Home Care In Sikes, LA

Joanna Sikes, the Museum of Northwest Art's development director from 2021-22 and executive director, 2018-2021, said goodbye to her leadership roles at MoNA in November.

Sikes has had a long and storied career in the arts, one which she found quite actually by accident. It began in the 1960s in her early days at the University of California at Davis, where she had planned to become a veterinarian. Davis, located in California's Central Valley, a largely a rural farming country, was the perfect place to fulfill her desire to be a large-animal veterinarian. On the day she was informed that her arms were not long enough to reach into a pregnant cow giving birth to her calf, Sikes knew she needed to adjust her focus. But to what?

Meanwhile something was about to change at UC Davis. In an extraordinary coalition of alliances, political shifts and timing, the university had managed to attract a faculty that would forever change Sike's life. Esteemed Bay Area artists Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud, with Elmer Bishoff, had decamped from the San Francisco Art Institute to teach at UC Davis. And so it was that she simply "walked into an art department that was loaded with the best''.

Sikes as both student and assistant would make herself indispensable to these artists whose work, individually and collectively, would change the face of California art. They took Sikes under their wing, so much so, that one evening they brought her to see fellow painter Richard Diebenkorn's "Ocean Park." "It blew me away – I just didn't know what to do with it." Sikes continued to take art courses at UC Davis, but in the end feeling that she was not an artist, decided the only way she could function in the art world was to become a curator.

Upon graduation, one opportunity led to another for Sikes and while preparing to curate a solo show for a then little known glass artist named Dale Chihuly, fate would take another wonderful turn and she would continue to help build Chihuly's career for the next 30 years. Later Sikes would move within the glass art community to work as director of external affairs at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and then on to MoNA in La Conner.

"In 2019 MoNA was in a bit of a mess both in terms of personnel and finances" recalls Susan Parke, MoNA's curator emeritus and a former executive director. "Then came Joanna Sikes to the rescue. With Sikes at the helm, MoNA ended almost in the black for the first time in many years. She was willing to take advice and we talked a lot about what was happening and what had happened. She was able to use some of my experiences and thoughts to essentially turn things around. She had a great staff who knew what they were doing and were happy to go ahead and just do it."

Stefano Catalani, MoNA's new director, agrees. "Joanna inherited an institution which had lost its way forward, stricken as it was by financial losses and board divisions. She was instrumental in healing the institution by stabilizing the finances, inspiring the staff and offering the board a road map out of the tunnel."

He notes her contributions: "I see her impact every time I walk into the Museum and meet the staff. The staff truly loves her and she not only supports them but offers them an invaluable emotional stability so critical to not only go about the day-to-day workload but also embrace with vision the long-term challenges of working in an art non-profit organization."

I ask Sikes what her plans are now – and she smiles.

Holgate, a fine artist, has a studio in La Conner and has exhibited at MoNA.

Things got heated at the end of Sunday's game between the Los Angeles Sparks and Washington Mystics.

During the game's final minute, Sparks guard Layshia Clarendon drove to the basket with Los Angeles leading, 83-80. Mystics guard Brittney Sykes met her at the baseline with a hard foul, grabbing Clarendon around the waist with her left arm.

Clarendon responded with a well-executed tackle. As they landed from the midair collision, they grabbed Sykes with their left arm and drove her body to the ground. Sykes' left shoulder slammed onto the court.

Sykes immediately got up and shoved Clarendon to their back as they regained their posture. Sykes then stood over Clarendon as players from both teams jumped in to separate the players.

The situation de-escalated from there. Neither player appeared to be injured in the fracas. Both were issued technical fouls and ejected.

Sykes was also issued a personal foul for the initial contact, leading to free throws for the Sparks. Backup Rae Burrell took Clarendon's place in the Sparks lineup and on the free-throw line. She hit both free throws to extend the Sparks' lead to 85-80 to help close out a 91-83 win for Los Angeles.

Both teams are fighting to make the eight-team playoff field. The loss dropped the sixth-place Mystics to 13-14. The now 10-18 Sparks would be on the outside looking in at the postseason, trailing the 11-15 Chicago Sky for the eighth and final playoff spot. It's not clear if either player will face further discipline from the WNBA.

The setting was ultra-chic.

The club dining room at the posh Newport Beach Country Club had been transformed into a sophisticated salon on the classic theme of blue and white Oriental porcelain.

Each of the round dining tables in the dining room were adorned with individual porcelain vases sporting white-on-white summer blooms of hydrangeas, roses, stock and lilies.

The appropriate crystal, flatware and china supported the summer theme. It was all in recognition of guest of honor, Mark D. Sikes, a Los Angeles-based designer who had come at the invitation of the Decorative Arts Society (DARTS).

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It was the organization’s end of the annual “lecture season” luncheon, and Sikes, who has earned an international reputation as a designer of note over this last decade, came to Newport with his partner Michael Griffin, to share their story of glory. It is quite a story.

Sikes and Griffin met while working for Pottery Barn.

Each man devoted some 20 years to that organization, with Sikes rising to a senior executive design position with the company.

Then, about a decade ago, it was time to leave. The pair first settled in San Francisco and then moved to Los Angeles where they bought a home in the Hollywood Hills.

