Adding Up: Artful and Art-Filled New Spaces for Working at Home

Tucked away on a quiet street in Santa Monica, a bright red addition peeks out from behind this modest 1929 Spanish bungalow, signaling not only the home of artists Elena Mary Siff and Sam Erenberg but their work and display space as well. Designed by Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg, who live up the street, the hybrid residence has prompted its share of double takes. Says Eizenberg: “It makes you see the normal elements of a house--the windows, the roof, the walls--in a new way.’

Siff and Erenberg moved to the Cecil Gale bungalow in 1993, after 18 years and raising their two children in Santa Barbara. Since they wanted to be able to make and show their work at home, plus still enjoy the outdoors, they turned to their architect neighbors for ideas. “We liked the way they had used the lot for their own house, and they had worked with several artists we knew,’ Siff recalls. “Elena also liked Julie’s feminine touch, her use of curves and color, the sensitive scale of her design,’ Erenberg says.

So Eizenberg and Koning freshened up the flooring, tiles and paint in the existing rooms and consolidated most of the new construction in the two-story, painted-stucco addition. A large and colorful ground-floor studio for Siff’s intricate collage and assemblage art looks out on the garden, where she designed a madcap mix of tiles to line a new lap pool. A new master bedroom atop the studio has the airy feel of a treehouse. “You don’t know how blue the sky is until you see it past those red walls,’ Eizenberg says. A smaller white building beyond the garden doubles as garage and studio for Erenberg. In contrast to the main addition, this new space is a pristine, skylit container appropriate for Erenberg’s minimalist paintings and installations.

“Some of the curves of the red building came from the old place, and we chose the color to work with the roof tiles it rises above,’ says Eizenberg. “But I’ve always been interested in how you can play with scale and composition to make familiar elements more evocative, more powerful. Our work is a combination of simple and unexpected moves.’ The end result? Art both at and as home.