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Winona Barton-Ballentine Anne Hall s refurbished 18th-century farmhouse sits on 155 acres of land. To Hall the entire project first the rehabilitation and total renovation of the home and then the establishing of the resident flower farm may seem almost opposite in nature, but Hall sees commonalities. “There’s definitely a very elemental thread through all of this,” she explains. “It’s taking things down to their most basic processes, appreciating those and then finding new ways to work their basic elements.” In 2015, when Anne Hall first encountered her historic 1783 farmstead, she didn’t see a stone house that needed major renovations, or 35 acres that wanted planting, or even the attached modernist barn-cum-studio washed in light waiting for makers to make some creative hay. “I just saw one huge canvas,” she remembers.
Writer and design historian Amber Winick rolls the dice at her house in Croton- on-Hudson, leaning into whims of chance to curate an ever-changing home environment.
Most people fit their creative practice into the spaces they find, adjusting to the confines of a building or a room or whatever corner is at hand. When artists Anat Shiftan and Jamie Bennett had the chance to renovate a 1960s Cape Cod, however, tailoring it to their art practices, the couple didn t hesitate they tore the house down to its studs. Both of us are pretty spontaneous, says Bennett, a fine art jeweler known for his expertise in enameling techniques, especially when it comes to how we work. In fact, it isn t unusual for his wife, the ceramicist Anat Shiftan, to wake up in the middle of the night and take to her studio, where she creates botanically inspired sculpture, tiles, and ceramics that explore both the abundance and limits of the natural world.