Sikes went to work decorating the home, top to bottom, his life-long passion. The preacher’s son from the Deep South, raised and influenced by a fashion-conscious mother who, as Sikes put it: “Dressed far too expensively for a preacher’s wife.”

“I was the kid who always knew all of the design trends, the celebrities, the fashion and tastes of the current day and I was the consummate observer of every detail in every house, every fashion — anything to do with design,” Sikes said.

Oddly, Sikes claims he never set out to be an interior decorator. It just happened, and it happened due to the creation of their Hollywood Hills home that he created for himself and Griffin.

Neighbors noticed and then they talked. Soon people were asking for a tour. Then, they were asking Sikes to design for them.

Sikes and Griffin would open a design firm and business would flourish over time.

Today, in addition to a full-scale roster of architectural design commissions, the pair have launched a ladies ready-to-wear line which is being managed by Griffin.

Major client commissions from celebrities including writer and director Nancy Meyer would put Sikes on design radar.

He shared a story with the DARTS audience on how the director met him, and eventually hired him to do her daughter’s new home.

“Before we opened our design firm, I was doing store windows for a design house on La Cienega Boulevard,” Sikes said. “I was there actually in this one window placing objects and corresponding fabrics when I noticed two women had stopped to watch. I came out to say hello.

“One of them asked me for my opinion on fabric, which I gave her and it turned out to be the fabric of choice she and her daughter had just selected for the daughter’s new home. It was the beginning of a long association and friendship with Nancy.”

Sikes’ full story was brought to life for the luncheon crowd with help from noted Orange County interior design and architectural publisher Susan McFadden of California Homes Magazine.

McFadden interviewed Sikes on behalf of DARTS as the crowd listened with attention to his every detail as the decorator shared excerpts from his bestselling decorative book titled, “Beautiful.”

The handsome book was presented to all in attendance in a blue and white stripped canvas tote. Another detail, another touch of class.

Chaired by the amazing duo of Ann Dennis and Mary Anna Jeppe, the luncheon event attracted some of the best and brightest of the Newport social scene.

Sandra Ayres, Linda Phillips, Maureen Madigan, president of DARTS, Cathi Bledsoe, Bonnie McClellan, Carolyn Garrett, and Madeline Hayward were among the glitterati.

Major supporters of DARTS Hyla Bertea, Julia Argyros, Barbara Glabman, Laraine Eggleston, Shelley Rigg and Kim Donahue also were front and center.

Emceed by Madigan and Dennis with a little help from community leader Hyla Bertea, a very special announcement was presented to the crowd.

Bertea took the microphone and offered a little story.

“I went up to Julia Argyros to thank her for her incredible, generous donation of $200,000 to DARTS,” Bertea said. “Julia was surprised and said, ‘I didn’t donate $200,000.’ I was taken aback. How could I make such an error?”

“’I donated $250,000!” responded Julia,” Bertea said.

The crowd went wild.

Argyros served as honorary chair of the event, making a very significant contribution. Funds donated by Argyros and others, including proceeds from DARTS dues and fees collected from the annual designer lectures series, are distributed to local nonprofits on an annual basis.

2017-2018 organizations supported by DARTS funds include American Red Cross, Breast Cancer Solutions, CASA Youth Shelter andCaterina’s Club, among others.

Established in 1995, DARTS invites community-minded women and men to support the organization participating in its annual series of five lectures featuring noted designers, architects, historians, landscapers, artists and writers in all fields of the design and decorate arts.

This support in turn funds the deserving nonprofits in the Orange County community.

Design divas spotted in the luncheon crowd were the chic Barbara Bowie of Big Canyon, Lisa Argyros, Ronnie Allumbaugh, Toni Berlinger, Judy Brady, France Campbell, Janet Curci, Elana Donovan, Brenda Eastman, Marion Hartwich, Marion Palley, Judy Slutzky, Ardele St. George, Nancy Wynne and event sponsor Stuart Winston of Lugano Diamonds, Newport Beach.

To learn more about DARTS, visit decorativeartssociety.net.

B.W. COOK is editor of the Bay Window, the official publication of the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach.

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Having undergone a refresh at the hands of AD100 designer Mark D. Sikes, the beloved filmmaker’s longtime abode is ready for its close-up

Photography by Amy Neunsinger

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If the story of writer-director-producer Nancy Meyers and her house were a Hollywood movie, it would most certainly be what the late philosopher Stanley Cavell famously termed a “comedy of remarriage.” Just like His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, and The Awful Truth—three of the best-known examples of the genre from the 1930s and ’40s—this feature would begin at the couple’s breakup, trace the rekindling of their sparky romance, and end with their delightful reunion. In this case, however, our heroine’s romantic partner is not Cary Grant. It is her Provençal–style house in Los Angeles.

Sixteen years ago Meyers, the creative powerhouse behind Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, and It’s Complicated, decided that things were over between herself and her five-bedroom dream home. For several years, the house (originally designed by architect Elaine René-Weissman) had been a beloved refuge. But when daughter Annie went off to college, the house—which Meyers had started building when she was married to the girls’ father, director Charles Shyer—seemed much too big for just her and younger daughter Hallie. “After many years of enjoying this house, I decided I should move to a smaller one,” she says, her eyes twinkling behind horn-rimmed glasses.

