Happy Monday!

   Happy Monday! Isn't great to start off the week with a little bit of artistic inspiration? The uber-creative home of artist Hilary Pfeifer is certainly a great place to start! Owner of the Portland-based store Bunny With a Tool Belt, her remarkably inventive uses of recycled and found materials lend such personality in her work and in her home! Knowing we're all voyeurs at heart she has generously agreed to walk Design^Sprout readers through her home.

     "I use a ton of found objects in my work  (above) and alter them until you don't recognize the original form as  easily.  They come from thrift stores and some of Portland's great  reused art supply and building materials stores, which I scour on a  regular basis."

    "I saved covers from the New Yorker Magazine for a  few years to get enough to
paper a wall in my foyer.  It was inspired  by my grandmother's farmhouse, where
covers from the Saturday Evening  Post were decoupaged onto a cabinet in the
bathroom.  I put a few  layers of varathane on top and then hooks so I can hang
wet raincoats  and my cloth shopping bags near the door and out of the living room."

     "This is the stained glass window I designed and had  made for my front door. 
I chose various pieces of glass from the  scrap bin at a local glass shop, all
with white, and a simple  helvetica-esque font for the lettering."

     "An ikea bookshelf lets me alternate square cubbies  of books with some of my
favorite art objects."

     "A sitting area off the kitchen.  We are planning on  finding a great breakfast
table for this space, but right now I love  having this couch here because the
light is fantastic!"

     "One of many lights I own by artist/friend  Daniel Sadler.  A year or so before his
death, he started this series  of houses where he took photographs of actual
buildings and  transfered them to paper lamps.  He told me that this one was taken 
of various walls of a children's music school in New Orleans.  He  loved this building
so much that he returned the next day to take  more pictures and the building was
completely demolished!!"

     "There are a billion cupboards in  this room, so I decided to paint the walls a
pale greenish yellow,  and then randomly choose others to paint brown, kind of
like a  Mondrian painting.  The fridge is covered with a series of cards I 
made last year when I turned 40 and decided to list 40 things I'd 
always wanted to do in the hopes that I'd tick down the list before I 
turn 50!"

     "A detail of two of the cards, which I made with  some of the clippings from my
massive magazine image database I've  been compiling for the past two decades."

     "Here's the only shot of the dining room I'll  release right now!  It's a quilt I made
years ago from my family's  huge record collection.  I don't have a turntable and
was in the  middle of a transitional year, so I decided to use the Log Cabin 
pattern to show a series of labels that trace my musical influences, 
from my grandfather's 78's through my mother's albums like Bob Dylan 
and Carole King, to my 45s like Rick James' Funkytown and Elvis 
Costello."

     "The downstairs bathroom is quite small and  so I decided to paint it electric
colors and keep my collection of  glow-in-the-dark things there.  It's fun at night,
when the  blacklight does its magic!"

 
     "One of my favorite glow treasures--an  elephant ornament from the 1950's,
which is early glow plastic  technology."

     "This box holds a lot of smaller objects, waiting for  their second life!  Here's one of the pieces I have already completed for the  September show--a shiva-like plant with unusual blossoms at the tips."

Comments

[surie]

What a lovely and creative home! I can't wait to implement some of her tricks. Thanks for posting!

[surie]

What a lovely and creative home! I can't wait to implement some of her tricks. Thanks for posting!

[Sarah Jane]

This house is an inspiration to me as i am trying to go a green as possible and reuse things in a new and beautiful way! Thanks so much for sharing.

[Sarah]

I love your New Yorker front hall, such a clever and effective idea.

*would like to steal for own home....*

[Veronica]

Thanks for commenting Sarah! I loooove that hallway as well. Guess it's time to start stock piling the New Yorkers!