Photograph courtesy of Susan Rissover
OK, we’ll admit it. We’re big fans of historic North Avondale homes. We’re especially fond of this 97-year-old white house with three floors of living space and a private treed yard. The whole place was recently renovated by architect Eric Puryear (see the brand new master bath with contemporary tub and patterned tile floor), but the coolest part of all is the fact that it’s most recently been home to the family of Joe Girandola, associate dean of Graduate Studies at UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, who is also a classically trained stone carver, sculptor, and international duct tape artist.
Photograph courtesy of Susan Rissover
The duct tape art started, Girandola says, when he was training as a stone carver in Italy, where he began wrapping duct tape around his hands to protect them. In his spare time,“I started to make ‘drawings’ from my duct tape stash,” he says in an interview posted on the Duck Brand website, “referencing things like the Gates of Paradise bronze doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti from the Baptistery in Florence and Donatello’s bronze statue of David.”
The rest, as the saying goes, is history, some of which can be seen on the walls in this home today, like the duct tape Taj Mahal mural in the breakfast room. Girandola and family aren’t leaving Cincinnati, by the way—just aiming to move back to Clifton and unfortunately, taking the art with them. Still, if we were buying this house, we’d try to work out a deal to keep at least one piece.
Click through the gallery below for more images of this house:
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