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Hamptons Cottages & Gardens / July-1 2011 / The Art of Living

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The Art of Living

Mark Wilson and Claudja Bicalho create their own east end dream world.

Peripatetic, Poetic and Chic | Wilson and his partner, Claudja Bicalho, seated on a bench that he designed, travel the world for inspiration. He has recently been painting Arab portraits and oils of 17th-century Persian carpets, which can double as floor coverings.
 

Devotees of Amagansett’s laid-back pop-up shop, Lazypoint, go there for the always seductive mix of high/low vintage and modern items, from tribal masks to Argentinian leather goods, Brazilian jewelry to Peri Allen antique whites. The store’s wares, lovingly curated by owners Mark Wilson, an Australian artist, and his partner, Brazilian clothing designer and style maven Claudja Bicalho, are gathered on the couple’s own, often faraway, shopping excursions, but somehow seem familiar at the same time.

The World Is His Canvas | Mark Wilson at work in his Springs studio, where he paints and makes furniture. ”

It’s no surprise, then, that their home and art studio in the Springs bears the imprimatur of the shop’s esoteric, worldly aesthetic, with an emphasis on furnishings and objects from the natural world. The pair are always motivated by both the ostentatiousness and the utter simplicity of the Hamptons. “One minute, I’m dancing in high heels, and the next I’m barefoot, digging a hole for a rosebush,” Bicalho says, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. “That’s the beauty of life in the Hamptons: You can enjoy both worlds without being stuck in one.”

“This area has always had an authenticity, a beautiful primitiveness that aroused our nostalgia,” says Wilson. “In Portuguese, it’s called saudade, and it means ‘a deep longing.’ Lazypoint is all about evoking saudade.”

Wilson and Bicalho travel often in the off- season, handpicking goods with the precision of museum experts and the sophisticated eye of the worldly-wise. Their home is a daring amalgam of decorative organic elements—many of them handmade by Wilson, and others purchased once the couple had enough funds. Everything begets a “new type of luxury,” as Bicalho explains. “Acquire what you love as long as it ignites a fire inside you. It’s about how something makes you feel—never about what you paid.” In the house’s studio space, Wilson fabricates found-driftwood furniture and paints bucolic landscapes, portraits and fabulously detailed oils of 17th-century Persian carpets, and Bicalho creates Brazilian crochet and lace beachwear, all offered at Lazypoint.

Last year, as Wilson hung one of his paintings at Lazypoint, in walked painter/designer (and dear friend) Madeline Weinrib. Instantly smitten, she insisted on mounting a show of his works, now on view through July 14 at ABC Carpet & Home in New York. “My career has been based on synchronicities,” Wilson muses. “If someone predicted I’d be in retail five years ago, for instance, I would have laughed. I’ve never really taken the normal route.”