Through the Looking Glass

Sam McKinniss's Connecticut home is a magical, maximalist mash-up, tying together riotous color, throwback Americana, and the artist's uncanny visions of popular culture.

- Chloe Schama

The first thing to know about the artist Sam McKinniss is that he loves a fake. Or maybe it's more precise to say that the 39-year-old painter, who has made his name by turning ubiquitous images from pop culture into lush canvases, loves the disquiet caused by something that seems about five degrees off. His oil paintings of celebrities are instantly recognizable-subtly seared into our subconscious by a thousand impressions and also disarming, evoking the way we relate to those images with empathy, scorn, affection, disdain.

And then there is his house in Kent, Connecticut-an artistic project of a different order but with a metacommentary of its own. With its long, low profile and rough-hewn beams, the house seems as if it might have had a former life as a 17th-century cabin, pipe smoke suffusing its wooden panels and subtle rippling in the window panes. It's early fall when I visit and the trees have dropped their leaves; cords of chopped wood are piled chest-high out front, ready for winter. It's easy to imagine a lesser member of the Mayflower staking out a homestead on the site.