Fauxology: Studying the Visual Magic of Faux Finishing and Interior Design (brought to you by Garay Artisans)

My friend, Gretchen, from WFTV/ABC-9 clued me in to a great event tomorrow night combining an art auction, wine and sushi — and it all benefits Variety Children’s Charity.  (Gretchen is a great person who is always clued into local events and donates her time and efforts to great charities.  How she does all this and still maintains her awesome television-producer-extraordinaire self is beyond me.)

chART, a company that introduces artists to art collectors all the while benefitting charities, is hosting one of their great events at the Shari Sushi Lounge in Thornton Park tomorrow, June 19th.  The auction is from 5 pm - 7 pm and the auctions start as low as $40.  The shindig benefits Variety of Orlando, who strive to provide for special-needs children in the Central Florida area.  For every art purchase, Variety will receive 20% of the sale and publicity in the chART magazine.  The event is free and open to the public. 

chART was started by Casey Swann, who experienced a business slowdown after 9/11.  While at an art show with a friend, Ms. Swann noticed how difficult it was for artists to promote and sell their work.  An idea began brewing in her mind about an interconnected promotional program designed to sell original art from local artists and benefit worthy charities.  The upside is that it provided a creative and fulfilling new direction for her and her business. I hope to have the chance to meet such an exciting person! (Can you tell I’m a big fan of women who Make Things Happen?)

After e-mailing and calling a few friends, a group of us are going together.  I hope you have the opportunity to come out and possibly bid on the beautiful art — and say hello if we are to bump into one another!  

Today, we continue with the second home in our Street of Dreams tour: Triana.  (To see the first home, click on Chateau d’Usse.)  Triana’s design is Art Deco flavored — though thoroughly modern.  The home has six bedrooms and all are outfitted with iPod docking stations and satellite radio — it also has five plasma televisions (with one cleverly hidden within a cabinet).  Throughout the house is a smart home system that will adjust your room temperature and home lighting, bring up video surveillance and order dinner for you.  (I wonder if we’ll even need our hands in the future…)  Triana was designed by Robb & Stucky Interiors and built by the Irvin Construction Company.

Our whole group really liked this home but our mutual favorite area was the Theatre Room.  It had an amazing sound system (which was only helped by the movie playing: Transformers) and the seating was not your normal theatre seating…it was large, lush sofas you could stretch out in.  (Sadly, none of those pictures came out well.)  It also had a beautiful wine cellar (monitored closely by security — I’m guessing they had advance notice of our arrival, LOL) and was the favorite house of some of our group. 

Here’s the Foyer:

Some of my favorite touches from the Foyer above are the cool chair (you can see it towards the middle in the pic above) and the marble stairs (lower left, above pic).

When you come up those nice marble stairs, you find this nice seating area for you and ten of your closest friends…

My mother walked into the library while I was still one room away.  She came back and told me to “contain myself”.  When I walked in, it was my complete dream room: books and a spiral staircase.  Delicious.

Some views of the top area of this library.  Aren’t those jumbo light fixtures gorgeous?

Here are separate guest rooms with nice touches: beautiful, dimensional pieces of pottery on the wall (left) and a cool ceiling fan with a ceiling that mimics the wall color (right)

Last but not least, the backyard.  So stunning it deserves two pics!

Some pictures courtesy of Street of Dreams.