Mural turns home into work of art

SCRIPPS HOWARD

First, the good news: A mural painted by artist Sandra Hilliard in the Florida home of actor John Travolta is the subject of a pageand- a-half picture in the April issue of Architectural Digest.

The accompanying caption mentions Hilliard by name, while the story itself describes the 15-foot-by-17- foot mural as “dazzling.” Now, the not-bad-but-not-sogreat, either, news: Nowhere in the magazine does it say who Hilliard is, where she lives or how homeowners interested in commissioning a mural of their own might go about finding her.

Hilliard, 52, of Oxnard, Calif., is sanguine about the situation.

The focus of the Architectural Digest piece is, after all, on the 8,900- square-foot concrete and tintedglass home Travolta and wife Kelly Preston built near Ocala, Fla., so that its curved windows offer views of Travolta’s growing collection of planes, parked just outside on the taxiway.

“I just got a little brochure going, and a Web site is in the works,” Hilliard said of making the most of any attention that does come her way.

Meanwhile, she relies on wordof- mouth to bring in an already steady stream of projects.

The majority involve painting special finishes and fool-the-eye murals on the walls of private homes in and around Ventura, Calif.

Hilliard’s projects have included the home of Jerry and Maureen Magnuson of Ventura.

The couple’s shared love of antiques, the ocean and their fluffy white Persian cat, Coconut, provided inspiration for two bathroom murals.

Working in a powder room off the kitchen, Hilliard painted Coconut sitting in a trompe l’oeil window framed by roses.

A secret rose bush “blooms” near the base of another wall, its flowers visible only when the door is closed.

In the nearby master bathroom, Hilliard used her acrylic paints in thin, watercolor-like layers to create a balcony-style vista of the distant Channel Islands, the view accented by Greek columns and stone “tiles” painted to look like those that link the bathroom with the bedroom.

“The house is small, so we wanted to make the most of every square foot,” Maureen Magnuson said of the mural’s view of the outdoors, painted over a sunken bathtub nestled like a curvaceous white seashell in a field of black granite.

“Whatever the client wants, I’m good to go,” said Hilliard.

“One gal had me paint her champion dog on the wall.

Another wanted her cats (on the wall) in the laundry room, with angel wings on one that had died.

What I do is very customized and personalized.” Perhaps even more so when the client is someone like Travolta, an avid aviator and collector of old magazines.

When he first discussed the specifics of a mural for his Art Deco-style dining room with Hilliard in 2002, Travolta brought with him a 1937 advertisement from the pages of Fortune magazine.

It showed a family dressed in its white-gloves Sunday best in anticipation of an airplane ride.

Hilliard plans to return to Travolta’s house this month to do some additional painting of an around-the-world scene that will extend over the room’s fireplace, which is not shown in the Architectural Digest spread.

The scene includes such instantly recognizable symbols and places as the Tower Bridge in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the New York skyline and the Queen Mary.

A recent decorative painting project in Hilliard’s own home, meanwhile, remains a work in progress.

“I’m like the shoemaker’s kid who doesn’t have shoes,” Hilliard said, laughing again.

She finished one project that involved painting branches on the cabinet doors in the laundry room but painted only about 3 feet of a Greek scene in the guest bathroom before giving up.

“And I’m still not finished.”