Making SPACE

For CREATIVE PEOPLE, HOME can be a WORKPLACE, a SANCTUARY, a room with a VIEW, a PLATFORM for SELF-EXPRESSION, or a font of INSPIRATION-sometimes ALL AT ONCE. But for these ARTISTS, WRITERS, DESIGNERS, CHEFS, CHOREOGRAPHERS, and MULTITALENTED MULTIHYPHENATES, it's SOMETHING much MORE IMPORTANT: THEIR OWN.

- KAITLYN GREENIDGE

JORDAN CASTEEL

The artist in the garden of the home she shares with her partner, David Schulze, in the Catskills in upstate New York

"When I'm PAINTING, it's very INSULAR. And then when I'm in the GARDEN, it's me OUT of my HEAD in so many ways. I'm just PLAYING IN DIRT. I love the TACTILE nature of it."

Making creative work means forging a divide within one's self that necessarily complicates the meaning of home. James Baldwin wrote that "the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone." 

THE MARDEN FAMILY

Painters Brice Marden (far right) and Helen Marden (second from left) with their daughters, Melia (left), a chef and restaurateur, and Mirabelle (second from right), an artist and curator, in Helen's studio in the family home in Tivoli, New York

"My parents made a very COLORFUL home OVERFLOWING with INTERESTING OBJECTS, but nothing that felt too PRECIOUS." MELIA MARDEN

The thing is, when I read Baldwin on this, I don't think of this aloneness as solitary. I think of a writer like Lucille Clifton, who made her house into a refuge for civil-rights organizers and artists but also set up her typewriter on her dining-room table so that she could slip away from the chaos of the abundant, vibrant home she had created for herself to compose her poetry. She was both there and not there, at home in the world but also at home in her mind.

LISA EISNER