Dressed in a crisp white blouse, she’s seated in the home office, where she’s conducted most of her pandemic-era Zoom interviews, a long wall of white-painted bookcases crammed with books and framed family photos behind her. “So I bought the house next door and hired architect Howard Backen to build me a new one,” she continues. That one was going to be much more modestly sized and modern, conceived around indoor-outdoor living. But since it was going to take a couple of years, “I thought to myself, I’ll just change things up here in the meantime,” she recalls. “Basically, if something was dark—like my dining room table—I made it light, and if it was light, I made it dark.” Pause. Cut to our heroine’s light-bulb moment, when she realizes that she might be making a big mistake. “I fell back in love with my house!” she says with a laugh. She abandoned the plan, sold the place next door, and has stayed happily ensconced here—with some recent “freshening up”—ever since.

Meyers tidies up the lawn with her leaf blower.

Meyers’s talent for conjuring movie homes that audiences covet for themselves has been evident since 1991’s Father of the Bride, which she cowrote. That film (starring Steve Martin) featured a posh white Colonial that seems an early cinematic testament to the low-key good taste that Meyers’s own movies would come to embody. With each film since, Meyers has masterminded one mouthwatering interior after another. Who has watched Something’s Gotta Give and not swooned over the Diane Keaton character’s Hamptons living room, with its acreage of inviting white sofas? Or the elegantly rustic kitchen in It’s Complicated? People’s obsession with her film interiors, Meyers has said, is so passionate that she fears it sometimes “overshadows” the films themselves. Still, her attention to every chair, lamp, and book on set remains unwavering: “Characters’ homes convey so much about the people who live there,” she says. (Having just inked a deal with Netflix to write, direct, and produce a new ensemble comedy, the director is surely about to envision new spaces that will set fans’ hearts ablaze.)

At any rate, she can’t resist her penchant for beauty, a trait she traces back to her late mother, Patricia, who regularly dragged young Nancy and her sister to antiques fairs. “We would drive out to the country outside of where we lived in Philadelphia and she’d load up the trunk,” she says fondly. “She was always rearranging furniture or refinishing something in the garage. She had lovely taste.” Meyers seems to have passed the decorating genes to Annie and Hallie. (It’s hardly a coincidence that Hallie, also a director, made the film Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon as an interior designer, which Meyers herself produced.) “I mean, it’s fun,” she says. “My girls and I are on a group chat every day, and often it’s ‘Look at this thing I found on eBay.’ ”

To read more about how Meyers worked with AD100 designer Mark D. Sikes to give her home a refresh, check out AD’s July/August issue.

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The L.A. Designer Reinterprets a Legendary Cap Ferrat Villa With His Blousy Blues, Checks and Stripes

photography Stephen Karlisch

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Living room designed by Mark D. Sikes Interiors. (Photo by Stephen Karlisch)

Overview of the Living Room

Mark D. Sikes’ beautiful living room, dubbed Casa Fiorentina, was inspired by the iconic La Fiorentina estate in Cap Ferrat. Checks, stripes, paisleys, and tile motifs play together in this refreshing and rejuvenating space that honors the essence of the timeless La Fiorentina while being reimagined with a Texas twist. The fabled La Fiorentina has a rich history filled with legendary designers who played a role in its legacy: Rory Cameron, Billy Baldwin, David Hicks … Even Hubert de Givenchy and Bunny Mellon are a part of the story. Mark’s interpretation of this space continues the tradition of casual ease and elegance for which its namesake is known. A magnificent custom wallpaper by Iksel Decorative Arts creates the perfect backdrop: a decadent yet airy blue-and-white tile motif that engulfs the space with a worldly elegance. Layered within is a mix of Italian and Portuguese antiques from John Nelson Antiques, as well as pieces from Mark’s own new collection with Chaddock Home, upholstered in Schumacher fabrics and accented with Samuel & Sons trim. Hanging lanterns from Paul Ferrante punctuate the space. A special debut collaboration with Christopher Spitzmiller also makes an appearance, reinterpreting wicker onto a porcelain vessel. — Mark D. Sikes

Mark D. Sikes on his collaborations, favorite sources, and Tex-Mex every night:

I’m very excited to debut a collaboration with Christopher Spitzmiller. We designed The Mark Lamp and The Mark Wall Bracket together. It looks like a glazed basket, and it’s beautiful. I was also thrilled to partner with Iksel wallpaper on a custom wallpaper design. And, of course, I was thrilled to showcase my new Chaddock furniture collection .

Upholsterer: Chaddock. Painter: Louis Gloria Painting. Finisher, workroom: Valley Drapery.

Nick Brock Antiques and Grange Hall.

Set your Easter Table with Bering's

Mi Cocina, like every night.

A huge 17th-century Italian oil painting from John Nelson Antiques in Los Angeles. It makes the room feel like it’s 80 years old.

Doing it all from L.A. and not seeing the space until a week before install.

Working on a house in Dallas. I truly love Texas.