Glowing mustard-gold from the shining coats of polyurethane artist David Ireland applied to them when he lived and worked in this 1886 Edwardian-Italianate style building at the corner of 20th and Capp streets, they flow from room to room, ascend a stairwell and follow the gently bulging curve of the upstairs hall. A string of plastic trout swoops from light to light above the dining room table. Thanks to Carlie Wilmans, a philanthropist who bought the house for $895,000 in 2008, snatching it away from potential owners or developers who might well have gutted and modernized the space, 500 Capp St. re-enters the public domain when tours begin Friday, Jan. 15. Wilmans, the granddaughter of Bay Area arts patron Phyllis Wattis and director of the eponymous Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, has established a multi-mission 500 Capp Street Foundation that will feature changing exhibitions, artist residencies and an education program. The foundation acquired some 2,500 pieces from Ireland’s estate and built a new terrace-topped addition, garage gallery and, in the rebuilt basement, a study center devoted to his work. Wilmans went home that weekend and read a catalog of an Ireland museum show and decided on Monday she had to buy the house. Wessel’s conservation team had to reattach some patches of original plaster to the lathe, sometimes by scrambling around in attic spaces and, in other cases, using needles to gently inject adhesive through the polyurethane. Careful looking in every room is rewarded, whether it’s at the abstract beauty of the walls and varnished floors, a pair of bulbous oversize wicker chairs or a cabinet display of postcards, empty liquor bottles and other ephemera. Writing about Ireland’s house in 1983, the poet John Ashbery said the place “bears witness to the glacially slow forces, both mundane and extraordinary, that have gone into the shaping of late-20th century American consciousness.”
