Jungalow: Decorate Wild , livre ebook

For Art

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION WILD AT HEART
CHAPTER 1 MAGIC IN THE MIX
CHAPTER 2 WILD FOR COLOR
CHAPTER 3 WILD FOR PATTERN
CHAPTER 4 OUTSIDE INSIDE
CHAPTER 5 WILD IMAGINATION
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DESIGN RESOURCES
WILD AT HEART
When I started Jungalow, I had just moved into a 1920s bungalow court in Los Angeles, a type of multi-unit housing that surrounds a central courtyard. After ten years of living with the cobblestone and concrete of Florence and Brooklyn, front door access to a little bit of sunshine and greenery was a welcome change. I felt revived by the sight of fluttering butterflies, the sounds of singing birds, the scent of citrus trees, lavender, and rosemary, and the feel of the warm sun on my face as I sipped my morning chai on the front porch.
I invited these outdoor feelings inside my bungalow by bringing in bamboo shades, botanical wall coverings, and lots and lots of plants. I converted those five hundred square feet into a creative laboratory. It was the first time I ever lived alone, and I leaned into the freedom of having to make no compromises with parents, roommates, or boyfriends about design choices. I furnished it with reimagined curbside finds and embarked on a series of DIY projects that turned the space into a spiraling kaleidoscope of color and pattern. It was wild.
I started a blog to chronicle these creative adventures. I had no plan, just a yearning to create and share and connect. I blogged while doing any client work I could find, designing products and logos, building websites, and styling homes and boutiques.
My girlfriends and I were unwinding on my thrifted sofa after work one evening, and one of them remarked that my place looked like a jungle . . . a jungle bungalow, at which point all four of us shouted in unison, A jungalow! I love a good portmanteau, and it suggested a mix of comfort and adventure, outdoors and in-just the feeling I wanted in my home.
Over the course of the next decade, what started out as a fun name for a botanical bungalow has grown into a lifestyle brand that draws inspiration from nature and celebrates diversity, color, pattern, plants, and creativity. For me, Jungalow represents the idea that a home is not just for living, but a place for creating and growing.
A home is like a garden. It must be cultivated to create the conditions for healthy growth. In this book, I m sharing the most inspiring work I ve had a hand in over the past decade, with the high hopes that it may move you to cultivate a home in which you can thrive, emotionally and creatively. Now, perhaps more than any other time in my life, home is so much more than a place to hold belongings and take shelter from the elements. Home is a sanctuary, a school, an office, a creative studio, a gym, a garden, a spa, a place to nourish the body, the soul, the mind, the heart. My aim is to connect you with your own-and your home s-potential, to cultivate space in which you may grow and blossom, and to help you feel free to tap into your most wild self.
In Chapter 1 , we mix things up by reaching into our roots. Like plants, we are all anchored and nourished by our roots. It is in discovering where I come from and who I am that I have learned that there is Magic in the Mix . What will you discover?
In Chapter 2 , we clash and pair, forage and play, and go Wild for Color . Color is one of the greatest joys of life, and the most ubiquitous mood enhancer. Notice it! Appreciate it! Use it! Color transports, confounds, and moves. It inspires me to create. What does color do for you?
In Chapter 3 , we go Wild for Pattern , gleaning inspiration from nature to make our own patterns and gaining confidence using pattern in home d cor. Have you ever walked into a garden, forest, or jungle and thought, Wow! It s so busy in here!! Yeah, me neither. On the contrary, the mix of patterns and colors inevitably feels coherent and balanced, calming even. Think of leopard spots, the stripes of a palm frond, or the ripples in a lake-there is something about the repetition, the rhythm, you know?
In Chapter 4 , we bring the Outside Inside , exploring biophilia and the use of plants and natural materials in home d cor. Plants are living things, and to thrive indoors, they need sun, soil, and water. But are we not also living things? What do we need to bring indoors to be happy and thrive?
In Chapter 5 , we explore creative reuse and reinvention. We look at everything as material. We go foraging at home and at flea markets and let loose our Wild Imagination .
Jungalow: Decorate Wild tells the story of my roots, rhythms, and ways of seeing the world. It is my sincere hope that this book inspires your own wild adventures in making a home that supports your imagination, well-being, and growth.
The bright colors of the zinnia flowers draw pollinators like bees and hummingbirds to a garden.
In the wild, plants send pollen grains to ride the water or wind, or develop flowers with the colors, fragrances, or nectars necessary to attract pollinators-all in order to send their genes far afield to mix with one another. All sexually reproducing species go to great lengths to mix their genes as a way to survive shifting environmental conditions. Over time, new species evolve, and the result is the vast array of living organisms we encounter on our planet. We humans are part of this story, of course, and there is a deep sense that our very existence as individuals and as a species is the result of putting a high value on genetic mixture and diversity. Mixing is magic.

