Room with a you:
Amazing folk art fills a west-side home with narrative and wonder
“The goal was to create a gallery environment,” Michael says, “and to me that means white walls everywhere.” It’s an aesthetic he hasn’t forgotten from childhood trips to the big museums. “You don’t walk through the Metropolitan Museum or the Guggenheim and see walls with a red sponge treatment.”
“The house wasn’t supposed to invade your consciousness,” Feder adds, “but then, when you focused on the house, there were some cool stories.”
Stories. That’s your first takeaway here. While you probably can’t afford a museum-quality folk-art collection, you can customize your environment with objects rife with meaning. The Feders’ house is filled with stories. That’s the nature of this genre: Folk art emerges from a storytelling urge so undeniable that, for example, Southern artist Eddy Mumma had to paint untold pieces modeled on English aristocracy, never selling or giving away a single one in his lifetime. (The Feders own five.) Other items trail fun stories about how they were acquired. Point being, few touches are merely decorative; the couples’ home life is pillowed in a rich sense of narrative.
As he bounds through his house — expounding on the similarities between ancient cave paintings and folk art, describing how to fine-tune the placement of artwork (they hang construction paper sized like the paintings, tweaking them for weeks) — the other lesson of this place becomes clear: surround yourself with things you have a flagrant passion for.
“Art is the proper task of life,” someone — Nietzsche? A Facebook meme? — once said, and even if you don’t make art, you can make art central to your life. “It’s just a really creative space,” Feder says, standing in his living room. “It’s incredibly inspiring. For me, it elevates.” Sounds delightful.