark moved to the town of Sonoma full time in July 2019 with her family after first purchasing her house, just a 15-minute walk from the Plaza, in 2011 as a getaway from San Francisco. “I love Sonoma all year, but fall and winter are really why I love it here,” she says. “The weekend crowds have mostly disappeared, the Plaza lighting ceremony kicks off the holiday season, and the restaurants shift their menus to reflect what’s growing around us.”

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Tallahassee, Florida, Clark is the product of a Bauhaus marriage: her father was an architect, her mother a textile artist who died of leukemia when Clark was only 17. She studied art and architecture and ultimately found her way to urban planning, where she worked under New Urbanism visionary Peter Calthorpe.

While her interest in architecture followed her father’s career, she did not associate her textile talent with her mother until she married, had a child, and began experimenting with painting and photography as a stay-at-home mom. “I remembered my mom’s huge loom,” she says. “And then I had an epiphany: No wonder I wanted to work in textiles.”

In 2011, as she was turning 40, the artist stumbled upon her calling, creating large-scale works that bring light to issues of social justice. “The goal of my work is to provoke a conversation,” she says. “But I’m an introvert, so this is my way of speaking out.”

Clark synthesizes the information she gathers from books, articles, podcasts, and Instagram feeds for months or even years before beginning to execute, vetting ideas and designs with organized peer reviews.

Public institutions, not private collections, are where she strives to have her work shown.

Her “Washington, D.C. Foreclosure Quilt,” was purchased by the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. The quilt-and-embroidery piece, rendered in linen, cotton, and recycled thread, documents the effects of the 2007 recession and the economic distress of the subprime mortgage crisis that lingered long after disappearing from the headlines. Comparable maps for Detroit, Cleveland, Miami, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and other municipalities followed.

In 2018 she completed “Paul Manafort Money Laundering Blanket,” which depicts the glittering zig-zagging of transcontinental bling from the U.S. to Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, Cyprus, and the Grenadines, in hand-embroidery and beading on cotton organdy and gold silk. Her “Refugee Stories,” shown at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California, uses embroidered panels to illustrate the path of Syrian refugees into Western Europe.

Clark, her husband, Dave, and their daughter had lived in San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood for 13 years before they bought the home in Sonoma. In the house, she discovered an original hand-colored drawing as well as a photocopy of a magazine feature about the home from April 1948.

The home had come in a kit designed by draftsman Alpha Sehlin, known for marketing “Affordable Swank for the WWII Generation.” Clark’s own take: “Mid-century for the working class.”

Also appealing was the compact, 950-square-foot floor plan, the third-of-an-acre lot crammed with raised garden beds, and a slower pace of life (locals are “more relaxed and less cutthroat” than in the city, she says). Among other improvements, Clark and her husband refurbished the kitchen and planted a dwarf olive tree in an established mini orchard of lemon, plum, apricot, pear, nectarine, and cherry trees.

She also decorated the walls with paintings, prints, drawings, and textural pieces by artists she finds inspiring, including Robert Motherwell, Kiki Smith, Sonya Philip, ReCheng Tsang, and her 83-year-old mentor, San Francisco artist Myrna Tatar.

Then she turned her attention to the yellow tumbledown shed in the backyard. After it was determined to be beyond rehabilitation, she tore it down and designed a gleaming-white, board-and-batten box to her own exacting specifications.

Measuring 640 square feet with a ceiling that soars to 16 feet at its peak, and large windows in loadbearing places that made Clark’s contractor squawk, the studio is a spry younger sibling to the main house across the courtyard. It features a storage loft, a guest bedroom, a small library-lounge, and a large trussed work table.

It’s here in her self-designed and purpose-built studio that Clark’s maps, fabrics, tracing paper, sewing machine, iron, rotary cutters, and spools of thread are scattered about like decorative objects: the tools of an artist whose work is anything but decorative.

The post Working out of Her Sonoma Studio, a Fabric Artist Takes a Stand on Our Political Moment appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

Hollie Greene and Jeff Rottman exchanged wedding vows in a hot air balloon in 2011, and every year since they set a lofty theme for their married life. In 2015 it was “The Year We’ll Take Risks,” leading them to buy 6 acres of rugged hillside above Sonoma Valley and launch a plan to leave their San Francisco life.

Steep land and a rigid budget presented challenges, but three years later they moved into Triple Barn House, their rural 1,750-square-foot home that includes an idyllic nursery for their baby daughter, Sophie, born last February.

