Tile House + Tree of Life - Beverley Magennis

Artist-built Environment | Mosaic environment | Private property  -  Visible from the street

The Tile House is considered an Albuquerque landmark. All original mosaic art work that covers the home was completed by ceramic artist Beverley Magennis. She has been inspired by outsider artists, and throughout New Mexico, including Roswell, Albuquerque and southwestern New Mexico. Magennis has tiled the interiors and exteriors of homes, including her own, with tiles, pennies, and mosaics,

She began in 1984 with a mosaic border around the doorway, eleven years later the house was covered inside and out. Most of the tile was donated from friends, neighbors, and strangers who left buckets of scrap tile in the driveway.

It now belongs to Beverly's daughter, Erin Magennis and her husband Kyle Ray, both artists carrying on the mosaic tradition. The mosaics on the exterior of the house includes over 150,000 tiles, as well as pennies, mirrors, cereal boxes, plastic straws, bottle caps, and cigarette lighters, in fractured rows and grids, modernizing the ancient technique of mosaic through the reuse of common materials. The interior of the house is governed by the same opportunistic reuse of materials, noted by visitors. The house is on the Cultural Registry of the City of Albuquerque.

Beginning in 2006, the house underwent a facelift. Erin and Kyle scraped all the existing tile off the front face of the house, removed paint with a sandblaster and grinder, installed brand new windows and resurfaced the entire area with a latex based mortar, appropriate for tile bondage.

Other notable mosaic art works by Beverley are her Garden Ladies, which have a standing height of about 6' tall and the landmark Tree of Life in Albuquerque. Her work is held in the collections of the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, and the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History.

The home is currently occupied by the artist's daughter and her husband. It is not open to the public.

Credit: Home page and Wikipedia  http://magennisraymosaics.net/id15.html

Creator:  Beverley Magennis: 1942
Creation dates: Tile House 1984-1995, Tree of Life 1999

Tile House: 300 Gene Ave. NW
Albuquerque, NM

Tree of Life:

http://www.abqartglass.com