THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406240777
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Long
Instead, she sees a stem. The stem of a beautiful flower.
{REST} Fisher, who has just finished repotting a tropical hibiscus plant, eyes the crack, declaring it ``perfect. A perfect rose.''
The rose isn't really there - yet - but neither are the white lace curtains to adorn the windows or an old-fashioned wicker table for the sage green porch.
But Fisher sees those, too.
``You don't see it?'' she asks incredulously. ``Well, maybe I see things through rose-colored glasses.''
Fisher is an artist, and she's hired herself to renovate her own home, a Victorian three-level house that one day she hopes will be a bed-and-breakfast.
Often, in early evening, she will step onto the pavement of tree-lined Holly Avenue and gaze at the 100-year-old edifice, cooking up the kind of decor that would make an heiress jealous.
``This house,'' she remarks ``is an artist's dream.''
-
The assortment of boxes that fill every one of the 13 rooms in Fisher's home doesn't unnerve her. Nor does the peeling plaster in the upstairs bedrooms or the mound of soot in the basement. They simply don't rattle the artist, who claims she's so tidy that a piece of lint on the carpet sends her racing across a room.
``I can promise you once this house is in order, I'll know where everything is; everything will have its place,'' says Fisher, 40, who admits this project has her ``living on Extra-Strength Tylenol. If I hadn't prepared for it mentally, I'd be going batty. I knew what I was getting into.''
Six months ago, Fisher, who's originally from the Indian River section of Chesapeake, was living in Naples, Italy. Europe had been her home since 1987, when her then-husband was transferred there for a job with NATO.
``I got to the point where I just didn't like the American lifestyle, the attitudes of people,'' she says, relaxing in a favorite chair she picked up at a garage sale. ``Everyone in Europe is more respectful. Americans don't appreciate what they have.''
Europe was good to Fisher, who first went to Portugal with degrees from Tidewater Community College and Old Dominion University in commercial and fine art.
``I was lucky,'' Fisher says. ``I lived in an artist's colony. I mean, it was a real artist's dream.''
She rented a prestigious estate, the Quinta da Palma, in Colares, Portugal, where she promoted various art shows, using the grounds as natural settings to display her work and the works of other artists.
Eventually, she turned the estate into a small bed-and-breakfast.
``We had everyone there, the U.S. admiral and his wife, prime ministers,'' she says. ``It was a storybook type of situation and beautiful. I mean BEAUTIFUL.''
Three-and-a-half years later, she relocated to Naples, where she promoted more shows, and eventually turned the downstairs of her villa into a school for student artists.
But always, Fisher's first focus has been her own art. Whipping out a small portfolio that she carries in her car, she shows off her work, which includes acrylics, chalks, pastels on paper and her specialty, mixed media. Her business card reads: ``Alice Creighton Fisher. Original modern abstract art, layout, illustrator, copywriter, photographer.''
``I love to experiment,'' says Fisher, pausing to look at a favorite piece, a mixed media titled ``Lisbon is Lisbon.'' ``I have to be in the mood to create, and sometimes when I look back upon it, it's hard to believe I was able to do (it) myself. There's a detachment. . . . It's like a diary for me.''
-
Even after she and her husband split up in Naples, Fisher never tired of Europe, but she did miss her daughter, Heide, and other friends in the States. Six months ago, she moved back, into a Sandbridge house, but she had aspirations of renovating a historical home. Her ideal place: an old, affordable house that wasn't a dump. After scanning Olde Towne Portsmouth, she finally laid eyes on 1304 Holly Ave. in South Norfolk. The house had only belonged to one owner, a widow who lived to be 100, but it had sat vacant for two years.
``My mother said no; my daughter said no; my best friend said no,'' Fisher says. ``I'm the only one that said yes.''
Ironically, Fisher's first apartment was only two blocks over from her new home. Back then, she hadn't entertained any notions of returning to South Norfolk, but she thinks the area holds potential. It's only minutes away from downtown Norfolk, and her home sits in a registered historic district. She likens the neighborhood to the working-class towns in Europe - the neighbors know each other, and it's blue collar.
``I can even ride my bike to the dentist,'' she says. ``I don't have to use my car. And hear that?'' she says above the toot of a train whistle. ``Now that's something right out of an old-fashioned neighborhood.''
-
``I have no social life,'' Fisher sighs. ``I'm the contractor, architect, designer, handyman, when I can, and secretary for this project. But I know what it's supposed to be like. I can envision the end. It's like somebody who knows there's gold at the end of the rainbow. I know this house is gold.''
The renovation is her seven-day-a-week job, and besides occasional visits from neighbors, her Weimaraner, Gus, is her constant companion. Fisher started the project by having central heat and air installed and some masonry work completed. She walked up and down her yard, tape measure in hand, with the contractor to ensure a new picket fence in the front was level with the property line. Soon, the walls will come down in her kitchen - Fisher's planning a gourmet one for the potential B&B, which she hopes will open in three years. Any day now, she expects a two-car garage with a breezeway, on special order, to arrive.
Fisher pulls out a roll of peacock wallpaper she has planned for the foyer walls. ``I'm going to wallpaper every room of the house,'' she says, cautioning that the flamboyant decorating will be saved for the entranceway. Everything else will have hint of design topped by her own hand-painted classical borders.
``I'm going to hand-paint the ceiling in the living room,'' she says. ``Have some kind of motif, birds here and there, maybe with vines running up to the ceiling. And I'm going to have white sheer German curtains, white lace, that are patterned. I'm going to have them in every room of the house.
``Your eye will be lifted to the ceiling,'' she says with a wink. ``And tassels. I'm going to use a lot of tassels. I really do like spectacular window treatments.''
The rooms will be separated by French doors, and the decor will be largely European - Fisher has 20,000 pounds of European antiques in storage.
One of the dining room walls is partially stripped - Fisher had gone hunting for a second fireplace to put there - but she promises it will be patched and the room will be formal, large enough to seat 16. The basement, suffering from the recent removal of a cast-iron boiler, ``will make a wonderful laundry room,'' she assures. And upstairs the three bedrooms will be classically decorated and private, for potential guests. The largest room will lead to a sitting room that Fisher plans to make into library. For now, Fisher's retreat is a sofa bed in the master bedroom, with a diet Sprite and a remote control nearby.
``I have woken up a couple of mornings and said, `Oh my, God, the place will never get done,' and put the covers back over my head. But then I'll work on a project that needs to be finished. That keeps me going.''
The renovation, she says, will be complete by November. And also in the works are a rooftop herb garden, an art and design studio in the attic, evening art shows. . . .
All of it is part of her ultimate dream. She stops short of saying she wants to be famous.
``I flip through the art books and all I see are men's names,'' she says. ``One day I want to open them and see mine. Alice Creighton Fisher.'' by CNB