“We intended to be easy on the land and have a light footprint, leaving everything as natural as possible,” Rottman says. “We used basically raw materials.” Greene explains that they favor contemporary architecture with clean lines, yet shy away from anything stark or unwelcoming. “We wanted the house to have a sense of humor,” Greene says. “Modern houses can be so serious. We like simplicity, but we also wanted warmth.”

The couple turned to architect Casper Mork-Ulnes, who designed the home with a thrice-peaked roof topping three distinct living areas below. The layout features a kitchen and dining area that opens to a covered patio for alfresco entertaining, a central living area that includes two bedrooms and shared bath, and at the far end of the narrow home the couple’s private master suite — with an adjoining deck overlooking dense oak woodlands.

Built by Neema Construction Company, the earthy structure is made primarily of Cor-Ten steel, which rusts to a natural hue, and rough-hewn concrete. Large swaths of glass frame the miles-long view that stretches to Mount Tamalpais in Marin. The home is impervious to pests, and more important in its wildland location, extremely fire resistant.

Greene is a professional chef and holds a management position with Wellness in the Schools, a nonprofit focused on creating healthy, delicious, and affordable meals for children. Rottman heads up the global diversity and inclusion program for Roche Pharmaceuticals, and travels frequently to Roche’s headquarters in Switzerland. He is passionate about his role as board chairman of the Ceres Project, a nonprofit that provides organic locally produced meals for Sonoma County residents struggling with illness.

Greene and Rottman met in 2008 when they were both working for American Express in New York. Three years later they moved to San Francisco when Rottman accepted a job at Genentech. Greene, who had studied at the New York campus of the International Culinary Center, was then free to follow her foodie career, starting up the food education website JoyFoodly.com, and beginning her life’s work encouraging families to eat wholesome foods.

The couple, healthy eaters themselves, turn to their five raised planting beds for seasonal veggies and herbs. With the exception of some drought-resistant grasses and native plants surrounding the home, the only other altered land is a rough path to a seating area surrounding a gas fire pit, perfect for s’mores and taking in the view.

A long driveway accesses the home, and it was a permit requirement that it had to be wide enough at the top for a firetruck to turn around. Mork-Ulnes met the challenge with a soaring concrete carport at the ground level, creating ample room for a turnabout. The couple’s shared office (with facing desks) is tucked into one end of its base, and the other end offers an entry hall. Here hangs a welcoming abstract painting by local artist Alex Cole.

From the entry hall, two flights of precipitous stairs lead to the single-floor residence, painted completely white throughout with light-toned Douglas fir floors. The architect’s wife, Lexie Mork-Ulnes, provided the interior design, choosing minimal, contemporary furnishings that suit the airy feel. Everything was chosen specifically for Triple Barn, with the exception of a custom-made walnut dining table from their previous home that the couple plan to sit around for the rest of their lives.

The Carrara marble kitchen island does not have the customary cutout for stool seating, as Greene wanted it used strictly for culinary pursuits. They entertain often and never hesitate to assign friends slice-and-dice duties as guests gather round. The countertops are clutter-free, with all cooking equipment stored in drawers and the walk-in pantry, which also hides the microwave, coffeemaker, and other small appliances.

When their move-in day finally arrived, their annual theme was “The Year We’ll Be More Social,” so they invited everyone living in the homes nearby to a Pinot and paella party. The gesture quickly led to new friendships — further proof that the risk of forging a new path in Sonoma had been rewarded beyond their highest hopes.

The post Rugged Hillside Lot Above Sonoma Valley Becomes Dream Home with a View appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

One of the most impressive houses in Sonoma County sits high in the gnarled grip of a Healdsburg coastal oak tree. The abstract, almost cubist, structure is the work of Dustin Feider, an “arboreal architect” intent on taking people — and treehouse designs — to new heights.

Inspired by the geodesic domes of American architect Buckminster Fuller, Feider has set about the task of designing and building eco-conscious treehouses that respect trees and embrace their shape and aesthetics. His inventive, efficient and light designs require less material for strength than traditional treehouses and allow viewers to appreciate the structures from a multiplicity of angles.

“Most of the time you view a treehouse from the ground. With a traditional “cabin-in-a-tree” type of treehouse, all you see is the utilitarian and ugly bracing while the beautiful part above remains obscured,” says Feider. “I wanted to find a way to work around that; to discover a form that blends easily with the beauty of the tree and that does no injury to the tree.”

