The Everyday Alchemist
Jonathan Fong had never decorated anything before moving into his Santa Monica townhouse 12 years ago. “I have never been by nature a particularly creative person,” says the former vice president at Suissa Miller Advertising. “I was into math and science as a kid--I’m Asian.” The all-thumbs Fong needed to find a way to fix up his place that would be easy and economical, he says. “I kept asking myself, ‘What can I do on my own that will look really cool and not cost a lot of money?’ ”
For five years he lived with white walls. Bored with his “minimalist museum” and feeling stifled creatively, Fong, like many people, wanted more color but didn’t know how to begin. A close friend, costume designer David Zyla, advised Fong to wear “vital spring” colors and surround himself at home with the same hues.
Armed with his color palette, Fong headed to Home Depot, where he stocked up on Pop Art shades of tomato soup red, lilac, teal blue and wedding-mint green that now enliven his living room walls.
His creative genie on the loose, he found that he couldn’t stop with just painting. He raided a local craft store, where he bought foam stamps in star, diamond and swirl shapes and added the motifs to the walls. A soffit the length of the room got a dose of red stripes. Fong applied a grid of letters to the lilac wall above the fireplace--”a personal puzzle based on the board game Boggle,” he explains. Names of his favorite movies, “Xanadu” and “Grease,” their star Olivia Newton-John, and his beloved mutt Broadway are spelled out in helter-skelter fashion. (Check out the second row, where his first name is spelled backward.)
Fong says one design experiment “just sort of led to another.” Today his home is a laboratory for his inventive, inexpensive ideas. Kitchen cabinets sport decoupaged Pop Art posters of Jackie O, Grace Jones, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s tomato soup; aluminum roof flashing and faux fur walls enliven his TV room and master bedroom; floral “cakes” and colorful drinking straw vases adorn tabletops. “I never studied design, so I didn’t have any formal schooling to bias me,” Fong explains. “It allowed me to come up with some rather unorthodox ideas.”
Three years ago his theatrical style of turning everyday objects into extraordinary designs caught the eye of HGTV’s “Kitty Bartholomew: You’re Home” show, which invited him to be a guest. A producer on the show suggested that Fong set up a website to answer questions; it received 300 hits in its first two hours.
Appearances on Bartholomew’s show led to gigs on HGTV’s “Smart Solutions” and a USA Network makeover show, “Before & After’noon Movie,” as well as a recent HGTV pilot called “Crafty People.” He added more ideas to his website, which averages 15,000 visitors a week from as far away as Africa and Australia. “I started getting letters from all over the world,” Fong says. “I thought I must be on to something.” Sensing that his life was taking a new direction, he left his advertising job.
Today the adman-turned-design guru has a deal with Watson-Guptill to write a series of decorating and lifestyle books. The first volume, “Walls That Wow: Creative Wall Treatments Without Fancy Schmancy Painting,” will be published in October. The second volume will deal with easy-to-make flower arrangements that, Fong says, “your florist doesn’t want you to know about.” The third is a food and entertaining book, with ideas too secret to reveal.
With his imaginative ideas and easy-to-execute designs, Fong likes to think of himself as “the hip, Asian Martha.” “The main difference between Martha and myself is that all my techniques are very forgiving and don’t require perfection,” he says. “If I can do it, anybody can.”
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Fong’s Favorites
Fabric: Home Fabrics, 910 S. Wall St., Los Angeles; (213) 689-9600
Giant silk flowers: TJ Maxx ‘n More, 8621 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Westchester; (310) 670-7098
Paint stamps: Pearl Art & Craft Supply, 1250 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 854-4900
Aluminum flashing: Home Depot stores
Accessories: IKEA stores
Shelving: www.westelm.com
Fine-art posters: www.art.com; www.globalgallery.com
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Resource Guide
Jonathan Fong, (310) 766-0313, www.jonathanfongstyle.com
