His works soothe the tile-tale heart

Even if Ben Gilliam loses his sight, he won't stop looking into people's souls. "People will keep what they really like a secret," he says, and it is his task as an artist, he believes, to unwrap those secret selves - a task that perhaps only an artist can undertake, if what Oscar Wilde said is true:

"It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves." Gilliam's art is architectural ceramics, an old discipline - terra cotta - with a new name. He specializes in large-scale, custom-made ceramic creations with a personal touch - fireplaces, fountains, door trims, backsplashes for kitchens and baths, counter tops, sinks - as well as smaller works for interior and exterior building adornments.

Each piece is a new adventure, appropriately for an artist whose life has been a series of adventures. Gilliam was born in Michigan and left home at age 13. He went to Hollywood to be a rock star, played in "loser rock bands" there, and then, still in the thrall of music, went to Dallas, where he met his first wife. He went with her to New York and got into sculpture, working in stone and cast metals. He had some success, but he wasn't satisfied.

"Things didn't come out the way I intended," he says. "I sold some things, but they were screw-ups." (He acknowledges that life was a screw-up, as well.)

He was so unhappy, in fact, that he quit sculpting altogether for a while and did construction, a change of course that led to a change of direction. In remodeling historic homes, he found that he couldn't get the tile he was using to do what he wanted, so he decided to make what he couldn't buy. With the help of his current wife, Leah ("Behind every successful artist is a spouse with money," he says), he developed his own clay and glaze formulas to produced custom-sized and -shaped tiles. His creativity, he says, is limited only by the physics of clay.

Gilliam's company, The Tile Installers, is in Nashville, his home for 20 years. Most of his clients are homeowners, although his work is conspicuously on display at Café Coco (front door trim and men's room tiling), Sam & Zoe's (front door trim), and the O'More College of Design, where he built the fireplace in the student art center. And he recently completed tiling the front of a building at 1418 Church Street.

When Gilliam was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited eye disease that will cause him to lose his vision, he set his sights on Art. He opened his Ceramitecture Studio, devoted to turning out one-of-a-kind works in harmony with clients' lives and loves.

"I spend time getting to know them (clients)," he says. "I talk to them - we talk about them - and try to gain some (fundamental) knowledge of them.

"People live under the tyranny of other people's opinions. But if you look at them closely enough - look in their closets and drawers, for example - you can tell what they really like.

"I want them to have a work that gives them comfort." And it's clear that the comfort, or consolation, of art can come not only from having it, but from giving it.

Ceramitecture Studio is at 3212 West End Avenue Suite 500 in Nashville. Call 615-568-9368; visit www.ceramitecture.com.

The Tile Installers provides high-quality tile installations. Every project is overseen by Gilliam, who has 22 years experience setting tile, and makes specialty tiles and architectural ceramics. All work is guaranteed, and the company is fully licensed, bonded and insured.