The art of home is a tidy title with an unpretentious posture. And yet it’s idealistic and evocative, ample and ambitious. Frankly, its restrained and self contained first impression is a little misleading. Maybe even a little ambiguous. What do I even mean? I’m not offering a catchy epithet for design and decor. Nor architecture. And yet, it certainly may include some or all of these. When I describe the art of home, I’m conjuring several things at once.
In conjoining art and creativity with home-ness, I’m alluding to my own personal outlook on an intrinsic relationship between the two as well as an aspirational goal. Home isn’t science. Or, home isn’t only science (or even mostly science.) Sure, there’s science and math and all manner of practical, detail and data driven inputs in transforming a house into a home. But there’s much more. There’s a profoundly personal, subjective, intimate relationship at play in the act of homemaking. And, in the best of circumstances, essential circumstances in my opinion, home becomes a sanctuary for creating, an oasis for art.
All of this binds art-ing and homing. The art of home is a look at the homeness of art and the art of homing. It is an attempt to discern what allows one’s domestic sanctuary to transcend mere utility (a garage to cache one’s car, a grill to sear one’s supper, a nest within which to sleep, a shower with which to wash away the sleep and sweat), to transcend the housing function and become a place of growth and nurturing, an incubation space, a revitalizing space, a dreaming and dream-fulfilling space,…
In the photograph at the top of this post you can see the icehouse, mid-rehabilitation, tucked in beside the carriage barn, both frosted in snow like fairy tales illustrations or gingerbread confections. After a decade and a half my slowly percolating art of home has matured from a pipe dream into a concept into a clutch of sketches into construction plans into a creative collaborative of many. And for a few short weeks I’m privileged to participate daily, to engage in a real and hands-on way after participating from afar, participating virtually. It’s a peculiar but exciting transition. An ongoing transition.
The Art of Home: Poem Excerpt
I’ve been excavating through layers of creativity compressed into, and coexisting within, my notion of homeness. While shaping a house into a home is in and of itself a creative art — indeed a nearly universal creative art, even among those quick to volunteer that they are not artistic, not creative — I’m deeply curious about my awn associations with home as a cradle and catalyst of art. I’m trying to tease apart these different layers of art in a still embryonic poem, so I’ll include only a section about gardening, a creative pursuit that I inherited from my mother decades ago.
...composing a garden,
my own personal patch,
from selecting seeds —
corn, radishes pumpkins,
tomatoes, and sunflowers —
to turning the soil,
working compost
into last summer's
stems and stalks,
into clay clodded dirt,
into July-August hopes.
Watering and weeding,
thinning, scarecrowing,
suckering, and staking...
Composing a garden is but one of the many instances that the art of home means something to me. Cooking. Writing. Telling stories. Pruning the orchard. Entertaining guests. Landscaping. Drawing. Adapting old buildings into new lifestyle enabling and enriching spaces.
The Art of Home: Documentary
At the heart of Rosslyn Redux is a quest to discern and describe what I’m learning about the art of home. But there is still more question than answer. I’m still untangling my thoughts, still reaching for some sort of clarity that might improve my ability to communicate concisely what I have found so captivating, and why it has obsessed me for so long.
But I’m not there there. My journey is ongoing. So I will, for now, offer another perspective on the art of home, a captivating documentary that obliquely sheds light upon our Santa Fe / Essex home duality.
Two indigenous artists create new works reflecting on their tribal homelands, the Wind River Indian Reservation. Ken Williams (Arapaho) is a Santa Fe art celebrity and Sarah Ortegon (Shoshone) is an up-and-coming actress in Denver. Both artists travel to Wind River Reservation to reconnect with their ancestors and present their art work to a somewhat isolated community. (Source: The Art of Home: A Wind River Story,PBS)
Intertwined with Sarah Ortegon’s and Ken Williams’s extended meditation on the relationships between art, creative expression, identity, home, culture, family, and belonging are the perspectives of other Native Americans including George Abeyta who touches on home as a place of strength.
“Your home, it’s a place of your family. It’s a place of warmth and comfort and strength and happiness. It’s the place where were you look forward to going because that’s your stronghold. That’s your place of prayer.” — George Abeyta
In the context of beadwork Abeyta is examining it feels seamless and comfortable the way we moves from beading motifs to home as a bastion of strength, as a stronghold. Also a space where family, warmth, comfort, happiness, and even prayer coexist. Perhaps even where they are rooted, where they thrive. The subject of his reflection, a beaded ornament akin to a necktie, is an intricate work of art, and as such it functions as a vehicle or a vessel to showcase and honor these fundamental elements. This notion of home, and more specifically the art of home, as a sort of sacred space for strength and belonging, for identity and connectedness, for family and for happiness resurfaces throughout this documentary. I encourage you to make time (just under an hour) to appreciate it from beginning-to-end.
As we hurtle toward completion of the icehouse rehab, I catch myself in barn reflection. Again. Yes, I consider the icehouse a barn. And, yes, migrating my books and artifacts and works in progress from a bedroom-turned-office (aka study/studio) in our home into the almost renovated icehouse is enthusing me beyond reason. It’s also catalyzing reverie and rumination into my farm backstory. Let’s dig a little deeper?
