Of all the issues the AD team produces yearly, it is the December Art issue that I most find brimming with sheer surprise and wonderment. Of course, artists of all stripes tend to ignore convention and do things their own way, resulting in exciting, memorable homes and interiors that very often break rules, push boundaries, and are utterly sui generis. The creatives who share their personal domains this year are conducting experiments in environment: Quite literally, many of them are living in their own artworks, which are themselves constantly evolving.
Japanese artist Mariko Mori, known for her site-specific, light-sensitive sculptures, acquired land on idyllic Miyako Island in the East China Sea, then spent five years observing the sun and the landscape and 3D-modeling various forms and structures before ultimately building the extraordinary white retreat that is really an extension of her practice. Halfway around the world, writer-director Lena Dunham reveals that her childhood dread of leaving her parents’ home—“I couldn’t imagine a better set of pals,” she writes in her delightful essay—led directly to her latest real estate project: a house of her own, right in their Connecticut backyard. As Dunham collaborated closely with her artist parents, the cottage is a labor of love and a kid’s fantasy come true.
Claire Tabouret, a French artist living and working in LA, has painstakingly swathed many of the surfaces of the 1920s Los Feliz house she shares with her family with brightly colored, fanciful murals and whimsical imagery. Covered with tarot card figures, the ceiling alone is a big wow. “We think of it as an artwork that’ll never really be finished,” says Tabouret of the house. “Little by little I will finish painting it so there is no longer any white. Maybe that’s what will happen to the whole house over time. I’m sure in two years it’ll be more and more alive.”
-Amy Astley, Global Editorial Director and Editor in Chief, AD U.S., @amyastley