The Ivenetian Journey.
How it happened
I grew up in a small town in New Mexico called Clovis. My Dad was a painting contractor who practiced customer satisfaction years before it was goal of most fine companies.
Mostly ranch style homes and barns and wood shake shingle roofs.
He would take me along to help on Saturdays but I generally ended up playing with the customers kids!
It was not long he would talk me into helping scrape and sand and taught me how preparation was the key to a good finish. Little did I know that those disciplines would become the foundation to glass marble plaster.
I grew to love detailing and loved the idea of fine finishes. My older brother started a paint company of his own and received huge contracts from the local air bases with the Corp of engineers he made me the foreman.
Working with specification taught me typical path procedures. Soon I moved on to begin my own paint contacting business In Temple TX.
I found a niche customer base of doctors at Scott and White hospital. Now working on million dollar new homes I found myself always striving to produce a better finish.
I moved to Albuquerque NM where I married. From there a company found need of my services in Arizona and started me with about 1 million in work to get me started. With that type of cash I marketed heavily to build a strong customer base.
Eventually niching out again to high end clients.
One particular job would change my course forever.
While painting a complete interior there was one room they didn’t want painted because they had an “artist” doing that room. Feeling proud and that I could do what he did I said I happy to make a sample for your living room. Needless to say it turned out horrible and they continued with the artist.
That crushed me, here I had risen to incredible heights in my field of painting and although fine- I was not an artist.
That afternoon I said *****these faux finishers “artists" I will leap frog over them and do some of that Venetian plaster! So I went to Home Depot and bought a gallon and the another until I had done my kitchen over and over again until I was happy with the look. That worked out very well I quit painting and started doing only decorative plaster. Very successfully until the recession
Now with zero customers I took the time to learn lime plaster on my own. I took a few classes but none taught me much.
So naturally I applied all the disciplines I learned over all my years to this new finish and produced what is now called glassello. They told me along the way that this was not how it was supposed to look .
I knew it was an excuse because they themselves didn’t have any experience to even make that statement.
Perfection became the goal and soon we found ways to perfect the perfect. But as with all coatings it can be used as a base for further creativity.
That brings us to today where we now teach applicators around the world how to achieve perfect glass marble and how to use that as an incredible base to apply other mediums on top!
Our current hottest trend is Swarovski Crystals applied over a flawless glass marble Venetian plaster to create the ultimate in ultra high end decor.
Currently hosting students monthly we conduct a masterclass week of intense one on one training. They travel for all over the globe to attend an Ivenetian Masterclass!