The Farm in Cossayuna, New York (Painting: Louise Coldwell)
The painting above, made by my godmother, Louise Coldwell, has hung above my study/studio fireplace for the last 15 or so years. In this façade of the first home I remember, the two small windows at the top, right were my bedroom. Below my bedroom, the dining room. To the left of the entrance doorway, the living room. My parents bedroom was above the living room. I say, “the first time I remember”, but there were others. An apartment in Manhattan and another in Bronxville. Also, overlapping, a house in Glens Falls and another in Lake Placid. Itinerant years when my parents were still primarily living and working in New York City and then orchestrating a shift upstate. I’ll sit down with them to try and map out these years and lodgings. I muddle these memories in part to offset the fact that The Farm stands out for me. I’m not 100% certain why, but it is the first home the main impression on me, a home that still conjures poignant flashbacks.
Recently I’ve been sifting through memories and mementos of those few-but-formative years, and I’m coming to suspect that my association between barns — especially old, weathered, rural farm barns — and “home” (as well as “homing” and basically all matters related to “homeness”) is intrinsically rooted in my early childhood adventures at The Farm.
Omnipresent: OMC and The Farm (Photo: Geo Davis)
Note the painting, partially cropped, in the photograph above. For a decade and a half this is what I saw when sitting at my desk, if I turned away from Lake Champlain to look at the fireplace. And if you allow your eyes to drift down to the cluttered mantle above the fireplace, you’ll see a black-and-white photograph.
That’s me as a shaggy, bowl-cut youngster, with OMC, a family friend and neighbor when we were at The Farm. He was also my godfather and, in many respects, a surrogate grandfather. The initials stand for Old Man Coldwell, a nickname he used to sign the pottery he made (including the enormous bowl featured in this post: “Generosity of Friends: Lemons from Afar”).
Memories of The Farm and OMC overlap for me. Not always, but often. His presence and guidance, his physicality — apparent in this photograph — and his wonder-welling words. Our time together was guided by adventure. Riding an old tractor through a field to round up a cow that had gotten out. Riding an old tractor through a field to round up a cow that had gotten out. Walking to a distant meadow where he kept a rowboat and fishing rod ready on a pond bank. Squatting among strawberry bushes hunting for the largest, ripest fruit. Harvesting honey from a hive and eating it, thick and warm from a spoon. Massaging clay and squishing it through my fingers when he and my mother were potting…
At The Farm with OMC circa 1974-5
My parents’ friendship (and eventual falling out) with OMC remain intertwined with their memories of The Farm as well. I’ll inquire what if any memories they might share. Until then, I’ll loop back to the property itself.
My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres in Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later. Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)
Bucolic. Burnished, no doubt, by time’s spirited sentimentality.
I weave The Farm in Cossayuna (aka “The Farm“) into a conversation, a blog post, a social media update. Why? Not sure. Maybe the omnipresence of The Farm as a defining point of reference in my own life? (Source: Preservation by Neglect: The Farm in Cossayuna)
I’ve explored elsewhere the overlap between my lifelong fascination with barns (and barn vernacular) and my early memories at The Farm. The chicken or the egg? Which came first?
Woven into the earliest tapestries of my childhood are fond associations with barns. (Source: A Barnophile of Bygone Barns)
I wander my patchwork memory map and wonder, wandering, wondering, where is the margin mocked by tides and waves, the littoral boundary of fact and fiction, fluctuating with wind and moon? What was The Farm? And what have I imagined into it?
I inevitably distort history, omitting and abbreviating and emphasizing, distilling the vast landscape of data into vignettes. These accrete gradually, revealing the narrative design of my story. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
Are these memories of The Farm in Cossayuna accurate? Reliable? Are they actually defining details in my life, reliable anchors tethering my current contemplation of homeness?
“Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
This rings true to me. We are our story. Our stories. And The Farm, embedded inextricably into my attraction to Rosslyn, has provided a sort of scaffolding for many of my homing initiatives since about 2005.
As I bring this meandering meditation to a close, it’s worth noting that I’ve shared images of The Farm over the years. Always the farmhouse, never the barns. Peculiar that I don’t have any images of the barns. I’m almost certain that I took a few photographs when I visited within the last decade, but I haven’t managed to put my fingers on them. I will keep looking, but in the meantime, I’ll ask my parents if they might have an old photograph or some other representation of the outbuildings at The Farm.
Sailing in San Diego, April 27, 2023 (Photo: Richard Darmanin)
Homecoming! After a week in the Gila Wilderness with John Davis and other Rewilding friends I’m reunited with my beautiful bride. The photo above has *almost* nothing to do with my backcountry adventures in the middle of 3 million acres of New Mexico wilderness. That image was taken about a month ago when Susan and I were sailing in San Diego. The common denominator? “Home is wherever I’m with you…”
Instead of getting tangled up in words and thoughts about homecoming, today’s post will lean into the lyrics of the song “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros… “from Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros’ debut album ‘Up From Below’…”
Oh, home, let me come home Home is wherever I’m with you Oh, home, let me come home Home is wherever I’m with you
Sometimes it takes being away from home to identify “homeness”. I’ve been meditating on this question of what makes a house a home for a looong time. And I’m not ready to offer a definitive answer yet. But juxtaposing glimpses — one above, and the other in my unplugged memories of six days and nights in the Gila — reminds me that a BIG piece of the puzzle is Susan. Home is wherever I’m with you!