What sparked Feider’s interest in creating alternatively shaped treehouses was a conversation he had with his father while a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. At the time, Feider’s dad, having just moved into a new home, was reminiscing about the treehouse he built for Feider and his sister when they were kids and asked Feider to build a treehouse in his backyard.

“I was at college studying furniture design and had become interested in the green movement; sustainable materials, living naturally — all that jazz. When my dad asked if I could build a treehouse for him, I thought: yes, I should do that,” says Feider.

Eager to turn childhood dreams into adult-size reality, Feider created a tree sanctuary in his father’s backyard for his final thesis project. The young design student also tried to build a few treehouses for summer camps in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but “nobody was willing to hire a kid just out of school to hang up little campers in trees.”

After graduation, Feider moved to L.A. and, following a brief stint living in his car while working hard to get things going, he began building treehouses for the rich and famous (film producer and screenwriter Mark Levin has two in his backyard, connected with a bridge; Doors guitarist Robby Krieger has a sphere-shaped perch from which to practice guitar and compose songs).

Feider’s designs caught on in several architecture and lifestyle blogs and magazines, including Wired and Dwell, and in 2012 he relocated to Oakland to pursue his dream of one day building a treehouse high in the redwoods.

During the past four years, Feider and his company O2 Treehouse have built several houses among Bay Area branches. His first project in Sonoma County, the cubist Healdsburg treehouse, was constructed as part of a weekend getaway for an Oakland family. Waiting for the construction of the main house, the father of the family wanted a place to “camp out.” The treehouse now serves as a play structure for the two little girls in the family and, in true Wine Country fashion, it boasts a wine deck at the top; a retreat for parents and guests.

Upon referral from the Healdsburg project, Feider was commissioned to build a house in a Douglas fir in Geyserville. At this time, he had been developing a modular and expandable frame structure, the Octatruss space frame system, as a prototype for a prefabricated treehouse. The Geyserville project offered him an opportunity to test out this system for the first time.

“The Octatruss space frame system is like treehouse legos. It’s simple and made of only two parts — hub and strut — which, like legos, can be connected and configured in an endless variety of ways,” Feider enthuses. “With the space frame system successfully installed in several places, including Geyserville, we are now developing the associated prefab tree home enclosure system that will essentially plug into that frame.”

Feider’s passion for developing eco-conscious, lightweight and livable treehouse designs is part of a desire to influence people’s perspective on the relationship between society and nature. He’s hoping that his designs can inspire people to think differently about the way they live, and how buildings relate to the surrounding nature.

As part of this vision, Feider is now preparing to launch a workshop program called “Tree Walkers.” The program will teach people how to build treehouses and, at the same time, create a collectively owned network of rentable treehouse accommodations.

“I would like people, particularly the younger generation, to realize that we need to live lighter, in symbiosis with nature and the surrounding landscape,” Feider says. “A treehouse, five or more feet off the ground, has lower impact on the earth than a traditional home and takes into consideration the conditions of nature, rather than working against them.”

The post Calling All Treehouse Lovers: There’s a New Way to Get High in Sonoma County appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

Situated on Westside Road southwest of Healdsburg, the home of Lisa and Trini Amador is a stark contrast to other estates in the Russian River Valley, the ones hidden behind locked gates, vineyard foliage and lush landscaping. With its rough-hewn stucco exterior, three-level “pinwheel” roof and walls of glass, the Amador house is front and center, for all to appreciate.

The house hugs, seemingly precariously, the edge of a winding country road, allowing passersby to take in the grandeur of its modern-Tuscan architecture. When darkness falls, the home literally glows, offering a peek at its sparkling interior through myriad windows — so many of them the owners lost count.

Guests enter the home through 300-year-old carved wooden doors from Guadalajara, Mexico, a gift to the couple from Trini’s father. Stepping though the foyer into the great room, they’re greeted by a sigh-inducing view of the Amadors’ Pinot Noir vineyard snuggled against the Russian River.

“The vineyard is the star,” Lisa said, as it can be seen from most windows and is the source of the family’s Gracianna Winery wines, which can be sampled at the separate tasting room on the 3-acre site. 

The Amadors bought the property in 2006, first planting the vineyard, then putting up the tasting room with guest quarters above, and finally building the home. But they had been mentally designing it for 17 years before moving there in June 2014.

