Mark de Jong’s work gives old structures new life.

 

For more than fifty years, Mark has lived within and worked among Cincinnati’s buildings—restoring them, reimagining them, and revealing the stories they hold. What began as a love for his neighborhood’s buildings has evolved into a practice that joyfully blurs the line between art and architecture.

 

Trained as a sculptor and experienced in the craft of home restoration, de Jong approaches each project as both builder and artist. Every beam, hinge, and plank of wood becomes part of a new vocabulary: one that speaks to the beauty of imperfection and the possibility of renewal. His process is hands-on and deeply personal, combining the patience of a tradesman with childlike curiosity.

 

Influenced early by his mother, a ceramicist and teacher who believed art was a way of understanding the world, de Jong continues a dialogue through the buildings he reimagines. His projects explore how people and places shape one another—the passage of time, the push and pull between reality and the imagination, and the quiet power of a space transformed.

 

Each structure he transforms is an invitation to step inside and see the familiar made new. Whether you enter to experience the space as art, designed interiors, or the story of a place, you leave with a sense that these homes are alive, and that art can exist inside anything we choose to hold, to keep.