If you don’t know this catchy song by by Alexander Ebert and Jade Allyson Castrinos, here’s the full adventure.
“Home” is a song written and recorded by American group Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. It was released in January 2010 as the second single from the album, Up from Below… The song is a duet between Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos, with portions of spoken word from both. (Source: Wikipedia)
A quick post for a contemplative homecoming. Ideas percolating…
Today’s dispatch delves into a puzzling enigma, maybe even a genuine mystery.
Shortly after purchasing Rosslyn in the summer of 2006 friends were touring the house with us when their young son blasted through a doorway.
“Do you think this house is haunted?!”
His optimism was palpable. He related in quick chronicle what he’d discovered during his solo inspection of the house. On the third floor, he assured us, there are hidden doors and secret passageways. Mystery and intrigue percolated in his proud delivery.
He was correct. Small doors and mystery access panels in the backs of cupboards and closets opened into dark attic soffits. However, years of renovation would eventually reveal that these were simply entrances to otherwise inaccessible passages (ie. space behind the point where rafters met knee walls) that permitted service to electric, plumbing, etc. Practical. But slim on mystery.
Shortly thereafter, multiple contractors assured us that the house was probably haunted. Two centuries of living (and, inevitably, at least some “expiring”) within these walls *must* have resulted in a few lingering spirits. Certainly Rosslyn was haunted, right? Right?! Again, a blend of dread and intrigue. But over the yearslong renovation, they gradually abandoned their soothsaying as uneventful days (and not a few evenings) dispelled their early convictions. Mystery anticipated; mystery dispelled.
The Warmth of Your House
Verum Archaeologiam
Across the sprawling inquiry I call Rosslyn Redux, I’ve gathered many posts into a category I call “Archeology of Home”. It’s a moniker I usually use in a quasi metaphorical sense, but not always. In fact, there have been plenty of instances in which we’ve quite literally disinterred and studied artifacts that have informed our understanding (and appreciation) of home.
Sometimes the excavation is figurative, exposing ideas and memories and stories and memories that, when scrutinized reveal what underpins my/our ideas of homeness. In either case, analysis (and sometimes creative exploration) or both real relics and those that exist in the realm of concept have deepened and affirmed our relationship with home.
Today I have an intriguing outlier to share. It’s archeology of home in the layered and often complex sense. And it invites inclusion in my intermittent what-makes-a-house-a-home series: does mystery make a house a home?
Ute Youth, Uintah Valley, Utah (Photo: John K. Hillers, Powell Expedition, 1871-1875)
Concealed Artifacts Considered
While drafting a post that revisits my enduring curiosity about (and reference to) The Farm I asked Katie to remove an old black and white photograph from its frame in order to scan it. Here’s our slightly abbreviated dialogue.
Katie, I’m hoping… you might be able to help me with the photo that I’d like to accompany this post. If you look at the B&W snapshot attached you’ll see a photo of me as a small tyke with an older man. I’m hoping that it may be easy to remove the image and scan it at high definition… Thanks!
I scanned this photo for you. Did you know there were some other photos behind this one in the frame? I scanned everything in case you were interested…
Oh, what a find. You have no idea how moved and intrigued I am by your totally unanticipated discovery. I received this photo from my parents when they were preparing to downsize their Rock Harbor home a year or two before selling it. I imagine they must have repurposed an older frame that contained the images and information you’ve come across. The man in the photo in “Upper Volta” (newly independent from France as of 1960 and then renamed Burkina Faso in 1984) is my uncle Herman Gail Weller, my mother‘s older brother. He was in the U.S. Peace Corps, living in Africa (Ghana and later Liberia, if I recall correctly) in the 1960s when this photograph was apparently taken. No idea about the Ute news clipping and photo. I’ll reach out to my uncle to see what I can find out. What a fascinating layering of history. And what a wild surprise! Thank you, Katie.
I’ll return to the “older man” (aka OMC) when I publish the relevant post soon. But that youthful photograph of my uncle offered a subject for my inquiry.
Uncle Herman in Bobo-Dioulasso, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), 1967
Herman in Burkina Faso
I sent out an email (with scans of the photos, etc.) to my mother and my uncle. Circuitously the following message made its way back to me.
“The pictures came through on the email from George that you forwarded to me. The pictures were huge compared to the font size of the text. So I had to scroll back and forth and up and down. ….. Of course that was me in Bobo-Djou… in a market. The blankets were called “Mali blankets,” at least by expatriots. Most expatriots that I met in West Africa prized Mali blankets. My beard was nicer in red (then) than in white (now).
The width of each strip in a Mali blanket was the width that a typical loom created. When I traveled to Bamako, Mali one Christmastime, I saw weavers sitting on the sidewalks along the modern paved highway, each with his loom cords tied to the base of a modern street light.
Ah-ha! A few more details in Herman’s notes on reverse of photo.
