Just Faux Fun

At one time or another, most of us have probably seen a comedy where something or someone runs through a line of freshly washed clothes dragging it along the way. Now, you can enjoy that scene every day in your own home.

Local artist Phoenix Lloyd has begun painting personalized clothes lines in the laundry rooms of people's homes. As an added touch, she features a portrait of the homeowner's dog flying the line like a kite.

"It's so much fun," Lloyd said.

Each clothes line is personalized with the owners' favorite pieces of clothing. In one home, for example, she recreated a bright blue Hawaiian shirt complete with yellow hibiscus flowers and a tag that reads "Aloha."

"I love putting in the details. The clothes on the line say something about the personality of each person."

She also strives to make sure the clothes accurately present movement so it truly looks like the line is being dragged across the wall.

For the pets' portraits, Lloyd works off of photographs.

The projects combine her love of animals and her talents as an artist. Since the mid-1990s, she and her company, Phoenix and Company, have been creating murals, faux finishes and specialty paintings in homes and businesses across the valley.

Describing herself as somewhat of a rolling stone, the Ohio native lived in Colorado and California before moving to Las Vegas in 1993. She was a commercial designer at the time and came to the area to help create the suites as the now-defunct Debbie Reynolds hotel.

While still working as a commercial designer, she became friends with an artist who was working at several of the Strip resorts and suggested she try her hand at faux painting. A few years later, she had a flourishing business and put her designer days behind her.

That being said, however, she feels her background as an interior designer helps her see the possibilities of what can be done in each person's home. It also helps her work with designers who contact her for their clients.

"I've been an art teacher, an art designer and now I create custom artwork," she said.

Art comes naturally to Lloyd. "I come from a family of artists and architects," she said, adding that her brother is an art professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Lloyd has been an artist for most of her life and recalls creating backdrops and scenes for school dances and events throughout junior high and high school. After graduation, she earned a degree in art from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

She said her wanderlust began after seeing the mountains in Colorado, where she soon moved. She said she enjoyed being in a natural element and finds herself missing that here in Las Vegas.

So she paints skies and trees and greenery, and travels to nearby areas whenever she can to maintain her inspiration.