Growing up in Graham, Okla., where the post office's main feature was its outhouse, Dallas artist George Sellers had a lot of time on his hands.

"I was always playing in the creek with the clay," he says. "There wasn't a lot to do, so I had to figure out something or I would go mad."

And though he staved off sheer lunacy, his time-killing methods were only partially successful: Today his work has the touch of a mad genius.

Mr. Sellers' new collection of furniture and decorative objects at Grange Hall is stunning: hoofed side tables gilded in 24-karat gold, a giant oculus of hand-cast plaster, a console topped with opaque black glass. Mr. Sellers likes to refer to his style as "sexed-up Greco-Roman."

"The Greco-Romans always did these hoofed endings on everything from tables to cauldrons, especially the Greeks," he explains. "But then it got lost until Napoleon brought it back. I just blow it out and make it a little more modern."

A graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington's ceramics program, Mr. Sellers started out his undergrad years in pre-law.

"I thought the money could be cute," he says. "But then, that was boring, and I decided to make my own cute."

For his graduate studies, Mr. Sellers traveled to Florence, Italy, where he was taken with the city's architectural embellishments and learned how to create them himself. After Florence, he heard about the restoration of circus mogul John Ringling's Venetian gothic mansion in Sarasota, Fla.

"I knocked on the door and said, 'I can do this,' " according to the artist, and he was hired to work for two years beside the lead restorer on the famed Ca d'Zan (House of John) estate, now an art museum.

These days Mr. Sellers, his business partner Kathleen Allen, who is a gilder and furniture finisher, and artist Joe Ely Baird (Mr. Sellers' nephew) work together for Studio 832 – their two-year-old business creating high-style custom work such as the 11-foot-tall carved-plaster fireplace commissioned for a Highland Park house.

"As an artist, you really have to carve a niche out. In this case, literally," he says.

Nine years ago, he moved into his rented shotgun-style loft in Deep Ellum and immediately began fixing it up.

"Even when you rent, you have to live like a human being," he says.

What Mr. Sellers considers living like a human, others might consider living like a king. The entry opens into his salon, an ornate, columned wall of carved plaster. "When I find an artist interesting enough, I'll use this space for art exhibits. Sometimes it's an art gallery, sometimes it's a living room."

Beyond an intricately detailed door lies his real living space. Moving from the salon's black-and-white theme, Mr. Sellers' main living room is full of color and nuance. Four French card-table chairs from the '40s surround a Heywood-Wakefield table from the '60s, spotlighted by a Sputnik-era chandelier.

At the opposite end of the living room, Mr. Sellers' own work, a falling man cast in aluminum, balances on a pair of balustrades. Much of the sculpture in the room is Mr. Sellers' own, including side tables, coffee table and glass lamps, which he designs and sells under the name 832 V.

"My original architectural carving is a way to get sculptural work into a home, even if the clients do not collect sculpture, per se," he says. "They are living with original work in the home, even though it is not on a pedestal."

Mr. Sellers added pops of color to the room with a green side chair – a $20 antiques-mall find – and an orange velvet-mohair sofa that Dallas interior designer James McInroe reworked by adding walnut legs, new upholstery and down filling.

And that's where Mr. Sellers' home seems to end; mirrored panels form the back wall. So how does the artist live without a kitchen and a bedroom?

"I love hidden doors," Mr. Sellers says.

Pushing an almost-invisible opening in one of the panels, a corridor is revealed that leads to kitchen, study and bedroom.

The kitchen, admittedly, is small. "This is a takeout kitchen," he says.

He converted a "stink hole" with a drain in the ground into a polished, modern space. His nephew sprayed the wood countertops with automotive paint, buffed to a high gloss.

Mr. Sellers painted the study a "sick and ugly green," accented by deep-blue doors. They are colors that soothe him, he says.

The bed is in a sleeping nook inspired by 18th- and 19th-century architecture, and it's possibly just as small as it would've been back then.

"I moved here from a 2,000-square-foot open loft, and in here, I sleep like you wouldn't believe," he says. "It's my kennel."

Mr. Sellers' home surprises one more time with the black-and-white bathroom he modeled after an upscale train car. "It's so small it just had to be sparkly," he says of the glossy black marble and chrome accents. "People forget that masculine can be sparkly, too."

Mr. Sellers says he will stay in the rented loft as long as the area interests him.

"I love the space and the area of Exposition Park. I like the bohemian atmosphere and the real city experience I get living here. The area is, however, changing with the addition of the DART rail station and general gentrification."

For Mr. Sellers, a neighborhood that's too pretty isn't as pleasing as one that's gritty to the core. He's made it his life's work to take something rough around the edges and turn it into an object of wonder.

To purchase pieces by Mr. Sellers:

Grange Hall

4445 Travis St.

To commission custom work by Mr. Sellers, contact:

Studio 832

832 Exposition Ave.

214-526-7924

John Gregory Studios

1201 Slocum St.

214-741-9858

www.johngregory studio.com