“I pinch myself every day,” said Lisa, a health care executive in Santa Rosa. “We are the epitome of dream-chasers and we worked very hard to get here.”

The couple knew from the beginning they wanted a U-shaped home, and when they started working with their architect, John Pflueger of Sonoma, he got an earful of their predetermined desires.

It was Pflueger’s expertise, though, that put a 2,500-square-foot storage area beneath the villa, creating a platform that puts the home above the flood plain. He also used the golden mean for the central living area, allowing for the same proportions for length to width to height, an inspiration drawn from the Renaissance and Tuscan design.

One arm of the U is the kitchen area, with its 6-by-6-foot window over the sink, positioned to focus on a 100-year-place old oak tree. At the center is a Carrera marble island with built-in Dacor cooktop, with the marble drifting from the top to cover the sides. “We wanted it to look like a solid block of marble,” Lisa explained.

The kitchen opens to a dining porch with a built-in, wood-burning fireplace that can also be used for cooking, and a thick slab table they made themselves from salvaged wood.

They found 140 feet of wrought-iron railing on Craigslist that was used on the porch and surrounds the courtyard, powdercoated in black. The porch is one of the special places in the home, and where the Amadors frequently entertain and take in the expansive vineyard view, which includes their neighbors’ vines.

The home’s central area, with its 23-foot-high ceilings, is anchored by a massive dining table surrounded by 10 imposing red upholstered chairs.

“We both love red,” Lisa said of the accent color that pops up throughout the house, where interior walls are painted entirely in a soft, creamy white (Behr Ultra 9850).

At each end of the great room are seating areas, with rugs Trini, who travels extensively as a marketing consultant, purchased in Pakistan. The cream-colored, polished limestone floor tiles are from Turkey and extend outside the glass bifold doors and onto the courtyard at the center of the U.

The couple served as the general contractors, hiring all the subcontractors themselves and choosing the finishing materials throughout the home. There is a Sonos sound system and the house is solar-powered. The flooring in the living quarters is dark-stained oak, and Carrera marble was again the go-to for the master bath. The Amadors found solid-wood doors at a salvage yard that were once used in a bank.

The second wing of the U is two-story, with the master bedroom and guest room downstairs; the Amadors share a CEO-sized office on the upper level. It has a long, wide table, with a chair for each of them on either side, facing one another in a style aptly called a partners desk. Hanging from the ceiling in the multiwindowed room is their muse, Pegasus.

In the master bedroom hangs a French chandelier bought in England and stored for years, waiting for this dream home to become their reality.

“We are so grateful,” Lisa said, going on to explain that the square, lightrimmed windows that circle the entire home below the roofline are a symbol of the gift they give to each other just by being together.

“We have so much to be thankful for.”

Photography by Rebecca Chotkowski.  

The post A Modern Wine Country Home with a Renaissance Touch appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

That their house is on English Street was perhaps destiny for Caroline Hall and Brad Villegiante, who through hard work and a keen sense of style turned a weathered, weary 1920s Petaluma cottage into an utterly loveable home.

Hall’s mother was born in England and Caroline has dual citizenship, identifying strongly with her British heritage. The studio above the garage is a tribute to her roots, with Union Jack pillows, “Keep Calm and Carry On” and other British prints, and a lamp from Anthropologie made of piled teacups.

She is crazy for teacups, a theme that runs throughout the home’s decor. Hall also drinks plenty of tea, made in proper British fashion: first milk, then tea, and finally a bit of sugar.

The couple were in their mid-20s when they bid on the cottage, scooping it up for $365,000, then working to bring it back to its original splendor — and a notch beyond. They entered their 30s and became parents, recently welcoming beautiful baby girl Cecily into their hard-earned haven.

The old home’s interior was blessed with the original hardwood floors and a sturdy brick fireplace that was still working. Villeggiante was especially charmed by the built-in hutch in the arched-entry dining room and the vintage porcelain sink in the bath.

“Nowadays, they build things cheap and fast,” he said. “This house has character.”

Hall knew she could work wonders with the enclosed courtyard in the back, making it into the essence of outdoor living space that is basically an additional room on all but the rainiest days.