Pieces from four continents come together in this eclectic entryway.

An example of a Japanese ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1857. Van Gogh painted a study of this very print.

An African mask from the Fang people, similar to those Picasso saw in Paris before painting Les Demoiselles d Avignon .
I believe that mixing is just as essential to cultural reproduction, in all its various modes: food, music, art, architecture, design, etc. Like living organisms, cultural practices mix, mutate, and evolve, giving rise to fantastic innovations.
Culinary history, for example, often reveals the surprising hybrid origins of characteristic regional dishes. Banh mi is what you get when French baguettes are put to use by Vietnamese street food vendors. Vindaloo is a Goan variation of Portuguese marinade called vinha d alhos.
Such hybridization is the rule in music as well. Jazz music, for example, is what emerges when West African rhythmic traditions mix with European tonal music and musicians repurpose wind instruments left over from Civil War marching bands. Musical styles from ax to zydeco are hybrids.
There are examples of hybridization in the fine arts, too. Many modern artists are exemplars of cross-cultural inspiration. Vincent Van Gogh was so inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e paintings and wood block prints that he thought of their influence as fundamental to his practice. Pablo Picasso s encounter with the sculptures and masks of African artists were pivotal to the creation of his proto-Cubist masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d Avignon . Frida Kahlo, born to a German-Hungarian father and a Spanish-Tehuana mother, was herself of mixed heritage, and is known primarily for her self-portraits that often provoke the viewer by juxtaposing Indigenous and Traditional with Modern and European imagery.
This is also true in architecture and design. Famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright found the influence of Japanese woodblock prints to be as foundational to his work as Van Gogh did. If Japanese prints were to be deducted from my education, he said, I don t know what direction the whole might have taken. Mixing is everywhere. What would Art Deco be without its Ancient Egyptian motifs? What would Santa Fe look like without its mix of Native Adobe and Spanish woodwork? What would Moroccan design be without its unique blend of Berber, Mediterranean, Arabic, and Sub-Saharan African influences?
Even the language in which I write is an amalgam forged by centuries of mixing and remixing between Germanic and Celtic tribes, imperial Latin, ancient Greek, and Norman French. And because of the English language s status as a lingua franca of the modern world, it continues to absorb words and concepts and syntax from cultures and languages from all over the globe.
Cross-cultural hybrids emerge from the turbulent churning of history, but whether introduced by slave ships or trade ships, salsa dips or smacking lips, new tools, materials, and practices are inevitably transformed and reinvented to suit the lives and aspirations of people in ever-changing cultural contexts.

Frank Lloyd Wright looked to Japanese architecture for inspiration as he designed Fallingwater, which is now considered an exemplar of American architecture.

The Moroccan hotel Riad BE Marrakech incorporates Berber, Roman, Arabic, and Andalusian design elements.
MY ROOTS
I am Black and Jewish, or Blewish, as I like to say. When I was a child, each spring my family sat down to meals of matzo ball soup and collard greens. For New Year s, it was black-eyed peas with a side of apples and honey. On winter holidays, we celebrated with Mom s potato latkes and Dad s famous fried spaghetti.
The d cor of my childhood home in Berkeley, California, reflected the cultural and ethnic mix of my parents. Mezuzahs and menorahs mixed with West African masks. Havdalah candles and hallah plates were proudly on display, and above the fire mantel hung a giant surrealist painting from Ethiopia.
BLACK ROOTS
My dad, Charles, was born in California s Central Valley, one of Juanita Blakeney s thirteen children, and by the tender age of five he was already laboring in the fields picking cotton, grapes, and melons. In the evenings, he sold newspapers to the men in the bars and barbershops on the white side of town. Gamblers would pay him a nickel to rub his hair for luck.