Wall Art

Stuck on geometrics

A couple in Venice shape a design business out of a love of dots, circles and even invading aliens. The best part? Their colorful decals are easy-on, easy-off.

By Janet Eastman

Wednesday December 04, 2002

WHAT happens when an architect and a food editor team up to bring taste to bland walls? They make geometric decals in mint, lemon and tomato.

Scott Flora and Jerinne Neils, who share a 1980s duplex in Venice and a fondness for Pop Art, have blended computer-generated images with vinyl film to create colorful adhesive polka dots, blocks, bolts, even invading aliens, that can be stuck on walls -- and later easily pulled off. "We felt this cave-painting need to change our home quickly, easily and cheaply without having to mess with paint," says Flora.

One wall in Flora and Neils' living room has white squares positioned into diamond patterns. An adjacent wall has three rows of steel-blue dots with an off-center middle row. And another wall has three randomly placed red dots.

After three years of experimenting on their walls, Flora, an architect, and Neils, a food editor for Web sites and restaurant guide books, launched their mail-order company, Blik, in October. The two 35-year-olds are betting there are plenty of people who want to personalize their surroundings without a lot fuss and, in the case of tenants or employees, grief from a landlord or boss (all that's needed to remove the decals is a little fingernail action).

In designing their shapes, they were especially inspired by Sol LeWitt's cubed wall drawings from the 1960s. But precisely duplicating shapes in paint as he did is time-consuming and difficult even for professionals.

So, Flora and Neils powered up a Mac G4 and a suite of Adobe graphic-design software to create squares and rectangles, ellipses and ovals and then transferred the images onto thin, self-adhesive vinyl film. The decals are good for onetime application -- they lose their clean shapes once removed.

Although designing with vinyl decals is forgiving enough for just about anyone to play with, the basic idea has also captured the imagination of serious artists. Currently on display (through Dec. 29) on the lobby walls at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is a work by Jim Isermann, who created vinyl shapes -- round-cornered squares and rectangles in primary colors -- and installed them in a complex pattern.

When Flora and Neils saw the Isermann exhibit, they were more convinced than ever that the decal line they were launching would hit home. The shapes they are marketing -- a set of eight 12-inch-wide shapes sells for $35 -- have inspired a variety of uses in homes and workplaces.

Tony Papa, president of Vision New Media in Santa Monica, thought their tomato-red lug-nut decals would "communicate a creative, eclectic look" in a coffee-shop scene he was shooting for an independent film. After the wrap, he says, "I took a package home for my apartment in Brentwood."

Holly Hirzel decorated her cream-colored office at Sony Computer Entertainment in Santa Monica with decals that reminded her of the vintage video game Space Invaders. With the help of a friend, a ladder and a level, she placed dozens of kiwi-colored aliens and their missiles on her wall in about 45 minutes. "Everyone comments about the wall, because it has a retro-gaming feel," says Hirzel, a product manager for PlayStation. "It's nostalgic."

Recently, at a showing of the Blik decals at the Ilan Dei store in Venice, architect Brit Billeaud instantly visualized how he could lay a series of cocoa and raspberry doughnuts into a grid on his living room wall. Landscape architect Tomer Levi said he planned to rearrange the lemon-colored ellipses he bought -- as though they are puzzle pieces -- and not attach them until he's satisfied he's found a solution that's just the right fit.

"Everyone," says Flora, "has a different idea."

For more information, call (866) 262-2545; www.whatisblik.com.