It’s not that surprising that our house and gardens are so full. I was raised to be a maximalist, to feed my zest for life by surrounding myself with whatever sparks delight, happy memories and personal connection. Color is essential.
Leafing through wallpaper sample books with my mom is one of my earliest memories, a jumping-off point for imagination. She would point out the plaids, palm fronds, parrots, pomegranates. Options overflowed in every colorway imaginable; and to us, the scent of the freshly silk-screened inks smelled like possibility.
Mom was an artist and, like Claude Monet, color was her obsession, joy and torment. I could sense her excitement building as she schemed which wallpapers to try and fabrics to coordinate, what paint to choose for the trim or the furniture. She collected and displayed all kinds of objects, seashells, ornaments and artwork. Her hand-stitched Kaffe Fassett needlepoint pillows crowded us off the couch. The house was Mom’s decorating playground — we were all just living in it.
My family now has to do the “throw pillow shuffle” before sitting, or move multiple candlesticks so we can see each other across the table. I might feel sorry for them if it weren’t so cool in here.
My style is a direct reflection of the joy I find in the interplay of colors, objects, textures and patterns. It’s a lot like designing a magazine spread! As a graphic designer, I’ve been fortunate to work for two iconic women who influenced me from an early age: Mary Engelbreit and Martha Stewart. Martha’s art director plucked me from obscurity not long after I graduated with a graphic design degree from the University of Illinois. Mary brought me in as founding art director for Home Companion magazine — the dreamiest job ever. Over the years, we shared hundreds of artistic homes and studios in our issues.
While designing layouts, I absorbed the decorating moxie of the visionary creative people we featured, which helped me to develop my own style. Folks feathered their nests so joyfully and lovingly; their personalities were interwoven into the walls. I’m innately drawn to spaces designed to lift the spirit and stimulate curiosity, enhancing one’s everyday experience and quality of life. Toss the rules out the window!
Human touch is important in my work as an artist and in my approach to the house. I’ve never hired anyone to paint. I want to hold the brush in my hand, to feel the luscious dollops of creamy color get slathered onto woodwork, making what once were disparate pieces of trim into a silky continuum. It’s the same in our garden — every square inch was cultivated and planted by me. It can be exhausting, messy and somewhat dangerous (teetering on the top rung of a ladder at midnight to paint the ceiling?). But doing the work gives me a deeper connection to the process and pleasure in the outcome.
You can feel the transformation come to life because it’s springing from your hands! Hot-gluing pompom trim to a lampshade, lettering words on the wall, heaving pink sandstone slabs into their perfect place on a garden path. When I walk from room to room, or along the path I’ve laid, a proud voice inside me affirms: “I made that.”
The rooms on the first floor of our cozy 1929 house are separated by wide archways, where one side is visible from the other. Colors spill from pale pink in my sunroom studio, into pear green in the dining room and an emerald-green immersion in the living room. Maybe it’s the gardener in me, but I am drawn to green like no other color. For years I imagined painting the living room walls and woodwork, even the fireplace, the same shade of green. Life is short and now my mantra is: Everything is an experiment. I took the green paint plunge and couldn’t be happier. It is like being inside a ripening shoot, an unfurling leaf.
I begin each day with hot coffee, our corgi, Tibbs, and Rudy the chiweenie on the chaise beside the fire. The green walls and mantel are livened up further with abstract paintings by my mom, Susan Heard Smith; works in gouache by artist Jane Troup; and treasures made by our children, Tallulah, Sylvia, Finn and Clara. I’ve mixed in botanical prints, Minton tiles, antique oyster and asparagus plates, heirloom Staffordshire dogs, enamelware dishes, and plants both real and fake. Light filters through leaf-printed curtains and sets all of the colorful glassware aglow. I am simultaneously energized and soothed in that green room.
A few years ago, I started seeking out vintage glass vases on eBay and Etsy. My marvelous, maximalist mother was fond of displaying her cherished daffodils in bud vases, keeping dozens fresh in the refrigerator well into June. She tragically passed away in 2016 from breast cancer. Along with profound sadness, I inherited her vases. My initial look-see on eBay snowballed into an obsessive hunt for these semiprecious jewels.
