Articles & News...

Clean, contemporary home stands on its ground

Bend Bulletin, 2007, By Penny Nakamura

Rika and Stan Turel's modern home stands out in its rural neighborhood. There’s a home in northeast Bend that’s surrounded by pastureland with cows and horses. The house stands out like it belongs in another country, according to owner Stan Turel. “You can’t miss it,” he said. Indeed, this house can’t be missed; it resembles a mini version of the Los Angeles Guggenheim Museum, with its all-white, modern, cubical facade. The analogy of the Guggenheim is apt, as Rika Turel, 42, an artist, designed the home from the ground up with the main purpose of displaying her large, modern oil paintings. “I really wanted a simple style, with all white everywhere, to be able to show my art,” explained Rika, who moved from Japan when she was 18 to study art professionally in New York City. “I wanted it to look like an art gallery.” click here to read more (PDF)

House of Light, Art & Style
Rika Peterson's gallery-inspired home

HIGH DESERT HOME. A BEND LIVING Publication, Summer 2005
by Ellen Santasiero; photography by Simone Paddock

Gallery ambience permeates a Bend painter's home

Rika Peterson's home is all about the view. Not the view from Rika's house in northeast Bend: You can't see the mountains or the desert, or even the river, for that matter. It's the view of the house that is memorable. From the moment you arrive–to the instant you turn around and gaze at the house from the west end of the long, one-acre lot, the house continually asks you to stop and see. This is no accident. Rika designed the house herself, and as an artist she knows a thing or two about perspective.click here to read more (PDF)

SUNDAY MONEY: SPENDING; Keep the Grass Green And Stay in the Black...

New York Times, May 9, 2004 by JULIE FLAHERTY

RIKA PETERSON, an artist from Bend, Ore., was delighted last November after contractors carried out her design for a parklike yard. With a pond, rock sculptures and hundreds of shrubs framing a lawn of three-quarters of an acre, it looked like the perfect playground for her two Great Danes, and worth the $100,000 price.click here to read more (PDF)