Getting Plastered
For walls that can really talk, converse with the team at New Age Artisans
by Molly Kordares
Jeremy Mistretta, New Age Artisans
Jeremy Mistretta is obsessed with plaster. He loves the precision of applying it. He loves the colors and textures. He loves walking into a room and seeing how alive the walls look—a dance of light and shadow that could never be achieved by paint alone.
In fact, Mistretta loves plaster so much that he’s dedicated most of his adult life to the ancient craft. In 2004, he founded New Age Artisans, a one-stop shop in Bozeman for walls and other design projects sculpted from natural plasters. Over the past 20 years, he and his team have grown into Montana’s premier plaster experts. But being the best is not enough for them. Mistretta and his company have a new mission now: to teach others how to master the art themselves.
Mistretta’s self-proclaimed love affair with plaster began in his twenties, when he was painting houses. “I owned the business, and I was going through a quarter-life crisis. I woke up one day and decided, I don’t really like this,” he says. Around that time, a client came to him with a plaster repair job and asked if it was something he could work on. “I was immediately interested,” says Mistretta. “I had seen plaster before, but I hadn’t really worked with it. I thought, well if I like this wall finish and I think it’s beautiful, and the client likes it and thinks it’s beautiful, then maybe we’re onto something here?”
Mistretta got to work, teaching himself everything he needed to know to get the job done. “It took some time,” he says. “But I figured it out. And very soon after that first job, I got to the point where I realized that I would never do another painting job. You could not make me touch a paintbrush. All I wanted to do was plaster.”
“I had seen plaster before, but I hadn’t really worked with it. I thought, well if I like this wall finish and I think it’s beautiful, and the client likes it and thinks it’s beautiful, then maybe we’re onto something here?”
–Jeremy Mistretta, New Age Artisans
Two decades later, Mistretta’s choice was clearly the right one. Since he picked up his first trowel, plaster walls and projects have only grown in popularity. “I definitely think plaster is having a moment right now,” says Mistretta. Skye Anderson and Rain Houser, the designers behind Urbaine Atelier in Bozeman, agree.
“I definitely think plaster is having a moment right now.”
–Jeremy Mistretta, New Age Artisans
“Plaster is incredibly beautiful,” says Houser. “Truly, I think Skye and I would plaster every single room of every single house we work on if we could. It shows depth, it has beauty from within, and it really has soul.” The two designers say they’ve always been believers and fans of plaster but have noticed that it’s become more mainstream lately. “Once you see CB2 carrying plaster furniture, you know it has made its way into the public eye,” adds Anderson.
Rebecca Gilling is an artist, craftswoman and plasterer who creates bespoke sculpture & design works in clay, cob and lime plaster in both traditional and contemporary styles. She teaches the Artist Series course Plaster Sculpture and Relief in the Plaster Portal.
–Jeremy Mistretta, New Age Artisans
As for why, Mistretta credits the rise of social media, Pinterest, DIYers, and home remodeling shows for bringing new awareness to an old artform. “There’s also this push to slow our lives down, and make them more organic,” he says. “You just feel so much more grounded when you are in a space with plaster, especially with lime plaster. It’s a natural compound, and you are able to feel actual earth on the wall. It’s a living, breathing organism.”
“There’s also this push to slow our lives down, and make them more organic. You just feel so much more grounded when you are in a space with plaster, especially with lime plaster. It’s a natural compound, and you are able to feel actual earth on the wall. It’s a living, breathing organism.”
–Jeremy Mistretta, New Age Artisans
One of Mistretta’s favorite plaster techniques is called Tadelakt. Centuries ago in Morocco, it originated and was passed down verbally from generation to generation. “I went to Morocco,” says Mistretta. “I learned it, and I loved it, and I came back here with the technique. Soon, I noticed that plaster arts were dying, not just Tadelakt, but all of them. In a preservation effort, we invented an online class, where someone wouldn’t have to get on a plane like I did and travel to a faraway street in Marrakech. They could learn from somebody right here, in the comfort of their own home.”
New Age Artisans traveled to England to connect with Philip Gaches, a Master Plasterer, to learn In Situ Cornice. Philip teaches in the Plaster Portal and shares over three decades of experience with those who enroll in his Artist Series course.
That first class on Tadelakt kick-started what would become The Plaster Portal, an online initiative by New Age Artisans to help teach anyone—anywhere in the world—how to install plaster. It’s for DIYers and craftspeople alike, and Mistretta says all you need is the desire to learn (and an internet connection).
Once you sign up for the Plaster Portal, you have the option of buying materials from New Age Artisans and also selecting which plaster technique you want to learn. Online videos guide you through the process, but what really sets the Plaster Portal apart is that users get one-on-one access to global plaster professionals who guide them through their projects.
Mistretta likens it to the popular MasterClass series. “It’s like if Eric Clapton was teaching a MasterClass on guitar. But, in our case, we don’t just have video tutorials featuring Clapton, we’re going to actually connect you with him virtually, and he’ll be invested in your project from start to finish.”
By all accounts, the Plaster Portal is working. Just ask Avery Weaver, the owner of Weaver’s Walls in Bozeman. He wanted to expand his offerings beyond just drywall and heard about New Age Artisans from a friend. He connected with Mistretta who set him up on the portal. “It’s so easy and very user-friendly,” Weaver says. “The best part is being able to contact a real person if you need extra help or if you mess up. You can’t do that with a YouTube video.”
Since taking classes on the portal, Weaver has started doing more and more plaster work for clients, and even gets job referrals from Mistretta. “The portal really set me up for success,” Weaver says. “I think of myself as an artist, which is why I wanted to step into the plaster world to begin with. When you put drywall in a home, you never look at it again. But when you put plaster in a home, it’s something you look at all the time, and you’ll always remember who did it. It’s more of an art.”
After the Plaster Portal launched, Mistretta says New Age Artisans started getting a lot of calls. “My phone just wouldn’t stop ringing. I’d get calls from India, Brazil, Quebec, British Columbia, the UK, you name it. People from all over the globe wanted to talk to me about plaster, and I wanted to talk to them. I realized we were missing a giant opportunity to connect everyone, so I started a podcast.”
“It’s like if Eric Clapton was teaching a MasterClass on guitar. But, in our case, we don’t just have video tutorials featuring Clapton, we’re going to actually connect you with him virtually, and he’ll be invested in your project from start to finish.”
–Jeremy Mistretta, New Age Artisans
Now, once a week, Mistretta hosts a podcast called “The Aggregate,” where he has conversations with the world’s leading plaster experts. “I love getting the story behind some of these people, the grit about them that you can’t quite get from an Instagram video they post.”
Mistretta says the goal of New Age Artisans is bigger than just having a successful podcast or portal. “If I only wanted to make money, I’d hole up at the Yellowstone Club and just plaster all day.” Instead, Mistretta wants to be a mentor of sorts for his industry. “No one taught me,” he says. “I had to really, really, really put my head down and teach myself. So, if we can teach people how to do it, we can take out the steep learning curve and soften it. Then hopefully, we can get more people involved in it and that will help save these dying art forms.”
