1. GEORGE VENSON ON MAKING HIS OWN LIFE AND HIS OWN
WALLPAPER
A conversation with George Venson
Written by Daveyjoe! Tomczak
Portraits by Michael Popp Studio
George Venson, founder of Voutsa (pronounced |voot|– sä), a design company
specializing in wallpaper, is currently making waves with his daring colorful designs,
featuring an array of patterns ranging from beautiful inspirations such as flowers, to
unexpected animals such as chickens, to body parts such as lips – and yes, even nipples.
Venson’s personality offers a mix of deadpan irony, and cavalier charm, both resting
beneath hair as defiant as David Lynch or a young Michael Musto. He confidently
described the process of his work as being split between the design portion, “which is
easier if you have to spend all day in a studio for four days and get a pattern done, you
can” and the second, lengthier process, of “turning that pattern into a consumer good.”
Voutsa’s watercolored themes are all hand painted before being placed in contrast with
adventurous colors. He explained, “The real target for me are people that want to explore
new bold options – like, if you want to paint your wall pink maybe you should wallpaper it
pink– but with fish on it.”

2. In today’s market, Venson has found that “wallpaper is doing really well.” Voutsa’s recent
prominent collaboration in Storefront’s Letter to the Mayor, (where its designs were
featured on Steven Holl and Vito Acconci‘s transformable walls), in Sight Unseen Offsite
(where Architectural Digest listed his design as one of the Top 6 Can’t-Miss Items) , as
well as its inclusion in various showrooms nationwide, demonstrate this niche’s relevancy
and this overall brand’s growing impact. Yet, it is the audacity of his designs that elevate
wallpaper’s possibilities, “when people say it’s so back, I don’t think it necessarily really
applies to my work, because my wallpaper is more an art installation method of
decorating.”
The conversation shifted from his past work unexpectedly when he exclaimed, “We need
to talk about my clothes!” Voutsa’s trademarked tagline “The Walls are Alive” has taken a
surprisingly literal turn. “I have always envisioned my designs on the body,” he said. This
Summer, he is debuting his latest endeavor: men’s dress shirts, body wraps and pocket
squares in collaboration with Paul Marlow. Although he was quick to differentiate, “It’s not
fashion. I am not designing fashion.”
Originating from San Antonio, Texas, Venson’s upbringing was “totally suburban
everything.” In high school he immersed himself competitively in tennis and by the end “I
was among some of the top kids in the country.” He would “go to these tournaments, and
there were all these really serious tennis players – who lived in tennis academies. But, I

3. was just there, my dad was taking off work, taking pictures, or we’d be celebrating by
eating at the CheeseCake factory.” However, while attending Rice University, his sports
career faded, “I kinda closed that chapter. The passion changed. People don’t understand
that. Passions change.”
His economic major led him to a soul crushing summer internship. He made an abrupt
turn and completely remapped his college career, diving ferociously into an arts degree,
“because I literally could not go one minute further,” in economics. As an art student, he
discovered there was joy in “being recognized as a thinker and a whole person.” He found
his thinking diverging from his former mainstream education, “There was this whole
grasping and hunger for an alternative way of thinking.…It was as vital to me to help try to
shift people’s thinking.”
“I am really indebted to the Residency Program, at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. It
brings in all these great artists who are also required to teach at Rice. So I was
encountering all these great people who live in New York and LA.” The combination of
Rice’s Art Department, “stunning architecture” and the fact that it was “non-competitive”
empowered Venson to experiment boldly, in a variety of mediums from painting to writing
a fully produced student film.
Upon graduating, the university awarded him a scholarship which enabled Venson to
travel the world and leave his home state. “My only complaint” about Texas is that “- It’s
not connected to this big world. It wasn’t necessarily just a gay thing, it was across the
board, with all issues, and I could not handle that.” He found New York City to be,
“Incredible. There is a really complex dialogue happening everywhere, in all corners, in
Storefront…in wallpaper, in painting. It’s happening in performance, in clubs, in Bushwick –
for instance you even have the atrocious James Franco bullshit going on” and the
subsequent “dialogue that followed it.”
At the beginning of Voutsa, “I was encouraged to make beautiful lush wall papers..they
were abstract. I started to sell some to bigger companies” which evolved into, “why don’t
I just make my own patterns, have commercial success, and then fund my life?” However,
“that transition took from age 22 to 29, so it’s been at least six years.”
For those six years Venson “worked for a lot of different types of people,” which he said
“was vital.” This time “working a lot of jobs” was “not a waste whatsoever because… I still
draw on a lot of qualities I picked up along the way. Even if I worked something and I hated
it, maybe it taught me to run a studio, or make calls, or organize my art collection.”

4. Voutsa’s splash, “happened really quickly.” The location moved from South Williamsburg,
to a huge loft in Union Square, as noted in New York Mag, and is now finally
headquartered in Chinatown. That first year operating out of Union Square was when
“everything came together.” He nostalgically recalled how, “I made all my wallpaper. I built
my website. I had my first shows. I had my first press. I had my first visits with decorators.”
He sites that “the location [Union Square] and the size [of the studio] had a lot to do with
it.” Even though, “I literally had no furniture,” except, “a mattress on the floor.” Speaking
almost with disbelief, “I had all this space, at the right time – the universe came together
for the first time ever. Since then, I let it move itself in its own way.”
Voutsa is now fully situated into its new home and is better poised to continue its ascent.
With a new summer line of patterns, its clothing series, growing representation in
showrooms nationwide – or simple joys such as Lena Dunham ‘liking’ a design on
Instagram – the future of Voutsa is limitless and like George Venson, full of the
unexpected.
Before we both parted, he paused and spoke with the same fiery tenacity that took him
from Economics to Art, from Texas to New York City, from artist assistant to Company
Owner: “After six years, I am finally making my own life – that’s what you should put in
your article. I am finally making my own life.”