Julie Nuñez has spent 22 years covering numerous surfaces of her four-acre Morgan Hill property in hand-cut glass, ceramic tile and repurposed dishes, transforming her home into a dazzling display of color and creativity.
Now, she and husband Ramon Nuñez are preparing to put the unique abode on the market.
“Every girl should have a playhouse,” Julie declared. “This has been mine.”
The property they are preparing to list includes a main Craftsman-style residence, a cottage guest house, an attached art studio, a barn, a chicken coop, a pool and a natural pond fed by hillside drainage, all on 4.2 acres on the eastern hillside above the Santa Clara Valley with sweeping views of El Toro and the Santa Cruz Mountains in the distance.
The art studio contains more than 10 major mosaic installations, floor-to-ceiling compositions that Nuñez has built up over nearly two decades. There is also a garden wall constructed from hundreds of mortared glass bottles that catches the late afternoon light in a way that scatters a rainbow of kaleidoscope color across the meticulously maintained garden.
“This property has been the canvas of my life for the past 22 years,” Nuñez said. “It was a joy for my husband and me to create, and a magical place in which to live and garden. I’m grateful for the memories and all those hands on the wall, including those of my parents. It won’t be easy to say goodbye.”
Listing agent Geri Rincón, who has been in real estate for 33 years, said she has never represented anything quite like it.
“In many ways, it feels less like a private residence and more like a mosaic museum,” she said. “Something that deserves to be shared and celebrated.”
Nuñez came to art late and without formal training. She spent her career as an intensive care nurse and later a hospice nurse, and picked up mosaic in her 40s.
Her largest and best-known public work is the 14-foot mosaic wrapping the exterior patio wall of Rosy’s at the Beach in downtown Morgan Hill, a piece she worked on full-time for 15 months. At its center is a mermaid that has become something of a local landmark.
“I get people who take pictures in front of the mermaid and send them to me,” Nuñez said. “Especially little girls. Their parents send the photos and I just love it.”
Back home, the studio became a gathering place. Ramon’s extended family came every summer, staying in the cottage while Julie ran informal art camps and her husband cooked. Visitors were asked to press their hands into clay, from which Nuñez formed hand-shaped tiles that still cover sections of the studio walls, each one a record of someone who passed through.
The property sits on what was once part of a cattle ranch and retains its rural character and natural oak savanna setting. On the upper portion of the land, beneath the oaks, Nuñez found bedrock grinding mortars, evidence that the Ohlone people used the site long before any ranch existed.
“We are only borrowing this land,” she said. “We don’t ever own anything. We’ve borrowed this place and made it beautiful.”
The main house and studio were designed by a local architect, with a layout planned in part to accommodate Nuñez’s elderly parents, who required wheelchair accessibility to move easily between the two structures.
The gardens reflect the same sustained attention as the mosaics: hundreds of roses, three varieties of apricot, two of fig, donut pears, plums, grapes and a large vegetable bed. Nuñez dries the apricots herself each summer.
After the sale, she plans to continue gardening and finish writing a book. She says she holds no strong opinions about what a buyer might do with the property. The studio and all of her mosaics could be demolished, and she would understand. She has only one request for the home’s next occupants.
“I just want someone to love it,” she said. “Someone who will be a steward of the land.”
