My Favorite Room: Maura Tierney finds a simple serenity in Venice
Tierney says she responds to a variety of decor. “Sometimes it’s taxidermy, and sometimes it’s Julian Schnabel.”
Actress Maura Tierney doesn’t spend as much time as she’d like to in Southern California now that she’s doing more theater work and filming television shows in New York.
Tierney, who is known for her roles in “ER,” “NewsRadio” and “The Affair” (for which she won a Golden Globe Award this year), keeps an apartment in Manhattan. But when she’s looking for serenity, she goes to the living room of her Venice home, which she purchased in 2008.
Emily Kovner Architectural created a wall of glass doors opening out to a canal-facing patio. Designer Michael Angelo Stuno helped pick out the modernist furniture.
What is it about the living room that speaks to you?
It’s very sparse, really very simple. There’s so much of the outside that comes inside the house. There are nice, pretty, big trees — I live on the canal, and not everyone has trees in front of their house. It’s less about how the room is decorated and more that you can see the trees, the canal and the bridge.
What kind of personal touches did you put on the room?
There’s some art in there that I like a lot, some taxidermy — two squirrels talking to each other in a little diorama, a little baby chick. There’s a Julian Schnabel painting that’s really beautiful, and I never get tired of looking at it. And a Heather Barron multimedia piece that’s very calm, pretty, feminine that juxtaposes well with the other stuff, which is rather masculine.
I just respond to what I love. Sometimes it’s taxidermy, and sometimes it’s Julian Schnabel.
Maura Tierney’s living room looks out on the canals of Venice, Calif.
Where does one find good taxidermy in L.A.?
There are so many flea markets here, one every month. Rose Bowl, Santa Monica — every weekend there’s someplace to go here, if you want to shop for that sort of stuff. In New York, the markets are disappearing.
I’m not a taxidermy freak, just so you know. It’s not a passion. I find it interesting, but I’m not a devotee.
Has anything especially emotional happened in the room?
My father passed away in 2009, and so 2010 was the first Thanksgiving the family had had without him. I grew up in Boston, and we’d have every Thanksgiving at my parents’ house there. That year, I was like, “Why doesn’t everybody just come out here?” It would be a different place, a way to alleviate the loss of his presence. It was just a very beautiful Thanksgiving in L.A., which I’d never had before.
Why this house?
I’ve lived all over Venice, so it’s like my neighborhood in L.A. The parking stinks, though. But that’s just part of living here.
I liked that this was a modern house. I’d been living in Hollywood for eight or nine years in a beautiful Craftsman, but it was built in 1916. I’d been looking in the canals for two years. This house just feels really spacious but not too big. You know, sometimes you just walk into a place and it feels right.
