Earl Young’s Boulder Manor in Charlevoix, Michigan is for sale!
image from: http://chrisandkellysold.com/14765-Boulder-Ave-a261905.html
Last year I did a post about the unusual and adorable stone cottages designed by Earl Young in Charlevoix, Michigan. I still get emails about that post from people wanting to know if they can buy one.
Well, if you have the cash, YES YOU CAN buy one of Earl Young’s creations because his Boulder Manor is now for sale!
image from: http://chrisandkellysold.com/14765-Boulder-Ave-a261905.html
The listing agents Christopher Edwards and Kelly Small contacted me to announce that Boulder Manor is on the market for $1,195,000.
The 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom 2,467 square foot home was built between 1928 – 1939 by famed local builder Earl Young.
image from: http://chrisandkellysold.com/14765-Boulder-Ave-a261905.html
This is the first time the property has been on the market in nearly half a century! Boulder Manor has been owned (and cherished) by the same family as a summer retreat for some 50 years.
The bicycle house in Bisbee, Arizona
image from: http://www.afar.com/highlights/
Well it goes a bit beyond bicycles - as you can see.
But it is known far and wide as The Bicycle House of Bisbee – an old mining town in south-eastern Arizona.
image from: http://en.wikipedia.org (by: Willjay)
Bisbee is a fun place to house-peep because it has tons of colorful Victorian mining shacks and is now something of an artist’s colony. Many of the homes there are delightfully quirky and will no doubt find themselves on the pages of House Crazy someday soon.
image from: http://www.househunt.com/
A number of years ago, someone decided to beautify the facade of this former Greyhound Bus Station-turned-house with some household knick-knacks painted a bright orangey-pinky-red.
It was the best thing that ever happened to this building.
Skratching the surface of extreme funkiness
image from: http://skratchworks.com/gallery/
I’m always on the lookout for funky, head-turning homes, so when I saw this sculpted interior on Houzz.com, I was captivated.
The beautiful designs are made, literally, from “Skratch” -
Skratch is an architectural innovation in creating load bearing structures, sculptures, 3d ornamentation, seamless moldings and fabrication for the construction of earth based architecture.
image from: http://skratchworks.com/gallery/
The company is called Skratchworks and they are based out of Salt Lake City, Utah.
image from: http://www.facebook.com/Skratchworks
Skratch is essentially a really durable and malleable sculpting medium made from plant fiber and quarried minerals. It is said not to rot, mold or mildew, and to be virtually fire-proof.
crazy lil’ cottage
image from: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/
I spied this 1923 Los Angeles cottage on the Curbed website a few days ago. It is currently listed for sale at $799,000.
image from: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/
From the outside it is a meticulously well kept classic California bungalow with oodles of curb appeal…
image from: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/
But on the inside…
image from: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/
BAM!!! Welcome to funky town!
Canadian women’s house art
image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/3221267572/ (By cliff1066™ Cliff)
Dollhouse, 1972, wood and mixed media by Miriam Schapiro
Few things motivate me as much as art, houses, literature, history and feminism. The combination of those elements – like in Miriam Schapiro’s mixed media Dollhouse [above] - sets my little heart a flutter with creative muses. Add to that mix a Canadian perspective, and you’ve got me pretty much over-brimming with contentment.
Canadian born Miriam Schapiro‘s 1972 statement piece was part of a larger feminist cooperative installation in California called Womanhouse where an old Hollywood mansion was transformed by a group of feminist artists into expressive rooms dealing with different aspects of women’s lives.
Schapiro and her assistant Sherry Brody spent months collecting bits of fabric, tea towels, lace, and personal mementos from women around the country and then put them all together in compartmentalized “rooms” within a dollhouse.
image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/3221267572/ (By cliff1066™ Cliff)
The result was an expression of the often conflicting roles of artist, wife, and mother that Schapiro was experiencing and that many other women experience as well.
A parlor, a kitchen, a Hollywood star’s bedroom, a “harem” room, a nursery, and, on the top floor, an artist’s studio suggest these conflicting roles. The different symbols challenge the idea that the domestic lives of women prevent them from making “serious” art. At the same time, the tiny rooms in Dollhouse evoke cells in which the hopes of women are often imprisoned.
I remember studying Schapiro’s work in my high-school art class in northern Ontario. The concept of women’s experiences being represented in miniature “rooms” was obvisouly very intriguing to me.
Why? It probably has something to do with the traditional notion that domestic spaces are women’s spaces. And that there can be something empowering and even subversive about women manipulating those spaces.
~~~
Have a look at Canadian photographer/artist Julia Callon‘s Houses of Fiction – a series of photographed dollhouse-sized rooms that depict “The dichotomous representation of women – mad or sane”.
Using famous female author’s 19th century work as subject matter, Callon meticulously crafted the rooms to perfection… then destroyed them by descending each one into some type of chaos:
Wuthering Heights No. 1
image from: http://www.juliacallon.com/#Houses-of-Fiction (reprinted with permission)
Wuthering Heights No. 2
image from: http://www.juliacallon.com/#Houses-of-Fiction (reprinted with permission)
It’s controlled chaos, of course.
