Art inspires the interior design of art consultant Tara Clayton’s home.
Tara Clayton caught the art bug early on. It began as an art history major at Davidson College, which led to a position after graduation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I really wanted the exposure to a lot of different curatorial departments,” Clayton says. “I wanted to get my hands on the art and meet different curators and experience various fields in art history.”
Mission accomplished. After stints as an assistant curator at the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College and a position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Clayton attended graduate school at New York University, where she focused her studies on modern art. Her work in the arts collided with her growing interest in design, and she soon identified “a huge gap between the art and design worlds.” When her family moved to Durham in 2019, she started Cobblestone Lane Gallery, an art consulting and design firm. Now, she helps homeowners by providing a finishing service, which focuses on pairing vintage and modern artwork with artistic fabrics, textiles, and furnishings.
That passion was the perfect segue into designing her personal home in Durham’s Hope Valley, which she shares with her husband, Bo, and their three children. “We’d driven by this home a million times and just loved it,” she says. “We’ve always wanted a shake-style home and said that if we ever had the chance to buy one, we’d jump on it.” As luck would have it, the home went on the market and the couple purchased it in early 2022.
Not long after moving in, Clayton commenced work on the interiors, putting her eye for art and design into motion. “When I was younger and working in museums, I definitely skewed more modern because that was my area of research,” she says. “But, for my own home, I craved the warmth that vintage artwork, furniture, and accessories provide, coupled with the freshness of modern touches. I really wanted to find a way to let old and new pieces live together to tell interesting stories.”
These opposing aesthetics purposefully converge in spaces like the dining room, where an abstract piece by artist Helen Frankenthaler, an important figure in the Color Field painting movement, hangs above a Lillian August Furniture sideboard with a traditional wallpaper as the backdrop. A large abstract landscape, commissioned by Raleigh artist Eleanor Scott Davis, serves as the centerpiece to the otherwise traditionally designed breakfast room, where the Molly Mahon for Schumacher wallpaper provides just the right dose of color and pattern so as not to detract from the art. “My goal is to infuse big spaces with the intimacy and charm of smaller rooms through the use of color, art, furnishings, and accessories,” Clayton says.
Like her art collection, the interiors of her home are ever-evolving, with new additions or swaps being made. One thing, though, remains consistent with every tweak and move: artwork is the centerpiece to every design choice. “I love this home because I really pushed myself to try different things that you don’t see all the time,” says Clayton. “It feels warm and inviting, and is exactly what we wanted.”