The quest was comforting. I felt like my mom was moving through me. Together, we sought out the sweetest hand-blown vases in the world … a tall one; a quirky fluted number; a shorty with swirls. Why not all three? So as not to overwhelm (or overspend), I limited myself to green at first. But I soon branched into blue. Then yellow. When all was said and done, no color was safe.
Now that the kids are away at college, I play with my vases anywhere and everywhere. Any flat surface is a potential display zone. If we aren’t in the dead of winter, I’ll run outside, snip a few flowers, pick out coordinating vases and then arrange a scene, tucking in tidbits like ribbon, art supplies, paper ephemera and fabric swatches.
I play with height by adding books, then I photograph the scene from every angle. Whatever is happening in my brain and body as I set up vignettes is akin to electricity. Pleasurable volts of flowing sparkitude race through me. I do this for no other reason than because it inspires me. Then I will go about my day, and every time I pass the display, good vibes reverberate.
This house has been an incubator, As an entrepreneur who worked from home a place to nurture and launch our children into the world. It’s been there for us during tumultuous years, job changes, a divorce and the death of my dear mama. In 2017, I was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer (boo!) and married my soulmate, Douglas (yay!). We reconfigured spaces to accommodate everybody and all our stuff (my husband is also a maximalist who collects bicycles and guitars — hey, the more the merrier). running two businesses (freelance graphic design and Power Poppy, a paper crafting website offering my downloadable botanical illustrations to print and color), plus raising four teenagers between us and running a household where decorating had long taken a backseat,
I eventually found myself overwhelmed and unmoored. I was grieving, drinking too much, wavering between wanting to crawl into a hole and wanting to conquer the world.
Without the bandwidth to understand that something needed to change, I opened the front door and began to dig up our yard. I didn’t know what I was doing, but at the time, I didn’t need to know. I just felt pulled to go outside, in solitude, and feel the distant yet familiar comfort of dreaming and scheming to create something beautiful. With one shovelful of dirt and daffodil bulb at a time, over the course of several seasons, I took what had once been a steep slope of invasive groundcover vines and turned our entire front yard into a flourishing garden, planted with thousands of daffodils, tulips, peonies, hostas, hellebores — and my heart and soul.
I named it “The Slope of Possibility.” The garden embodies so much of what my mother infused in me from my earliest memory. Wonder and delight. Curiosity. A love of learning. The great reward of seeking out rare, heirloom and hybrid plants from small growers. A can-do, DIY spirit. Gratitude for the gifts of nature and our bodies that do hard work. Connection and camaraderie with gardeners and mentors. Trusting your gut. Providing a vessel for creativity; a respite for myself; and a destination for our neighbors, who walk by and share what a bright spot our garden is in their day.
Creating this garden caught me off guard, and it changed me forever. Sanctuary, catalyst, cocoon for healing — all inside a pie-shaped piece of property with a house on it. The experience of rediscovering my rooms, revitalizing my landscape, and finding myself anew has had a profound impact. I want to help other women find a more sustainable balance between the energy they give away and the amount of energy they need for themselves.
I started Vivopolis, a virtual community for women, where we come together to reset, reevaluate and reimagine the kind of lives we want to live. It’s a collaborative space for guidance and inspiration, with a roadmap to help you figure out what you need to thrive. I’m developing books and speaking about the healing power of gardening — it feels electric to be doing this work!
This is exactly where I am supposed to be right now; while at the same time, at age 53, I feel like I’m only getting started.
♦♦♦
From Lori Siebert | I was lucky enough to be introduced to Marcella by my friend Mary Engelbreit. We have since become regular cheerleaders for one another on Instagram. Mary suggested Marcella for this feature. When she sent me a few initial photos and I dug into her feed, I could totally see why. It’s evident in her beautifully curated home that she was born from a creative family. The way she honors her mother in the way she displays her vast collection of colorful vases creates such a joyful environment. And, being a fan of green, I am IN LOVE with how she fearlessly splashes that color throughout her home. It so speaks to her love of nature and gardening. Her home is so unique and CLEARLY decorated by a true artist!!