Caption from Uncle Herman’s Photo in Bobo-Dioulasso, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso)
Another uncanny aside: that Mali blanket hung in my bedroom as a tapestry during my teens. Also a sword from Herman’s West Africa years!
Ute Youth
And what about the handsome fellow with his dog appearing earlier this post?
So far no recollection from Herman to share on this one. Did one of my parents place it in the frame? Someone else. When? Why? The mystery endures.
Let’s take a look at the other artifacts, which at least explain something about the Ute youth, if not its provenance.
Citation for Photograph of Ute Youth by John K. Hillers
This documentation from the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology, Bureau of American Ethnology, Collection is affixed to the back of the photo of the Ute youth. If too blurry for you, here’s the gist.
Neg. No. 1537
Tribe: Ute
“Indian boy and his dog.”
Uintah Valley, eastern slope of the Wasateh Mts., Utah.
By John K. Hillers, Powell Expedition, 1871-1875.
I’m unclear how the Ute youth photo with documentation (above) happen to be located together with the article (below), but the caption (also below) suggests that the image may have been used to illustrate the compelling news clipping.
Ute Caption and Article
Also resonating subtly but pleasantly, the recollection that my maternal grandmother (mother to my mother and Herman) often mailed us news clippings that struck her as individually relevant and appealing. Perhaps she came across and clipped the article, and then sent it to my mother or my uncle?
Perhaps the trappings of home and the lives they echo, albeit sometimes a faintly fading echo, are among the mysteries that make a house a home?
Afterward
The lead image on this post is a dedication, a mystery dedication, that adorns a cardboard panel at the back of the frame. For whom? From whom? Well, we know their name, but who are/were they? I have absolutely no idea, but the sentiment is uncannily appropriate for the current context.
“May the warmth of your house be equal to that of your heart.” — Gerry and Marc Gurvitch
Appropriate, for sure. And perhaps it’s worth gathering well wishes wherever and whenever we come across them.
At the outset of this sprawling experiment I call Rosslyn Redux I needed a way to describe the vision (as much for myself as for visitors to the About page.) So, in the springtime of this journey I settled on the only real point of clarity: Rosslyn Redux would be the story of a house. I anticipated some of the interwoven elements (my still new marriage, our lifestyle changes, NYC-to-Essex pivot, etc.) that inevitably would find their way into the pages.
Rosslyn, November 8, 2004 (Photos: Jason McNulty)
Here’s a snippet from that early attempt to define my intentions.
Rosslyn Redux is the story of a house and the idiosyncrasies (and absurdities) of renovation, marriage and North Country life…
With 20/20 hindsight I’d likely replace “house” with “home” or “historic home”. Or even “homestead”. But in those naive early days I did not yet understand how profoundly my notion of home and “homeness” would evolve through my relationship, indeed Susan and my relationship, with Rosslyn.
In fact, with the benefit of time and perspective, there’s plenty that I would change in this preliminary vision, but for the moment let’s just dig a little deeper into the relationship and distinction between house and home.
Rosslyn, November 8, 2004 (Photos: Jason McNulty)
Old House, New Home
Per various accounts it looks as if the first phase of Rosslyn’s construction was completed and the property was occupied circa 1820. Records vary, and the succession of additions and alterations likely accounts for some of the confusion. But however you look at it this historic house and property is a couple of centuries old. at the heart of our journey was an effort to transform this old house into a new home.
Actually, in rereading that last sentence, I’m feeling uncomfortable with the idea that we have transformed Rosslyn. Certainly there is/was an element of transformation, but one of the lessons that we’ve learned with and through Rosslyn is the importance of reawakening a home rather than turning into something different from what it already was.
Rosslyn, November 8, 2004 (Photos: Jason McNulty)
Reawakening Home
Much of our early design and architectural brainstorming involved identifying and removing previous owners’ attempts at transforming Rosslyn. Layers of makeovers and alterations were carefully, slowly peeled away until we could simplify and integrate the design back into a cohesive whole. Cohesion and integration. Guiding principles for us even now as we undertake the adaptive reuse of the icehouse.
Aside from the somewhat arrogant and hubristic potential in setting out to transform Rosslyn, we’ve discovered that attempting to overlay newness, fashion, trends, and so forth onto four impressive buildings that have withstood the tests and temper tantrums of time misses many opportunities to learn from (and through) Rosslyn’s. It also preempts the potential for us to change and grow, allowing Rosslyn to inform and broaden and deepen our understanding of homeness.
Rosslyn, November 8, 2004 (Photos: Jason McNulty)
In other words, reawakening Rosslyn has been an opportunity to reawaken ourselves. (Still working on this idea, so I’m hoping for your forbearance as I learn how to better articulate this.)
In closing, I recommend a short film by Ann Magee Coughlin that I rewatched recently. Her story of a house is different from ours, but the richness and texture of history that can coalesce within an old home resonates with me in the context of our efforts to reawaken an old house as a new home.
Notion of Home by Helle Cook (Source: QCA Galleries)
One of the themes that I’m exploring in Rosslyn Redux is what I’ve loosely termed the archeology of home. It’s a misnomer really, an imperfect vessel that I settled on in the earliest days of renovation. Although my method was anything but scientific, I was mostly fascinated with the relics and artifacts we’d inherited. And before long new artifacts were being — in some cases quite literally — being disinterred. I was trying to decipher the practical and historic and aesthetic puzzle of an almost two century old property.
