Strange Closets

People often ask me how I find so many great spaces for Strange Closets, and the answer is several-fold: 1.) Sometimes interior designers e-mail me photos of their completed projects, and sometimes normal people do too. I appreciate nearly all of them and being poly-aesthetical, I love quite a few in one way or another. [...]

Jackie’s recent art installation was far too large to bring indoors, but her largest piece of work is the house itself – the ultimate container for Don and Jackie’s possessions, memories, art and lives.  For some people, houses are strictly utilitarian; and for some people, they’re more about the Joneses – neighborhood jewelry.  But some [...]

When I met artists Don and Jackie Seiden last year, Jackie was thinking about selling or giving away her SUV, which was on its last legs.  She seemed resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to own it anymore, and it seemed like she was trying to find something purposeful to do with it.  [...]

Painter Gail Potocki’s Rogers Park condo is equal parts Victorian and Moroccan with a liberal mix of outside influences, vintage odds and ends (including trinkets made by our Victorian ancestors from human hair) and lots of taxidermy: a crow, a doe, y’want moe?  How about a peacock?  The list goes on and on. Gail’s rich, [...]

Artists Don and Jackie Seiden have lived in their Rogers Park Victorian for thirty years, during which time they’ve transformed the space into equal parts home and giant art installation.  While Don creates and displays much of his art in the coach house, Jackie uses the house itself as a canvas. 

Enjoy Don and Jackie’s Open House.   I’ll be following up sometime in the next couple of weeks with photos of the basement and attic, both filled with Jackie’s suitcase assemblages.  Click here to see Don’s two-level studio / gallery, which is located in a former barn behind the house.

Last week I wrote about touring the updated Museum of Science and Industry Smart Home, so I thought you might be interested in seeing the first “green” home (at least that’s my angle for this post).  Built in 1909, the person who constructed Cheryl’s Rogers Park Victorian salvaged the woodwork from the 1893 Columbia World [...]