Murals by Chaya Esther Ort

About

The Backsplash as Canvas The Art & Soul of the Kitchen Call out: With interior design trending towards more open-plan layouts, today’s kitchen has evolved into the nerve center of the home. It's where we meet and greet family and friends, hang out, do homework, surf the web and share the details of our day. The kitchen is the busiest room in the home—it's where we live. The kitchen is known as 'the heart of the home', yet it is almost always overlooked as a place for fine art, because cabinetry and appliances leave little space for it. "Using the backsplash as a canvas for art is a great way to create the look, ambience and personality you want to imbue your home with,” says artist Chaya Esther Ort, who creates hand-painted tile collections and murals on tile. “The backsplash area is really the only large available surface for art in the kitchen,” notes Ort. “Utilizing it for original art on tile turns a great kitchen into an extraordinary one.” By integrating functionality with aesthetics, Ort offers a new alternative to conventional tiles—one that has been enthusiastically received by both homeowners and design professionals. Ort, who comes from a family of artists, developed a passion for working in clay as a teenager in Toronto. In 2008, she made aliyah with her husband and three of their children. “When we moved to Nachlaot, I was just enchanted by the rhythm and color of life in Jerusalem; particularly the Shuk,” she says. “I was so taken with the vibrancy of life, I began taking pictures everywhere I went. One day I had the idea of painting these bite-size vignettes on tile. There were sweet little gardens, charming alleys and archways, distressed old doors, stalls of the shuk—even colorful laundry hung out on lines were fodder for tiles.” About two years ago, she had an “Aha!” moment: Why not treat the backsplash tiles as a single canvas for an original, hand-painted mural? She got her first commission from a neighbor who was renovating her kitchen. What res