That’s particularly advantageous because the home on Petaluma’s west side is smallish at 950 square feet, with just two bedrooms and one bath. The bonus is that a previous owner added the 350-square-foot studio. Flooded with light from windows on all sides and skylights, it seems twice its size, complete with a living area, raised bed with storage underneath, a kitchen and full bath. The couple removed six layers of linoleum and re-did the studio floors in a gray-washed hardwood.

The house is framed in old-growth redwood, with plaster walls that the couple patched here and there. It was the shabby exterior siding, a lack of insulation and the old rickety windows that called for major overall. They put in triple-paned windows, framed in fiberglass on the exterior and wood inside. The new siding is new-growth milled redwood board, hand-nailed the old-fashioned way, and Villeggiante proudly points out the visible nailheads. Ben Bryant of Santa Rosa, who specializes in older homes, was the contractor.

They painted the house, which was once a faded bluish gray, an eyepopping shade of green that works with the white trim, gray custommade garage doors and nickel hardware. For a large exposed exterior wall, Hall designed a billboard-esque Petaluma scene, complete with a cow, rooster, barn and California poppies that she and Brad’s mother, Karine Villeggiante, painted together. It’s made of five pieces of plywood, with a frame that Brad built with his father, Andy Villeggiante, who also put in the new concrete driveway.

The landscaping is completely drought-tolerant. It was designed by Hall’s cousin, landscape architect Heather Fletcher, and Hall and Villeggiante did the planting and drip irrigation themselves.

They met in high school in Santa Rosa. Hall has a photography degree from Brooks Institute, earned while Villeggiante was at San Jose State University working on a business degree. They both went to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for their advanced degrees.

Today, Hall is the photography producer in the advertising department of Cost Plus World Market and Villeggiante is a manager at Smaato Inc., an Internet advertising firm in San Francisco. They said they are among the lucky souls who love their careers. Their backgrounds account for the artistic flair that is everywhere in their abode. “I am around designers every day,” Hall said. “You start to think that way.”

Villeggiante has a love for old advertising and movie posters, which is why King Kong and Marlene Dietrich grace the walls of his home.

Cecily’s nursery is a dream, with her name hung high in moss-covered letters with tiny birds, made, of course, by Hall. She also crafted a mobile-like wall hanging, from a tree branch with hand-folded origami butterflies floating from it. Hall and Villeggiante bought a gray Bellina Conversion Crib from Restoration Hardware that will turn into a twin bed when Cecily is ready, and a chalk-gray and white chest of drawers that they scored at The Find in downtown Petaluma.

While Cecily is so tiny, she sleeps in a Moses basket, a nook of warmth perched on a stand. Her nursery is full of toys and treasures, and on the lower shelf of a bookcase sit some very special stuffed animals that were once her Mommy’s.

The couple, who won an Award of Great Merit from Heritage Homes of Petaluma last fall, knew from the start the house had good bones and had the vision to appreciate its potential. They also enjoy their older neighborhood that long ago was a fairgrounds. It’s a mix of longtimers and young couples; everyone is friendly, and once a year they shut down the street and have a party.

“Everyone genuinely cares about each other,” Villeggiante said. “The new blood is great for the older people.”

He said they have learned the history of the area from those who remember when one bungalow was a Girl Scout headquarters and another home was a hunting lodge.

“We will own this house until we die,” Villeggiante said. “We’ve put so much into it. It feels like it has a soul and we just love it.”

Photography by Alvin Jornada. 

The post A Petaluma Heritage Home with a British Twist appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

When Fred and Barbara White Perry purchased 4 acres that were once part of the historic Buena Vista Winery, established in 1857, they felt a huge responsibility to honor the land. Located inside the Buena Vista gate and with a view through the trees to Bartholomew Park Winery, they can imagine Agoston Haraszthy, the original owner of both wineries and vineyards, still wandering their rows of Zinfandel.

In 1996, the couple had been living for 10 years in a two story home Barbara designed on Sonoma Mountain, where they enjoyed riding their horses. They’d tired of living in the hills and were searching for flat land closer to the heart of things near Sonoma Plaza, where they could build a home with no stairs. Buena Vista’s ownership was transitioning yet again at the time, and when they heard a small piece of the estate was for sale, with vines planted by acclaimed viticulturist Anne Moller-Racke in the early 1980s, they snatched it.

