1702020061_DannyFulgencio_10221LakeHighlands_LHC

Top: Michael’s home embodies her witty, charmingly deranged sensibilities. A replica of Picasso’s “Guernica” monopolizes one wall in the master bedroom, where a cartoonish anatomically correct heart of gold serves as an accent pillow. Above: Jack-a-lope “Poots” keeps watch over a long hallway. (Photos by Danny Fulgencio)

Top: Michael’s home embodies her witty, charmingly deranged sensibilities. A replica of Picasso’s “Guernica” monopolizes one wall in the master bedroom, where a cartoonish anatomically correct heart of gold serves as an accent pillow. Above: Jack-a-lope “Poots” keeps watch over a long hallway. (Photos by Danny Fulgencio)

Inside the home, and mind, of an unapologetically whimsical fabric designer

A pad’s worth of prescriptions for psychiatric medications, scribbled by doctors in the 1950s, mounted on a faintly smudged white canvas, underwrites a stop-in-your-tracks entryway. The outré design is one of homeowner Erin Michael’s own creations. But even as admirers express curiosity, she dismisses that sort of art as hobby and moves along to the next thing — a lanky cut of driftwood that resembles a headless eunuch who, she says, casts an eerie shadow across the blank wall at dusk.

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“Art can be expensive,” which is her reason for self-producing a portion of the fantastical items that adorn her mid-century contemporary-style abode. “Most of [the décor] is just what I like and what makes me happy.”

Rooms are festooned with a combination of unique collectables and remarkable derivatives of famous, otherwise unattainable, items: a version of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” a violent depiction of suffering and death during the Spanish Civil War, spans one master-bedroom wall. Above the bed is a reproduction of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Nude.” A drawing in a children’s book inspired a mural in her 9-year-old son’s quarters.

Color, irony and nostalgia, employed with precision, symmetry and disaffected whimsy, influence the home’s every element — strung together, it all looks like a Wes Anderson storyboard.

The room-roaming dog, donning a plaid bowtie collar, only adds to the effect.

A jack-a-lope called “Poots” overlooks the hallway (“That was Hank Williams’ nickname,” she explains); an entire guest suite imitates a 1950s motel room complete with “bad art” and a vintage TV set; shelves of records, an old Crosby player and vintage cameras fill one nook; a Joseph Cornell-esque assemblage (in a glass dome rather than a box) showcases a mouse wearing a scarf riding a saddled partridge. “That one creeps some people out,” Michael says, “so I keep it off in the bedroom.”

Michael works as “right-hand man” to renowned photographer Laura Wilson, who, though famous in her own right, also is mother to actors Owen, Luke and Andrew Wilson (all of whom have starred in at least one movie directed by the aforementioned Anderson).

The guest room resembles a dive-y 1950s motel room, right down to the old analog alarm clock. (Photo by Danny Fulgencio)

The guest room resembles a dive-y 1950s motel room, right down to the old analog alarm clock. (Photo by Danny Fulgencio)

But that isn’t Michael’s actual job either, she says.

“I’m there mostly to learn from her and have a mentor. She is an amazing woman.”

Michael suffers from a touch of what she calls “Artistic Attention Deficit Disorder.”

Her main gig, if you must pin her down, is as designer for Moda, a Dallas-based fabric company that her family owns.

Her line shines in its quirkiness — bucking horses, sock monkeys, cats, geometrically shaped cats, cats wearing the cone of shame, all in bold colors and often representative of pop culture throughout the decades. She’s in an equine-loving, Texas-proud phase right now, she explains, pointing to a paint-by-numbers pinto, left drying in her workshop. (Note: That paint-by-numbers smell may produce an intense rush of childhood memories.) Her customer, in general, is the quilting community. “It is a small but passionate industry, with loyal and lovely buyers,” she says. Moda sells only to brick-and-mortar stores, so in Dallas, items are available at Urban Spools in Casa Linda.

Michael purchased her home in 2011. Before construction even wrapped, she knew it was perfect.

The mouse in a scarf riding a saddled quail? She concedes there is no real explanation for that one. (Photo by Danny Fulgencio)

The mouse in a scarf riding a saddled quail? She concedes there is no real explanation for that one. (Photo by Danny Fulgencio)

The Lake Highlands Drive development where she lives originally was built to hold four 2,000-square-foot homes, but now will feature three slightly larger

dwellings; construction has yet to commence on the third. East Dallas-based architect Cliff Welch’s “small and specialized” firm designed the entire enclave. He also advised Michael as she added a garage and studio behind the home, as well as a back wing including a bedroom and play area for son, Finn, whose clear affinity for vintage Star Wars, dinosaurs and astrology plays well off his mom’s sensibilities.

Welch says he draws architectural inspiration from modern structures of the last century — “regional materials, local climate, and surrounding context … natural light, clarity of form … honesty of materials” are fundamental to each project.

“Our hope is that the architecture we are creating today may someday be worthy of restoration by future generations.”

Michael previously occupied a mid-century built home in an older East Dallas neighborhood, but maintenance became cumbersome for the hardworking single mother. Her current abode gave her the style she craves (“Can you tell I love the 1950s?” she asks rhetorically. “It always comes back to that.”), with modern materials.

It is always a work in progress, she says. Though the big things, like the studio and other expansions, are complete, her affinities are ever evolving. Therefore, the tapestry that surrounds her will continue to morph.

“My house is my sanctuary, my identity,” she says.

Taking a risk, she agreed to participate in the White Rock Home Tour this month, where ticketholders will be allowed to explore her abode (plus five others).

“It’s terrifying letting people into your most vulnerable space,” she says, “but I also want to share it, and it’s for a good cause.”


Find more details about the April 22-23 White Rock Home Tour, which benefits Victor H. Hexter Elementary School,
and pre-order your $15 tickets at whiterockhometour.org.