An Austin native who worked as a chief technology officer at “a bunch of different startups” in Texas and California, Joey Trevino moved back to his hometown roughly five years ago to be closer to family. “My parents are old, and so I wanted to buy a house,” Trevino told Alexander Marchant. Although situated in a prime location along Bouldin Creek, the house Trevino found didn’t meet all his expectations. “It had really good bones, and I liked the neighborhood, but I didn’t actually like the style of it at all. It was very insular, rectilinear and masculine. I felt very un-Texan. So I started the process of slowly turning it into what I considered more of an Austin house.”
Inspired by fond memories of a bygone Austin when hippies roamed the Drag, Trevino knew he wanted the transformation to involve a mural but didn’t have a theme in mind — yet. But just one day after he moved in, the Austin “Snowpocalypse” of 2021 took hold. “It was supposed to freeze for maybe a day, but it froze for a whole week,” Trevino recalled. “At the end of that first week, I came downstairs to my bed and there was standing water in my bedroom. So my brand new bedroom floor and my multi-million-dollar home was underwater. It was kind of a nightmare. And I slept in my shower, because that’s the only place I could find for my king-size bed — because I have the world’s biggest shower. So I slept in my shower for the first month.”
Eight months and four new floors later, Trevino had found experts to solve his flooding issues — along with a theme for his home’s exterior mural. “Well clearly it’s a water theme,” he said. “Like, I’m getting a message here: you can fight it, or you can join it. So I decided to join it. I’ve always loved aquariums and fish. And so I started thinking about different animals, and the octopus is the one that that met all the criteria to kind of drape over the house and turn this very square thing into a more flowing thing.”
To bring the mural to life, Trevino enlisted Mishka Westell — an Austin-based artist and printmaker who’s created posters for music legends (Willie Nelson, Metallica, and Patti Smith among them) and built brand identity for the Austin Motel and Hotel Magdalena. “She’s super cool,” Trevino said. “We started with an octopus she’d done way back in the day for some poster and then we digitally evolved it into what it is now.” Working with Austin neon legend Evan Voyles’ Neon Jungle, Trevino connected with painter Aaron Flynn, who used a projector to map out a design rooted in Westell’s original artwork. “It’s very cool to work with him,” Trevino said of Flynn. “He’s very zen.” Bringing the mural into a three-dimensional realm, builder Nelson Rockwood added sculptural tentacles to the facade. “Nelson’s kind of the mastermind who pulled it all together,” Trevino said. “He spent a lot of time on the steel extrusions, which are how we got the curvy shape to the entire building.” Running with the theme, Octopus House brings together an array of outdoor design elements including water features by Dan Johanson and Wade Burleigh, a bronze mermaid designed by Daniel Hornung, and a neon seahorse created by Voyles.
Alexander Marchant sat down with Trevino to learn more about the creative minds and puzzle pieces that helped him realize Octopus House — a wildly creative patchwork that brings to mind the decreasingly relevant slogan “Keep Austin Weird.”
“One of the things that I was really struck by was how passionate all the artists were about their parts of the house,” Trevino said. “They got excited. And then having them work together was fun too — because none of them had actually worked together before.”
During our chat, Trevino was quick to point out: “I’m not the owner of the house — the octopus is. And it’s a female octopus, by the way.”
On builder Nelson Rockwood of Nelson Rockwood Homes
“Octopus House was a two-year project from start to finish … and Nelson is the magic glue that made it all work. … I mean, I have a tank that holds 4,000 gallons of water underneath my backyard and two levels of power backup — and a circular staircase in a city where there are none. There was a lot of unique work that Nelson had to figure out. After a year or so, I turned to him and said, ‘So Nelson. I ask for crazy shit. And you never say no. What’s up with that?’ And he said, ‘Actually, my degree is in theater.’ So theater was his passion before he got into general contracting. He told me, ‘Your house is the first project where I can actually use both of those skills.’”
On architect and designer Ann Tucker of Studio A Group
“For Ann, Octopus House was very much a blank canvas upon which to work. I so enjoyed working with her because she brought so much energy and excitement to the project. She would literally be jumping up and down in the house at times about what we could do here, what we could do there. So the interior is pretty much all her. We gave her some thematic direction — like the Moroccan room is a reflection of my wife being in the Peace Corps in Morocco when she was younger.”
On hardware and fixtures sourced from Alexander Marchant
“The front door was a special project. It also broke the whole rectilinear mold — even the stained glass is curved. And the wood itself is part of the theme, because it has a big wave in it. And then you’ve got the starfish in the stained glass above it. So we had to do something [special] with the door handle. It’s an enormous piece of metal,” Trevino said of our PullCast Earth Collection “Nouveau” door handle in aged brass finish. “We couldn’t put a stock one on there.” As for our Watrline “Apollo 316” outdoor shower in brushed stainless steel finish, Trevino says, “I’m the only one who uses it — as far as I know. … I’ve only got one neighbor on either side, and I’m pretty good friends with them.”
On the public reception to Octopus House
When asked about conservative pushback from the city or the neighborhood, Trevino confirmed that it’s been quite the opposite. “People are really curious. I do a big open house once a year, which is going to be on Halloween going forward. People really appreciate it. I have not gotten a single piece of negative feedback — it’s just the opposite. It’s even on an e-bike tour. Two or three years ago, I was running on my treadmill on the top floor and I looked down and there were like 30 people on e-bikes in front of my house.”