A Renowned Artist’s L.A. Renovation Added a Distinct Facade—and Kicked Off a Much Bigger Project

When you see them from the street, the perforated white metal screens seem a little on the nose. Layered onto the facade of the house that artist Charles Gaines and his wife, Roxana Landaverde, a historian focusing on Mesoamerican and Mexican art, are renovating, they look conspicuously like the grids that form the basis of Charles’s celebrated work. "I never really thought about it," he says of the resemblance as we prepare to tour the house on a beautiful Los Angeles day in April. I’m not sure I believe him. But in any case, the screens are the unifying element in what has become an ambitious building project.