Interior Designers: Tessea McCrary and Turner Design Firm
Kitchen & Bath Cabinetry: Ric Guy
Custom Upholstery: Grand York
Hand-Painted Walls: Artstar Custom Paintworks

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An Artful House: Art was at the heart of every design decision for this three-story, 2,600-square-foot home in historic Clipper Mill. The homeowners have an extensive fine art collection, and their love of bold, saturated color became both the inspiration and the boundary lines for the renovation, says Tessea McCrary, principal and lead designer of Tessea McCrary Interior Design. They also introduced new works which created a rhythm throughout the home: Existing art provides continuity, while new acquisitions push the story forward, she says.

Inviting Interiors: “The vision was to create a deeply personal home that honors their professional sensibilities as psychiatrists,” says McCrary. “We tailored their lifestyle spaces by evoking emotion through color, texture, and pattern.” Color was powerful tool that was used as both an emotional and psychological driver. Saturated blues represented depth, calm, and intellect; metallics and charcoals added intensity and drama; and softer neutrals were layered in to provide balance, ensuring the home never tipped into overwhelming.

Defining Style: “Before, the home felt dominated by sameness, with its uniform honey-toned beams and floors,” says McCrary. “Now, it has a confident voice, it speaks of individuality and emotion. Each room tells a story, whether it’s the theatricality of the office or the playful progression of the ombre stair runner.” What makes this project special, she says, is it’s more than a renovation—it’s a portrait of the homeowners.

On a tree-lined block of Bolton Hill’s Park Avenue reminiscent of Brooklyn Heights, old brick rowhomes built in the 1800s share a storied history. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived on the street after Zelda died, as did renowned classicist and author Edith Hamilton. And the late artist Les Harris raised his three daughters there with his wife, Sally, hosting dinner parties and transforming his house into a work of beauty and a small mecca for creatives.

Harris flocked to the neighborhood along with other artists and teachers in the 1960s because it was affordable (he paid $14,000 for his rowhome) and in close proximity to several schools, where he taught and studied—Maryland Institute College of Art, Johns Hopkins University, and the Schuler School of Fine Arts (he also taught art and theatrical design at the Park School, and Stevenson University). After Harris’ death in 2008, his wife continued to live in the three-story brick home at 1323 Park Ave., built in 1885, but she recently put it on the market.

Harris was a Baltimore icon and a Renaissance man, full of magic and mystique. He and his wife were active across multiple artistic disciplines. They met when she hired him as a choreographer and set designer at her theater, The Gateway Playhouse, in Long Island, New York, where she grew up.

“It was a totally artistic household,” says his daughter Holly Harris, who spent the past two years boxing up the house. There was always someone playing the piano—which is still in the house—or painting or gardening.

Harris became known for his maximalist paintings exploring all manner of metaphysical thought, and much of his work is housed at his Amaranthine Museum in Clipper Mill, a space that reopened to the public in November.

But his house was a work of art, too. He designed and executed many renovations and decorative details: a brick basement that leads out onto a patio, a rooftop garden, a marble kitchen counter in the shape of a grand piano, a wrought iron railing running up a rear stairwell, coffered ceilings in three of rooms. Local artisans installed stained glass above the front doorway and above the handcrafted cabinetry in the dining room. His most obvious addition stylistically might be the long mural that wraps around the front hallway and stairwell, painted for the wedding reception of one of his daughters following a ceremony in the Brown Memorial Park Avenue Church across the street.

“The house is so filled with love,” says Holly, who was 1 when her parents moved there in 1962. “We had so many good times in there.”

His studio was in the basement, but when his paintings became larger in scale, he grew out of that space in 1976 and moved to a studio at Clipper Mill, which he also used as a museum to show his body of work, which he refrained from selling. When Clipper Mill sold in 2005, the museum relocated within the community and just last year relocated once again to a much smaller space. The family intends to sell his work, as they believe it will reach a wider audience.

To understand—or at least get a sense of—the man who said things like “matter is a superstition”—you must first go to Amaranthine, the legacy he left behind. Floor to ceiling paintings and sculptural work (including pieces hung from the ceiling) move through time and explore metaphysics through the lens of art—numerology, astrology, cathedrals from various eras—going from modern times all the way back to the origin of consciousness, as he understood it (the paintings are heavy with sacred geometry and hieroglyphics), perhaps developing his own cosmology along the way.

“He was gonna find God through the eyes of artists,” Holly says. “His search was for the divine in everything.”

Through the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Pisces, the Age of Romance and the Age of Reason—they all have their place among the work.

“Once he was inspired, he’d paint so fast,” Holly says. “Nothing here has two coats of paint.”

She also recalls how the rooms of the Park Avenue house changed often, each time her father got a new vision that “he had to fulfill” and would move things around and redecorate to realize his ideas. Sections of the house went under complete renovations repeatedly.

Antithetical to what is done today, he would paint the grand 12-foot ceilings in a darker hue to create more intimacy in the large rooms.

Growing up, Holly was surrounded by national and international artists and actors, she says. Her parents would habitually host people when they were in town for gigs.

They bought another house in Virginia in 1992, where his artistic eye went into landscape architecture, as he transformed nearly two lakefront acres into their second paradise.

“He was always all over the place,” says Holly. “Mom and Dad never looked back; they just kept going, kept building.”

Kalilah Wright’s cell phone rings in her Clipper Mill studio, and on the other end is a customer who didn’t receive a T-shirt order she had placed with Wright’s company, Mess in a Bottle. As Wright listens to the customer’s story about how her package got stolen, she apologizes and immediately makes plans to send her another shirt free of charge. The customer spends the next five minutes thanking Wright for not only for being so attentive, but for creating such an empowering product.

Wright, who was born in Jamaica, moved to Maryland to attend graduate school at Morgan State before taking a job with Under Armour as an architect for their retail stores. But after Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, she decided she wanted to do something that had more of a social impact. “That happened in my neighborhood,” says Wright. “The city was in an uproar, and this was also happening all over the country and the world. It just made me want to figure out a way to create messages for people to wear and connect to.”

Wright started Mess in a Bottle in 2016 and, a month later, she quit her job at Under Armour to venture out on her own. She now has her own studio space where a staff of eight people do all the order fulfillment, packaging, and screen printing. T-shirts are emblazoned with empowering messages such as “Be great today” and “100% Black- Owned.” All of Mess in a Bottle’s T-shirt designs are packaged and delivered in a reusable bottle—hence the name.

A year to the day from when Wright quit her job, she was on Harry Connick Jr.’s talk show, where she had the opportunity to pitch her business to Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, who gave her advice on growing her brand. After that, the brand exploded via social media, with local bloggers and celebrity clientele—including Emmy-winner Lena Waithe, Uber chief brand manager Bozoma Saint John, and writer Awesomely Luvvie—all sporting Wright’s designs.

The e-commerce company, which also sells jackets, bags, and mugs, is constantly adding new messages to its products, whether that be something Wright comes across in her travels or something based on current events. “Not too long ago in Starbucks, there was a situation where two African-American males were asked to be escorted off the premises because they didn’t buy anything, and so I created a coffee mug that says, ‘I like my coffee black, and without prejudice,’” says Wright. “Anything that really affects me, I make a shirt for.”