Soon the puzzle pieces included stories, memories, and anecdotes gathered from the people I met and recorded histories I read. As I sought to weave these various threads into a tapestry of sorts, I inevitably (and imperceptibly at first) began to insert my own wonders and hypotheses. Hopes. Confabulations. What-ifs…
Notion of Home by Helle Cook (Source: www.hellecook.com)
And soon enough my own meditations on home, my own rucksack of patinated, nostalgia-filtered experiences began to infiltrate the tapestry.
My archeology of home had evolved into a wide-ranging contemplation of home-ness. So much more than a dwelling place, “home” is a psychologically complex and, I’ve come to believe, a profoundly important concept. I’m still trying to unpackage it, but my process has shifted somewhat from the more intentional, methodical, even quasi-scientific approach of my earliest inquiry toward the lyrical.
And so it is that I lament being unable to attend artist Helle Cook’s exhibition, Notion of Home, opening two weeks from tomorrow in Brisbane, Australia at the Project Gallery (QCA South Bank Campus).
Here’s what the gallery has to say about the show.
Balancing on the threshold of abstraction and figuration, Helle Cook uses painting as language to investigate a sense of home identity… In ethereal, bold fields of colour emerges a sense of imagination and memory. Eschewing traditional and inflexible notions of “home”, Cook’s concept of plurality opens spaces of multiple perspectives within and in between, and fuels a quest for multifaceted exploration. (Source: QCA Galleries)
This language, both verbal (“a sense of home identity”) and visual, resonates with my own personal investigation despite the fact that Helle Cook’s search appears to be more focused on geographic/cultural places (i.e. Denmark, Australia, and the interstices). I’ve cast around often enough for a better alternative to “archeology” for explaining my quest, but I’ve come up short. Perhaps I’ve been looking in the wrong place(s).
Notion of Home by Helle Cook (Source: www.hellecook.com)
What defines the notion of home?
This is what Danish-born, Brisbane-based artist Helle Cook investigates in her painting practice… Drawing on interior and exterior monologues, Cook’s paintings explore home, identity, connection, culture and memories. Intuitive and imaginative, her work is an experimentation into the cognitive neuroscience of creativity, engaging both sensory and episodic memory to allow the paint to take agency. (Source: Cultural Flanerie)
Wow! Did you get all of that? Reread. Re-wow.
Let’s turn to the artist herself.
I use painting to investigate the notion of home… Is home a feeling. A sense of being present. Or does it connect us to particular place. A home with interior. Is home where we were born, where we live, can it be more places and anywhere in the world. And how is home connected to our identity and the sense of belonging. From the perspective that home is all of that and most of all a space in between, I explore the duality of my Danish background and my Australian life as an artist recreating my identity. In a space in between. With memories of the past, a sense of the present and ideas of the future, I create internal and external landscapes and fairy-scapes, symbols, nature, figures, creatures and objects of culture and design. I use my intuition, imagination and the slow process of painting to take agency. Creating the sense of belonging in a Space in Between. Home. (Source: Helle Cook)
Notion of Home by Helle Cook (Source: Cultural Flanerie)
Yes, “the notion of home” is precisely what I’ve been grappling with. It’s bigger than archeology, or different, despite that the reference served well initially.
I’ve discovered that identity and belonging are indeed intricately intertwined with the notion of home. Like Ms. Cook I find myself on an exploration of both internal and external artifacts, identities, terrains, narratives, and memories. And I’m increasingly discovering that my purposes are best served with a mix of inquiry (objective and subjective), imagination, and creative freedom.
Even this quick glimpse into Cook’s work has inspired me onward. Onward!
At the root of Rosslyn Redux is a question. What makes a house a home?
Simple question. Less simple answer. More precisely, the answers to what makes a house a home are diverse and possibly even evolving — slowly, perpetually — as we live our lives. What defines “homeness” as a child likely differs as a young, independent adult, nesting for the first time. And our first autonomous forays into homemaking likely morph as we live through our twenties and into subsequent decades, family and lifestyle changes, etc.
Let’s start with a playful poem by Edgar Albert Guest.
Ye’ve got t’ sing an’ dance fer years, ye’ve got t’ romp an’ play,
An’ learn t’ love the things ye have by usin’ ’em each day;
[…]
Ye’ve got t’ love each brick an’ stone from cellar up t’ dome:
It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.
— Edgar Albert Guest, “Home” (Source: Poetry Foundation)
If you haven’t read this Edgar Albert Guest poem, I recommend it. And I strongly suggest you read it out loud!
I start with Guest’s insights because they’re thoughtful despite the playful affect. They capture both the breadth and the subjectivity of answering the question, what makes a house a home? And they hint at the protean nature of this inquiry.
