The new home of tennis champion Serena Williams boasts a trophy room with open shelves displaying her U.S. Open, Wimbledon, French Open, and Australian Open awards and a living room space where her growing art collection, including works by Radcliffe Bailey and Leonardo Drew, is on view.
Upon entering her home, the first work of art visitors see is a mixed-media collage painting by Bailey. The work stands more than 11-feet tall, covering an entire wall. Atlanta-based Bailey explores ancestry, race, migration and collective memory in his work. “Astro Black” (2018) is embellished with railroad tracks, objects he has employs in his work for their personal and historic symbolism.
“It’s about dealing with travel by land and by sea, but then spiritually traveling as well,” he said. “Some of it’s layered between my father being [a railroad] engineer and the Underground Railroad, to boats and travel, movement crossing the Atlantic—as well as the relationship between sea and space, and how we somewhat sit at the crossroads between the two.”
Williams said “Astro Black” is one her “favorites” and noted that she has a few pieces by Bailey. Past the entryway, the living room-turned-art gallery showcases several more works of art, including a wall-mounted, sculpture by Drew.
A black wood abstract work, “Number 184” (2016), exemplifies Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Drew’s practice. He makes dramatic sculptures and installations, usually working with wood. The works are characterized by an accumulation of material, which he manipulates through burning, weathering, oxidation, or painting. Centered around form and composition, Drew’s abstract works reference decay, erosion, and detritus, symbolizing the arc of time, cycle of nature, and journey of life.
Nearby, “Monument for a Promise” (2013), another work by Bailey, sits atop a pedestal. The steel and concrete sculpture depicting a donkey carrying a trunk and standing over a mound of cotton was also on view in “Travelogue.”
Beyond the gallery space a bookshelf opens to reveal a media room with textured metallic wallpaper, complete with a bar, popcorn machine, neon “Sérénade” sign, and a stage for karaoke. Williams’s home office is decorated with huge magazine covers on which she is featured. The kitchen is outfitted with navy blue, brass-trimmed appliances by Officine Gullo, handcrafted in Florence, Italy. In the dining room, Williams made the red color field painting hanging above the sideboard herself. Out back, the infinity pool is surrounded by a terrace clad in White Falda porcelain tile.
The interiors and all of Williams’s custom ideas were realized in collaboration with her sister Venus Williams and her design firm, V Starr Interiors in West Palm Beach.
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