Yours-mine-and-ours is a game many new couples have to learn to play when faced with reconciling ownership of two separate homes filled with belongings. Seven years ago, Jo and David Loomis embarked on this quest; the result is one lovely home that suits both, a space on a winding, wooded Preston Hollow street that reflects their love of art and each other.
“I saw this Bart Forbes painting in a gallery a few years ago, but the price tag…well,” Jo says. “Then my birthday came around. It was Saturday morning, and David was out early running an errand. I hadn’t noticed that he had driven a nail into the wall across the bedroom the night before, but when I woke up – it was hanging there for me to see the minute I opened my eyes.”
The art/travel link has been a continuing theme in building their lives together, whether poking around sleepy little Texas towns for antique bargains or going a little farther out. One of the reasons Jo was attracted to Forbes’ painting in the first place was that, in addition to the fact they were acquainted with the artist, the depicted scene reminded her of their trip to Scotland, one memorable trip among many.
“We tend to get art from people we know and places we’ve been,” David says.
Jo, an artist herself, found the home that contains the art and the memories quite unexpectedly. The place they were camping out in until four years ago had become cramped, and she needed space for a studio in order to continue to expand her work in shard art – something the couple likes to call “painting with broken china.”
“I came home one day after being out of town, and Jo said: We have an appointment to see a house tomorrow,” David recalls wryly. “And I said: Are we looking for a house?”
“We’d been talking about what we were going to do,” admonishes Jo. “And I drove along here and saw this house and pulled one of those little sheets. It was a lot of house for the money.”
“It was so ugly. But I knew it was a great house and that we could do a lot with it.”
The real estate find brought other bonuses as the Loomises began to piece together their first real home together. When they started pulling up the carpet upstairs, they discovered real hardwoods underneath; an old family rug David had stuffed in the back of a closet turned out to be a valuable Persian from the 1800s that complemented Jo’s choice of décor and collections, including her colorful assortment of Transfer Ware. Although the structure took a lot of cosmetic updating, there was ample space for a home office and studio, and the remodeling gave them yet another way to let their merging lives evolve.
Plenty of wall space – another requirement – also was forthcoming, and today those walls are filled with bright, arresting images from throughout the world.
“We were in Spain to visit my daughter who was studying for a semester at the university in Salamanca,” Jo says. “And we just went all over the place; in the Plaza Majour in Madrid, we bought those (paintings in the dining room) from this little man. He started shaking when he realized we were going to buy more than one – I think we made his week.” “Ninety seven dollars for three paintings,” laughs David with a shake of the head.
Painting ceiling tiles by Russell Blackburn – from a trip to New Mexico for a friend’s wedding – form a focal point in the formal living room. The patio area offers up prime napping spots for dogs Will and Star, and Liquirice the cat, as well as brick walls to display Jo’s wall plaques and crosses – an aspect of mosaics that David himself has become involved with.
“He works all day at his job, and all night and weekends on my job,” laughs Jo. “He makes the plaques and crosses I use.”
“I became the woodworker,” David says.
“Hard work and low pay,” Jo concedes.
So, the question was: Can a health care consultant native to Pennsylvania find common ground with a mosaic artist and fourth generation Texan? One neighborhood home says “yes.”