Love Makes a House a Home (Photo: Geo Davis)
An Evolving Recipe
Just when I think I’ve narrowed down a reliable recipe for what makes a house a home, I question it. Whether catalyzed by a conversation with another homemaker, exposure to an especially compelling or innovative home, or a eureka moment totally unrelated to “homeness” (recently, sailboat design of 35-50′ sloops), my reliable recipe is suddenly less reliable. It needs a few tweaks. I remove ingredients less essential than previously believed, and I introduce new ingredients. A teaspoon of this, an ounce of that. Season to taste…
The mercurial nature of “homeness” is not really that surprising given the subjectivity of our residential tastes, needs, means, ambitions, and limitations. The rise of a thriving van life culture in recent years offers a healthy reminder of how little is actually needed for many individuals to feel at home. And yet, the proliferation of van life blogs and social media streams celebrate the individuality and subjectivity shaping perspectives on what makes a house a home. Overlanding in a tricked out van, living aboard a wind and water washed boat, or nesting on an anchored spot of terra firma, it turns out that what makes a house a home is profoundly personal.
One of the joys of homeownership lies in expressing ourselves through our surroundings… Most of us can hardly wait to put our personal stamp on our living spaces. It is, after all, part of the process of turning a house into a home. (New England Home)
The process of transforming a house into a home — fixed or mobile — inevitably encounters elements and conditions that shape the nesting process. In other words, our will and whim are only part of the equation.
Once upon a time
this handsome old house
became our new home,
and along with it
almost two hundred
years of backstory,
lives, styles, and lifestyles…
Snipped from my short poem about repurposing Rosslyn into our home, I’m acknowledging the property’s history and preexisting conditions. It’s a nod to inputs outside of Susan and my personal needs and desires. Just as these inherited inputs can be hurdles or challenges, often they introduce character and richness, add depth and texture, and even invest an aesthetic or programmatic cohesion that might otherwise be lacking.
I’ve frequently joked that no detail of Rosslyn’s rehabilitation escaped our fingerprints, [but] much attention was paid throughout to preserving the buildings’ unique heritage. My bride and I were far less preoccupied with our own personal stamp than we were with finding Rosslyn’s personal stamp, her DNA, and reawakening it to guide our renovation. (Reawakening Rosslyn)
I suspect that there’s often an even more abstract but profoundly important force at work in making a house a home. Intersecting our needs and appetites and the preexisting conditions, there exists an ineffable consciousness, even a conviction, that we feel at home. Can it be a sanctuary where we feel safe, happy, calm, nourished, revitalized, and creative? Can the house, as our home, become an oasis nurturing the sort of life that is indispensable to our wellbeing?
House of Dreams: Gaston Bachelard (Source: The Poetics of Space)
I understand that this wonderful old, living and breathing home provides for us in innumerable ways every day. I know that Rosslyn is a house of dreams and daydreamers. And for this I am extremely grateful. (House of Dreams)
This consciousness or conviction is totally subjective and deeply personal. Clearly articulating it can prove elusive. But we recognize the feeling when we’re fortunate enough to come across it. Sometimes the pull can be so powerful that we yield despite logical and practical considerations, and even despite obvious counterindications.
We had joked about how much time and money it would take to make Rosslyn habitable, categorically dismissing it as an investment. And yet it clearly had captured our hearts. If it were our home and not a short term investment, then maybe the criteria were different. Maybe the potential was different. Maybe the risk was different. (We Could Live at Rosslyn)
Many of us have found ourselves in this push-pull between the abiding rules and paradigms we use to navigate most of our life’s decisions and the sometimes conflicting passion we feel for a potential home. Over the last decade and a half that I’ve been trying to understand “homeness” and the curious exceptions that some of us are willing to make when it comes to our homes, I’ve picked the brains of family, friends, and total strangers when opportunities arose. And sometimes when they didn’t! I’ve been struck as much by the overlaps as the distinctions. There do seem to be some almost universal notions of what makes a house a home, and yet a beautiful bounty of unique attributes are at least as important to the individuals creating (and sometimes recreating) their homes.
Personal Mementos Make a House a Home (Photo: Geo Davis)
Vox Populi, An Introduction
Rather than pretending I’ve distilled the perfect formula, I’m going to showcase a relatively random but recent collection of perspectives and opinions gathered from family, close friends, and several contributors to our current projects. That’s right, I’m going to sidestep the tempting trap of defining what makes a house a home in lieu of broadening and diversifying consideration. Or, put differently, I’ll bypass my own bias by crowdsourcing the question.
I reached out a few days ago to a couple people with whom I’ve discussed this topic before. I asked them all some version of the following.
I have a quick challenge-type-question for you. I’m drafting a blog post about “homeness”, and I’ve reached out to a handful of people that I think might offer interesting perspectives. If you have 30 seconds, I’d love to include your thoughts. If not, no worries. No deep thinking. No fancy answers. No pressure. Just a spontaneous, off-the-cuff, candid response to the question: what does it mean to make a house a home? In other words, what transforms a house into a home?
I was so enthralled with the first few responses that I decided to postpone the post in order to solicit even more perspectives. What follows is a fascinating array of responses, starting with several collaborators on Rosslyn’s icehouse project (Tiho, architecture; Hroth and Eric, construction/carpentry; and Pam, project/property management) and Mike, a carpenter who works for us in Santa Fe (as does Hroth, although we’ve been fortunate to have his expertise at Rosslyn as well since July.)
