From Canvas to Courtyard: The Artists Shaping Optima Spaces

At Optima, art has never been an afterthought. From the founding conviction that architecture should engage the whole person, the mind as much as the body, the eye as much as the foot, the inclusion of original art in our communities has been a design principle, not a decoration strategy. The artists whose work lives in Optima spaces were chosen, commissioned, and collaborated with for the same reason every other decision at Optima is made: because the quality of daily life depends on it.

David Hovey Sr., FAIA — Sculptor

The artistic identity of every Optima community begins with its founder. David Hovey Sr., FAIA, architect, developer, and sculptor, has expanded the design reach of Optima to encompass both the buildings and the art that inhabits them. His love of contemporary art was ignited during his time as a student assistant to the curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, and his practice as a sculptor grew from the same fascination with materials that drives his architecture: a deep curiosity about what steel can express beyond structure.

Hovey’s sculptures, each one an original work appearing across Optima communities in different colors, sizes, and orientations, are conceived in direct dialogue with the buildings they inhabit. Kiwi, born from freehand drawings and named after the native New Zealand bird from the country of his birth, commands the sweeping entry plaza at Optima Signature with a bold color and distinctive form that gives the building an identity all its own. Curves and Voids anchors the entry plaza at Optima Verdana, grand sweeping steel curves interrupted by laser-cut voids that catch the North Shore light differently in every season. The sculpture garden at Optima Sonoran Village houses five original Hovey works in natural Cor-Ten steel, Silver Fern, Duo, Triangles, Intersecting Arches, and Curves and Voids, distributed through the courtyards so that art is encountered on the way to the pool, not in a gallery setting reserved for special occasions.

As Hovey himself has said: architecture is about function as well as aesthetics. Sculpture is really just about aesthetics. You don’t have that functional component. At Optima, that freedom, to make something purely for the sake of beauty, is taken as seriously as any structural decision.

The Painters Behind Our Walls

The art that fills Optima communities doesn’t exist in isolation. It belongs to a longer conversation, one that spans generations of artists and movements, and that Optima has been actively building for decades.

Alexander Calder’s bold, graphic works greet residents throughout Optima Signature, their bright tones and distinct forms carrying the playful rigor that made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. A multimedia artist whose output spanned sculpture, stage sets, paintings, prints, and jewelry, Calder brought a sense of movement and wit to everything he made, qualities that feel just as alive in an Optima lobby as they did in the Parisian avant-garde circles where he first made his name.

Pablo Picasso’s brightly colored work adorns the walls of Optima buildings across the portfolio. His range was extraordinary, Cubism, Surrealism, Neoclassicism, the Blue Period, the Rose Period, and his lifelong refusal to settle into a single style is part of what makes his work so enduring. A Picasso on the wall isn’t just a piece of art history. It’s a reminder that the most interesting spaces, like the most interesting artists, are always evolving.

At Optima Sonoran Village, the surrealist works of Joan Miró bring their own vivid energy. Born in Barcelona and shaped by the color and culture of the city, Miró moved through Cubism before finding his own language of organic shapes, bold lines, and pure color. Works like Figure in Front of the Sun and The Red Sun hang in units at Optima Sonoran Village, playing off the lively interiors and lush desert landscape outside. Miró once described his use of color as being like words that shape poems, and in these spaces, that intention is felt.

Paul Klee is another presence felt throughout Optima Signature. Trained in music before turning to visual art, Klee brought an almost compositional sensibility to his canvases, geometric forms layered with humor, color theory pushed into something deeply personal. His work touched Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Absurdism without being fully claimed by any of them, and his tenure teaching at the Bauhaus gave his ideas an influence that spread far beyond his own hand. His work Garden View, on display at Optima Signature, is structured yet alive, precise yet full of feeling.

These are just a few of the artists whose work lives in Optima communities, each one chosen with the same deliberateness as every architectural decision, and each one adding something that no floor plan ever could.

Contemporary Art and Furniture — The Curated Environment

Beyond the commissioned works, Optima communities are shaped by a broader program of contemporary art and furniture selected with the same deliberateness as every architectural decision. At Optima Lakeview, the Cloverleaf Sofa by Verner Panton, one of the most influential furniture designers of the 20th century, occupies the lobby as both seating and sculpture, a piece that embodies the same innovative spirit as the building around it. Throughout our communities, art and furniture are chosen to complement the architecture, set off the spaces, and bring shape, color, and texture to the experience of daily life, ensuring that every common area, every corridor, every amenity floor feels considered and alive.

Why It Matters

The environments we inhabit shape who we become, what we notice, what we value, how carefully we pay attention. A home filled with great art doesn’t just look extraordinary. It asks something of the people who live inside it: to slow down, to look more carefully, to be surprised. At Optima, that invitation is extended every day, in every sculpture encountered on the way to the pool, every painting noticed differently on a Tuesday than it was on a Sunday, every piece of furniture that makes a common space feel genuinely worth spending time in. Art isn’t applied to our communities. It belongs to them.

Come see the art that lives here. Schedule a tour at an Optima community today.