This article is part of our Design special section about buildings, objects and techniques that are fighting to stay alive.
The Bright and Bedazzled Art of L.V. Hull
The self-taught artist L.V. Hull daubed colorful dots and glued spangles on many of her possessions — whether shoes, hats, lamps or appliances — at her home in Kosciusko, Miss. Tourists flocked to explore her overflowing small house and witness her bedazzling process, which she described as an effort to “take the place of a lot of loneliness.” After her death in 2008, at 65, relatives and admirers carefully stored away about 850 of her artworks, and hundreds of them will go on view this month.
The exhibition, “L.V. Hull: Love Is a Sensation,” which opens March 20 at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, demonstrates her skills at rainbowing egg cartons, gourds, bricks, piggy banks, toy robots, clocks, a rolling pin and a handsaw. She also painted aphorisms on the objects, from warnings like “Mind Your Business” to encouragement: “You Are Welcome to Tour Here” and “Look at These Things.” Her guestbooks, art supplies and family photos will also be on view, and similar items and artworks will be displayed in Kosciusko starting May 2, when her home and some nearby buildings will open as the L.V. Hull Legacy Center.
The Mississippi Museum of Art and the Legacy Center will also show a new documentary about Ms. Hull, “Love Is a Sensation,” made by Yaphet L. Smith, a filmmaker, screenwriter and lawyer in Austin, Texas. His relatives were the artist’s neighbors and friends, and he is helping develop the Legacy Center. Visitors can make appointments to tour Ms. Hull’s house. Outlines of the removed artworks remain visible there, Mr. Smith said: “It still bears the imprint of her imagination.” — EVE M. KAHN
A Comeback For an Art Deco Gem
A major restoration of Troxy, a beloved music venue in East London, is a rare success story for the city’s former Art Deco movie theaters. Troxy was England’s biggest film venue when it opened in 1933 with a showing of “King Kong.” It survived the Blitz and cycles of disrepair and revival, doing stints as a Royal Opera House rehearsal space and a bingo hall before hosting bands starting in 2006.
Today, Troxy maintains its original Art Deco design, though now it’s the backdrop for acts like the Cure and Jack White. The renovations, which began in 2020, have restored the original stage and marble flooring in the entrance hall. Work is underway to add a coat room and bathrooms, repurposing what were once waiting areas for moviegoers with inexpensive tickets. A restored lift will allow a 1930s Wurlitzer organ to emerge from the stage for special events.
During a tour of the renovations, Tom Sutton-Roberts, Troxy’s managing director, said everything “is a nod to the original look and feel; we don’t want to do that kind of faux Art Deco, because it’s just too obvious.” But, he added, the work can be slow: While Troxy is “grand and robust,” he said, “it’s actually very delicate as well.”
Troxy received official heritage status in 1991, which likely helped it avoid the fate of other Art Deco cinemas that were shuttered or demolished to make way for housing. “Sometimes it feels like a miracle that it’s still standing and still thriving,” Mr. Sutton-Roberts said. — JILLIAN RAYFIELD
A Quirky Residence Now Open to Visitors
In São Paulo, Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Lima is something like Broadway, Wall Street and Madison Avenue all rolled into one: the chief urban boulevard of Brazil’s (and the Western Hemisphere’s) largest city. A quiet residential address it is not — and yet for more than five decades that’s exactly how the visionary architect Eduardo Longo has been using it, courtesy of a remarkable modernist house that recently opened to the public for the first time.
A silvery sphere attached to a base by a winding, slide-like ramp, Casa Bola has been home to the 83-year-old Mr. Longo and his family ever since he determined to build it himself, starting in 1974. He never, in a sense, stopped, with the orb undergoing multiple improvements while remaining its otherworldly self, a glorious anomaly surrounded by commercial high-rises.
“When I first moved here in the ’80s, I thought, ‘This is incredible; it’s this little representative of the ’60s and ’70s counterculture,’” said Claudia Moreira Salles, a designer and Rio native.
With Filipe Assis and Kiki Mazzucchelli, Ms. Salles organized an art exhibition in a portion of the residence as part of Aberto, an annual cultural fair that runs through May. The opening is an opportunity for the curious to get at least a partial glimpse at how the Longos live on Faria Lima. “He’s defied every rule,” Ms. Salles said of the architect. “It’s something very special.” — IAN VOLNER
A Renewed Purpose for Heath Ceramics
In 2003, Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic, a married couple of industrial designers, bought an ailing 55-year-old Bay Area pottery called Heath Ceramics and transformed it into a showplace of midcentury modern revivalism. Continuing to produce locally, with factories in Sausalito and, later, San Francisco, they updated the streamlined monochromatic tableware designed by Edith Heath, the company’s co-founder, and added many new products, including dinnerware created with Alice Waters for Chez Panisse. (The legendary Berkeley restaurant, with its earthy, unpretentious California Modern sensibility, is in many ways Heath’s culinary twin.)
Three years ago, Heath earned B Corp certification based on its social, environmental and transparent governance practices.
Last month, Ms. Bailey and Mr. Petravic announced that they were stepping away from their leadership roles, having appointed Megan Wernetti, formerly Heath’s director of creative operations, and Allison Banks, its chief operating officer, as co-presidents. Ms. Bailey and Mr. Petravic will remain with Heath, working to transform it into a purpose trust-owned company, a model that is meant to ensure that its future will be guided by concerns for design and manufacturing integrity and community connections rather than profit. (The couple also recently started a podcast called Make Good, in which they discuss design, craft and “what it means to do things well, even when it’s not easy.”)
Writing in a joint email, they said, “We’ve always emphasized the aim to be great, not big.” Aspirations to quality often get lost, they added, when a company is sold and its “founders/owners move on.” heathceramics.com — SARAH ARCHER
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