Tiho Dimitrov: What makes a house a home? For me, it’s my books, my guitars, and the odd pieces of art that I own. It’s the art and the books that bring a sense of me or a sense of my spirit. Combine that with the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and you have a home. It’s the imperfections of a place that make it perfect.
Hroth Ottosen: Off the top of my head the difference between a house and a home would be family. But that doesn’t apply to my life. My circumstances are extremely exceptional. I consider my house in Mora, New Mexico my home because I built it from scratch without much help from anybody, and to my own specifications and desires. Not many people can say that. (Later…) While making dinner I thought about what makes a house a home. A name doesn’t hurt. I consider Rosslyn my home right now!
Eric Crowningshield: Home is the place where I feel proud and comfortable being! I joke around saying we are the dream makers because we try to take homeowners’ dreams and turn them into a reality!
Pamuela Murphy: A house is a house, but a home is where the love is. It takes love, hard work, and teamwork to make a house a home.
Mike Hall: To me it it means cozy and comfortable and someone to share that with. This popped into my head because my wife and I are at the Bosque del Apache celebrating our 31 anniversary!
Homegrown Food Makes a House a Home (Photo: Geo Davis)
My next pollees are family members, starting with my beautiful bride (Susan), then on to my parents (Melissa and Gordon), one of my nieces (Frances), one of my nephews (Christoph), and my cousin (Lucy).
Susan Bacot-Davis: It’s easy to see Rosslyn as my home. We’ve invested sixteen years of our life reimagining, renovating, and sharing her. But I learned in Côte d’Ivoire where I lived in 1989 and 1990 that home can be a place very foreign to me. I came to my village wondering how I would ever be comfortable there. I departed almost a year later wondering how I could ever bear to leave. It was my neighbors, my friends and colleagues, my community, and my sense of belonging within that community, not the concrete hut within which I dwelled, that embraced me and made me feel safe and nurtured.
Melissa Davis: I’d say home needs comfortable spaces for you to do the things that you like to do. That means you need to know what those things are! So I need a place to sit and write, draw, type, pay bills, and address Christmas cards. And I need a place for the related “stuff”. And homeness means music in the places I do my activities as well as space to actually do the activities (room for yoga mat, comfortable chair/bed to read paper and books, do crossword puzzles, and drink coffee). House becomes home with enough outdoor space to grow something to eat! Eventually a home has memories throughout it which solidifies its homeness, and that requires people who are important to us.
Gordon Davis: Takes a heap a livin’ to make a house a home. And snacks.
Frances Davis: What makes a house a home in my mind is the few mementos that hold special memories or are sentimental for any reason, which we bring with us to each new place we live in. For example, random mugs collected over the years, or certain books, or even a sweater that we wore after high school grad. Whatever they are, these items carry significance in our hearts and bring our past into whatever new building we’re in to make it our home.
Christoph Aigner: Home is a place that draws people in, a space that makes one feel comfortable and at peace. It is familiar to those who call it home, and it reflects a person’s or family’s values and the life they live.
Lucy Haynes: Bringing the outdoors in – branches, plants. Living things. Also – antiques and pieces that have been used. And enjoyed.
On to friends, diverse personalities with whom we’ve fortunately become acquainted across the years.
Kevin Raines: The word home has it’s roots in the old English word ‘ham’ and means a place where souls are gathered. I like that idea because as a house is lived in it grows rich in memories that welcome and enrich the inhabitants and guests who frequent the structure. Through the gathering of souls space becomes an extension of self, past, present, and into the future.
Lisa Fisher: Home is not the house where you live but your relationship to it. If within the space you feel comfortable, yourself. To be “at home” is to have a sense of belonging — to a place, to the world you have made within it. I think it was Heidegger who came up with the notion of individual worlds, meaning the stuff we surround ourselves with, including ideas and beliefs, but also our physical realm. Homenesss speaks to the human element of habitation: the inhabiting of a space.
Alexander Davit: The stories that are created while people are living there.
Miriam Klipper: House is the structure. A home is all the things you’ve put in it — including memories. By the way, memories include selecting every painting, carpet (remember our visit in Turkey?), crafting the most beautiful house, every perfect detail…
Amy Guglielmo: What makes a house a home? For me it’s comfort and color! Soft natural textures, local art and touches. Softness, coziness, calmness. Always views for us. Aspirational space to dream. And accessibility to community. Beach, pool, recreation. Close proximity to nature. We’re wrapping up designing our new home in Ixtapa, Mexico, and we’re only missing books and games at this point. But I think we nailed the rest!
Roger Newton: Love.
Jennifer Isaacson: Surrounding yourself with things/objects that hold a history and meaning to you.
Lee Maxey: What transforms a house into a home… One word “life”. Living things, people, animals, plants, and any items that support or enhance life. Cooking implements, cozy blankets, music, well read books on a bookshelf, and signs of soul. Today is the 2nd anniversary of my mom’s passing. I have just spent a couple hours going through photos and crying and writing in my journal. One of the things I miss most are the smells. Our smells make a house our home.
