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By Constance Tillotson
Special to The Lookout
June 11 -- Joe Nicoletti has painted the lobby of
LA City Hall, Rod Stewart’s house and the Biltmore Hotel.
Now, he has his vision set on Santa Monica.
A 25-year resident of the beachside city, Nicoletti is not
just looking at painting a building here and there, but the
city itself, its business strips and boulevards, starting
with Pico.
“One of the intentions for the city is to create a
user friendly, welcoming and inviting destination for tourists
and local residents,” said Nicoletti, who is president
of Chameleon Paintworks,
a 28-year-old company based in Santa Monica.
“My intention is to appeal to City officials to create
an incentive to color brand the neighborhoods… and aid
their vision of being a more pedestrian city.”
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Nicoletti hopes to achieve this with
a judicious use of colors that can add a warm, inviting
character to lackluster strips and “connect”
the different parts of the city into a holistic experience
for its residents and visitors.
Nicoletti, who has made a name making over private
properties – including the homes of numerous celebrities
including Stewart, Jim Carey and Sting, as well as businesses
– has transitioned to public buildings.
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The City of Los Angeles chose Nicoletti to restore all the
elaborately frescoed interiors in its historic City Hall building
Downtown. The job not only involved the inner corridors, vestibules
and rotunda but also the mayor’s suite and office. It
took a crew of 11 and a year to finish the project.
“There are not a lot of people in the world who could
actually handle such a job,” said Kevin Jew, chief operating
officer of Project Restore. “ There was extensive damage
done, paint was flaking.
“Now it looks like it is brand new and never needed
to be touched,” Jew said.
Nicoletti’s career as a unique painter of buildings
began with Pop Art icon Andy Warhol.
“When I was putting myself through art school, I started
painting the rooftops in New York,” Nicoletti said.
“He used to throw parties up there. I jazzed it up a
bit with some
incredible colors.”
After graduating from the School of Visual Arts, Nicoletti
studied interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology,
where he found a passion in combining paint and architecture
he would bring to California
In Santa Monica, Nicoletti started painting houses for a
living and was inspired by the Los Angeles design.
“I was attracted to finishing,” said Nicoletti.
“It motivated me to constantly evolve and made the jobs
more interesting. Houses became much more magnificent when
painted with integrity.”
Corporations soon took note of how the color of a building
could impact the bottom line. One of those companies, Not
So Far East Imports, contacted Nicoletti to help design the
exterior of their building.
“By using the right color we were able to brand the
building,” Nicoletti said. “The color created
an interest to walk in. Sales immediately went up because
it was inviting to walk into. An identity was created.”
Other corporations soon followed. Nicoletti transformed a
14-foot wall in MTV’s Santa Monica headquarters with
base applications of copper, silver and gold leaf, then painted
it over several times with translucent color, detailing and
shading to evoke large robot heads with eyes made from televisions
displaying the MTV logo.
“We ended up at Rite Aide at 3 a.m.,” he recalled.
“I was inspired to buy 400 marbles for glasses, buttons
for the dimples, and bobby pins for blemishes and eyebrows.
The heads turned out really fun and interesting. Many companies
have used them in their annual reports and have sort of become
the MTV mascot.”
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| Chameleon paintworks crew touches up LA City Hall
ceiling. |
Soon celebrities were calling on Nicoletti to help bring
back the old Hollywood luster to their 1920 mansions by using
faux finishes, exotic paints, Venetian plaster one-of-a-kind
murals and trompe l’oeil.
“Jim Carey called,” said Nicoletti. “He
wanted us to paint his theater, his master bedroom closet
-- one hellava big closet -- think an entire department at
Barneys.”
At Sting’s Malibu home, Nicoletti took the colors of
the beach and ocean and had them flow effortlessly indoors.
“It was nothing dramatic,” he said. “No
faux finishes. The gentle, cool colors were basically a combination
of off whites which gave the home a beautiful flow against
the white beaches and blue ocean.”
His brush with the celebrities brought press coverage. Soon,
Nicoletti’s work was splashed across magazine covers.
His use of color to completely remodel Rod Stewart’s
home was featured in Architectural Digest. His renovation
of the Bell house in Los Angeles landed a 10-page spread in
“Town and Country.” “Interior Design”
magazine featured Nicoletti’s work with the headline,
“Move over, Michelangelo.”
Nicoletti acknowledges working on public projects poses very
different challenges than fulfilling the private whims even
of celebrities. But incentives can reduce the red tape and
expense faced by business owners who want to improve their
properties, he said.
“Santa Monica is known for its tax incentives for building
green,” said Nicoletti. “I would love to incorporate
a green paint incentive for business owners.
“There are many businesses in the city that are in
desperate need of paint, color and restoration,” he
said. “Many retailers do not own their space, but with
the cost of a well-thought-out color scheme and added tax
incentives it would be a slam dunk to help raise the spirit
of the visitor and of the locals.
“People soon will begin to walk the streets with an
uplifted spirit.”
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