design

Dance with Nature

Color, texture, wonder, joy: the entryway installation by artist Juan Carlos Collada stirs these qualities and more amid Elisa’s clean design for Fairway Transformation. A happy moment amid serene sophistication.

Elisa’s total reimagining of the scenic home introduced luxurious layers, subtle juxtapositions and lush materiality. As well as flights of fun—gestures indicative of her design approach and epitomized by the Collada piece, which she sourced locally at Diehl Gallery. “The butterflies are so pretty,” Elisa says. “They are colorful yet light and subtle in their presence. They feel soft and feminine.”

Abundantly talented, Collada fuels his creative practice by sourcing ideas from disparate sources around him—nature, books, humanity. “I think the beauty of being an artist is that you have the capacity to find inspiration in many, many places,” he says. After studying painting and printmaking at Miami Dade College, Collada traveled the globe, following his many Muses: designing textiles in Milan, furniture in San Francisco, decorative lighting in North Carolina and fashion styling in Miami, before returning to his fine art roots. Having worked in so many modes and lived in so many places, Collada considers his “home” the place where art, nature and family meet—a confluence reflective of his presence in Jackson, at Mariam Diehl’s gallery, who recently featured his new work in an exhibition aptly titled, “The Language of Color.”

Now working from studios in Toronto, Canada and Naples, Florida, Collada blends mediums—painting, sculpture, assemblage. His signature butterflies capture the ethereal presence of the insects through his reverent labor of hand-cutting and -painting feathers into winged compositions. “[My art] feels like the culmination of all the things I’ve done and all the places I’ve been.”

When considering his favorite place to see art, Collada offered his tandem focus on nature and design: “Any outside space where many people can enjoy [the art], although I do love seeing personal collections of people who truly enjoy art. It gives you special insight into what they are all about.”

Within Elisa’s designs, his work offers such human insight, conferring the joyful connection her clients feel to the place in which they live, and the exquisite beauty in which they surround themselves.

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