JoAnne Oliver: Home is Where the Heart Is

Oxford has some singularly beautiful homes situated throughout the city and county, from the historic Square to the tranquil settings that can be discovered on the nature-filled back roads of Lafayette County, but none any more beautiful than in The Highlands, a lakefront lover’s paradise.

While there are many stunning homes that complement the allure of the peaceful country setting, JoAnne Oliver and her husband, Gary Wright, definitely have one that can only be described as breathtaking, for more reasons than just the aesthetics of its outer beauty.

Oliver and her husband, Wright, have lived in The Highlands for six years. She is an artist, an abstract painter, and her husband sells banking equipment.

Oliver said when she and her husband started thinking about construction; they wanted more of a European exterior feel to their house, and a U-shaped design because they wanted an abundance of glass.

“Living in the beauty of The Highlands, I wanted us to live outside as well as inside,” Oliver said. “Therefore there are no panes in the windows; they’re single sheets of glass. The colors on the walls were all chosen so there are no barriers between the inside and the outside.”

The house has another unique feature, its floors and countertops are made entirely from concrete.

“Concrete countertops and floors are all I have throughout the house,” she said. “One misconception people have about concrete is that it’s automatically cold all of the time. Technically, it stays three to five degrees warmer than brick or tile year round. And that’s because it’s your flooring. Brick and tile, once they’re laid over the concrete slab, gets pressured air trapped between them. Concrete may give the illusion of being colder, but technically it isn’t.”

The art that is plentiful throughout the home was chosen mutually by Oliver and Wright. She and her husband have collected art from here in the States and all over the world, having also commissioned pieces from artists they admire.

“We have three masks hanging in the guest bedroom,” Oliver said, “that were done by Gabriel, who is the oldest living Lost Boy of Sudan.”

The Lost Boys of Sudan is the name given to the groups of over 20,000 boys who were displaced and/or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War.

The design of the house also followed Oliver and Wright’s desire to entertain. For the last six years, they’ve had many international students visit (both Oliver and her husband are Ole Miss Graduates), professors and athletes.

“We built the house to love people,” she said. “When we have guests, we want them to feel that love and welcoming atmosphere.”

The swing that hangs suspended from the beams in their living room is one such piece that invokes that feeling of “sit a while and relax.” When they were building the house Oliver said that she knew the swing was going to hang in the center of her living room, so the beams of the ceiling were done in the attic to support 1,800 lbs. of weight on the swing.

“A friend of mine, John Bishop, from Hot Springs, Arkansas, designed the swing for me,” Oliver said. “It took him 11 hours to hang it. It’s a beautiful work of art made from the heart of a gum tree.”

Oliver said the beams themselves were also another interesting focal point; they’re from a textile mill in Danville, West Virginia, that opened in 1875.

“When the mill closed in 2002, it was over 1 million square feet,” she said.

Oliver said that while the aesthetic beauty of her home wasn’t lost on her, she and her husband were minimalists and the stories behind the art and individual pieces of craftsmanship were really what her home was about, not the size or descriptive design.

“It doesn’t matter if you live in a home that’s 1,000 square feet or 100,000,” she said. “It’s the feelings and emotions the house evokes that really make it a home.”

Angela Rogalski is a HottyToddy.com staff reporter and can be reached at angela.rogalski@hottytoddy.com.