Denise Wilson Davis: For me, simply, what makes a house a home is the feeling that love resides there. That, as an owner you’ve put love into it… from the care and fixing to the furnishings and found objects that bring joy or remembrance. Home is an intimacy — a reflection of your heart and creative soul — that welcomes guests and makes them comfortable.
David Howson: This is similar to the saying, “at home”. When one feels “at home”, they mean they feel a certain kind of comfort and peace. One wouldn’t say, I feel “at house”. I fondly remember the first night I stayed at Rosslyn. While it wasn’t my house, you and Susan certainly made me feel “at home”.
Ana June: I think of home as curated and designed. It is a space where your heart is visible in your environment.
I’m profoundly grateful to everyone who offered their quick thoughts. And I was warmly surprised by how many wanted to expand the exchange into a lengthier conversation. So many intriguing notions of “homeness” and personal perspectives on what uniquely distinguish their own living space. Often relationships, shared experiences, and love wove their way into our discussions. I’ve abbreviated this post, and yet I realize that I’d like to dive in a little deeper with many of those I’ve quoted here. With luck I’ll revisit again in the near future.
Pets Make a House a Home: Griffin, April 16, 2012 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Until then, I’d like to weave in one additional thread that I personally consider an indispensable component of our home. Pets.
While Susan is the beating heart around which our small nuclear family orbits, we’ve never been without a dog for more than a few months. For us family and home are intrinsically connected with Tasha, Griffin, and Carley. Although Tasha and Griffin are chasing balls in the Elysian Fields, they remain with us, surfacing every day in our memories and conversations. They’ve left their imprints in the ways we live and play and entertain and in the way that we raise our current Labrador Retriever, Carley. On occasions when our little threesome is temporarily divided, for example this past October while I was away in California while Susan and Carley were in Santa Fe for a couple of weeks, our home felt incomplete. Despite good adventures with good people, Susan and I both acknowledged the voids we were feeling. Our home was temporarily divided. Returning to my bride and my dog instantly made me feel complete once again. So, for us, an important part of what makes a house a home is all of the beings — human and not-so-human (although our dogs differ on the distinction!) —that inhabit and visit our dwelling.
Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? (Source: Geo Davis)
In the days since publishing “What Makes a House a Home?” I’ve been fortunate to enjoy follow up exchanges with many of you. It seems that we all have some compelling notions of homeness! Thank you for reaching out and sharing your often personal stories. I’ve mentioned to several of you that I’d like to dive in a little deeper if/when you’re inclined. This inquiry is foundational to Rosslyn Redux, and I believe that the objective is less to answer the question and more to propagate more questions, to seed wonder and reflection.
There are so many little forays into this residential quest, that I’ve decided to follow up with three follow-ups posts that intrigue me and that have been percolating with renewed vigor since sharing the previous post. I’ll jumpstart the three with a preliminary introduction of sorts, maybe more of a welcome, today in seeding the three questions as one. Is home a place, a feeling, or a relationship? I’m hoping to intersperse more narrowly focused posts on each of the three questions with progress reports on the icehouse rehab (It was a big day today!) and the boathouse gangway. And I’m hoping to hear from you if you feel moved to share your thoughts on any of the three. I suspect that many of us consider all three to be connected in some way to our ideas of home. More one than another?
Two weeks ago I shared a tickler for this post on Instagram, a short reel offering an aerial view of Rosslyn that I filmed with my drone last summer. It feels meditative to me. Like a soaring seagull wondering, wandering…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClB-1F8AFiK/
I think for now, I’ll leave the question of home as place gently gyring in the updraft to be picked up again soon in another post.
Is Home a Relationship?
In the digital sketch / watercolor at the top of this post, the almost abstract blue green wash hopefully feels a little bit like a dream. Maybe a memory. Something fuzzy and abstract in my memory. It’s a barn, actually a barn quite near Rosslyn in the hamlet of Boquet. But it’s not necessarily that barn I’m depicting. It’s many barns including the barns at Rosslyn (carriage barn and icehouse) the barns at The Farm where I spent a few formative early years, and the barn(s) that I hope to one day, same day build or rebuild. In short, for reasons I’m still unraveling, homeness for me includes a feeling of an old, perhaps even an abandoned farm, with barns. More at that anon.
Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? (Source: Geo Davis)
Is Home a Feeling?
Sticking with digital sketches / watercolors for a moment, that black and white image above was actually made a few years ago to represent Griffin, our Labrador Retriever before Carley. But like the barn, my rudimentary skills at representation allow it to merge into all of our dogs including Tasha, who we had before Griffin, and even Griffin-the-1st, a long ago predecessor and the namesake for our more recent Griffin. That’s a bit jumbled, but it’ll do for now.
Why dogness as a way to explore homeness? Well, frankly, for me, part of the feeling of home is that it’s where my dog is. And when we’re migratory between the Adirondacks and the Southwest seasonally, our dog is with us, maintaining a sense of home even though we’re temporarily nomadic. More on that now soon.
Is Home a Point of Overlap Place, Relationship, and Feeling?
I’ll leave you with this follow-on because I find that it’s surprisingly challenging to tease apart the elements of homeness. Intrinsic to all three, is my beautiful bride, Susan. She is my home in a way that embodies place, relationship, and feeling. What about you?