Barbara, an artist and architectural designer, began rendering the plans for their new home by hand, starting out by sitting for hours in the rain, diagramming the natural flow of water on their future home site. She planned the home to the minutest detail, building an architectural model — a step usually reserved for large commercial properties. Even the home’s color palette was decided at the model phase (the exterior stucco is painted the exact color of a rock found on the property). Barbara’s blueprints were stamped with the county’s permit approval on Valentine’s Day 1997, a sign that this home they now cherish would become part of their ongoing love story.

The couple spent hours siting the home’s front door, standing on ladders and taking photos, eventually deciding on the perfect view. A 12-foot-deep veranda with pillars runs the width of the house, a subtle historical reference to Haraszthy’s original villa.

Barbara’s second design inspiration came from an old, wooden, three-gabled farmhouse on Arnold Drive. She had long admired the slowly deteriorating structure and photographed it in 1984. Their home now has three gables, just like the farmhouse did until it was bulldozed in 2001.

The farmhouse was also important to Barbara because it was one of the sparks that led to her publishing her book, “Drawing Sonoma,” which was released in late 2015 and is now in its second printing. The book is a collection of 45 of her ink and vine charcoal drawings of historic and unique properties in Sonoma Valley. The three-gabled farmhouse appears in the section titled, “Gone But Not Forgotten,” where iconic structures no longer standing are captured.

When building a home, most people consider how many heads on pillows they want to accommodate, but for Barbara and Fred, it was all about art on walls. Longtime collectors, particularly of notable Sonoma artists, their goal was to make the interior perfect for showing art. Barbara plotted all the windows so that there was room in between for canvases, and integrated lighting in the 9-foot ceilings to shine at the perfect angle to illuminate paintings. At the center of the residence is a long gallery wall with ample room for the 11 paintings that hang there.

Above the living room fireplace is a Dennis Ziemienski painting, the largest piece in their collection. They also have two Keith Wicks oils, one depicting Spain Street West and the other The Corner Store on the plaza, both purchased at Sonoma’s Plein Air Festival in 2009. There are three Brigitte McReynolds pastels, and commissioned Cynthia Hipkiss clay sculptures of Fred and Barbara riding horses while sipping sparkling wine, with a little sign that reads, “Here’s to 40 Years of Happy Trails.” The “40” is a Post-it, as Barbara updates the number on each wedding anniversary.

In the entry hall are three Jim Callahan bronze sculptures, “Golden Girl,” “Unbridled” and “Sisyphus,” a surprise gift from Fred to Barbara. He placed it on a ledge near the front door and waited until she noticed it. She was thrilled when it caught her eye a few days later.

They also buy art on their vacations, with many pieces acquired at galleries in Carmel. They see something they like, then discuss the possible purchase at dinner over a glass of wine. “We joke later about whether it was a one-glass or two glass decision,” Barbara said. Their home has a trussed roof, which means fewer weight bearing walls are required, making it open and airy. The clean lines encourage a certain ease and sense of calm. Simple, well-designed furniture seems to fade away so the art can reign. The doorways are 3 feet wide with a flat saddle for ease of movement, and the flooring throughout is 12-inch, off-white porcelain tile that has a sheen, which Barbara said makes it easy to keep pristine. She was the general contractor for the project, and the goal in the material choices she made was to keep the home low-maintenance.

Behind the 2,900-square-foot, three-bedroom home (a master suite, guest bedroom and an office for Fred, an expert in cyber security) is Barbara’s artist studio, where she paints almost every day. While the White Perrys collect other Sonoma artists, including Claudia Wager and Brennie Bracket, there are many who collect Barbara’s work. She has been painting since she was a young girl in rural Illinois, studied at the Chicago Art Institute, and was honored as Sonoma’s “Treasure Artist” in 2015.

There is a garden patio between the home and the studio, and an additional outdoor eating area off the dining room, giving two alfresco options no matter which way the wind is blowing. Three acres of vineyards completely surround the home.

Fred and Barbara are philanthropically inclined, and have held many nonprofit fundraisers on their property, often with Fred preparing all the food. They particularly enjoy contributing to Sonoma’s Pets Lifeline, where they found their adorable dog, Benny, a Jack Russell-West Highland white terrier mix. They have a long association with the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation, and are proud that their property won the League’s Preservation Award in 1999 for “new construction compatible with and sensitive to existing historic structures or sites.”

As their home is just a stroll away from Buena Vista’s stone press house, built by Haraszthy in 1863, it’s indeed quite an accomplishment.

The post A Sonoma Home Founded on History and Art appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.