小平米居家美學 帶有 DIY 裝飾的藝術紐約公寓

Hey, Homeworthy, I'm Kyra, welcome to my home in Brooklyn. Let me show you around. We're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Before today's episode, click the Join button below to support all of the storytelling we do on this channel. Our growing community of members help to directly fund more videos so we can capture these extraordinary homes from around the world. So join today to receive early and exclusive access to new Homeworthy videos. My name is Kyra Coffey, and I'm a writer as well as a set designer and prop stylist. My house is a little hard to explain. It's a bit eclectic. It has lots of handmade items that I've made. Being a prop stylist, I really spend a lot of time making things work sort of on the macro scale and the micro scale of items and colors and textures. I have a lot of artwork from loved ones all over the walls, and also there's sort of a theme of reuse a lot in my crafts and in my furniture even. I do a lot of thrifting, and well, you'll see as we go. My brownstone is in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and it's a typical brownstone. This was built in the late 1800s, and a lot of the brownstones in the area, which are townhouses for people who are not from New York, have a lot of similar architectural details, and a lot of the mantles look very similar. A lot of them are situated in the same places. Many of the brownstones look alike. And the neighborhood, I would say now it's largely a family neighborhood. A lot of families live here. We have a gigantic park really close by, so that's a big draw, and it's tree-lined and lovely. I've lived in this apartment for around 27 years, which is longer than I ever thought I would be anywhere. I came here from another apartment just one block away, and I've been looking for apartments for months and months. And somehow when I walked in here, I just knew, you know, I just knew this was the one. And the rent was a little higher than my budget at the time, which now sounds so low. But it had, you know, the brownstones in this neighborhood are all lined up, packed one against another. And this one, because it's the last on the block in the row, has a window on the side, which you'll see in the living room. And it's really unusual, and it makes the space feel open. So that was a really big difference that I instantly noticed and loved. And I sadly had to tell the landlady, it's too much for my, you know, it's higher than my budget, and I have to say no. And then she called me back the next day. It's sort of unheard of in New York for someone to reach out and say, I'm going to lower the rent. I'm going to meet your budget, and she did. Welcome to my dining room slash office. This is the first room you come into in my apartment, and it serves many purposes. My table is obviously where I eat and host dinners and all that. And also, though, it's where I, it's my studio. This is my tiny studio. So I do a ton of artwork and crafting on this table. And it was made to withstand glue and paint and everything, and not, you know, I don't worry about, I'm not too precious about it. And then over here at my desk is where I do all of my writing and obviously a ton of computer work. So it serves a couple of purposes. And a lot of what this room sort of has to handle is having all of my supplies, but not be too obvious or visible because not all my art supplies are attractive. So I have made use of some things like, I know, these are tiny little pencils that I hate to throw away because they're so useful, but they're ridiculously tiny and they don't fit in my pen cup. So those live there. And a lot of my erasers sit in this paper mesh shade bowl that I made. I sort of have ways of hiding my supplies everywhere. Over here is a bookcase that I grabbed off the street. It was being thrown away. And this hides a multitude of sins behind this curtain. Tons of supplies that are not very attractive. This shelf, which holds all of my craft supplies, I actually found on the street. A neighbor was giving it away and I decided to bring it home. It was probably about three, four blocks away. And I went to go lift it up because I took a lot of things home and it was so heavy. It's like super heavy. I don't know if it's masonite or what, but it's solid. And I was struggling. I didn't want to give it up. And then a young woman was walking by and just offered to help me carry it home. She didn't even know where I lived. And I said, no, no, it's not that far. So we struggled and got this home. And then she did not want to help me up the stairs. I said, don't worry about it. I'm going to get it up the stairs. And she left. And now we follow each other on Instagram. But I think of her a lot because this is why I have this shelf. This whole area is really not meant to be super elegant. It's really my workhorse, this shelf, and I have so many supplies. This curtain that I made, I haven't even sewn it yet. It's just pinned together with safety pins. It happens to be a really beautiful fabric that a friend of mine who's a textile designer sells. And it's a linen that he calls the heaviest linen. And it was made to work for sailors many, many, many years ago. And the weave is so tight and linen swells when it gets wet. So when it gets wet, it actually becomes watertight, which is just a super cool element of it, so I do not use it in water. And then this tea container, someone gave this to me, and it was just sort of a crappy little tin. And then I covered it in paper mache to make it a little more interesting. This is actually a lovely piece. This is a wood elephant that a friend of mine, Matt Austin, made. And it has magnets on the side, and he made wooden wings for it that could come on and off. And I realized it was much better suited for me to hold my pins. This is another example of me hiding my supplies in plain sight. And then these guys are just lucite pieces leftover from some shoot that I liked for the color of them. And these animals will not be here forever. They were made for a shoot, and they probably will go to a shoot. But what's interesting about them is, I made another one, too, that I don't know where it is. But I needed a lot of weight at the bottom to hold these long pieces coming out. So these are on boxes of things like baking soda, filled with baking soda still. And this one, I can't remember what's in this one, but I wanted them to be heavy enough to hold what was coming out of it. So those are funny little... Yeah, that's baking soda, which is funny. You can hear it inside. So these pieces, a lot of these things move around and may live somewhere else in another month. And this is an artwork, a pastel by my mom. My mom is an artist. My mom has always been an artist. Most of her career has been in pastels, but she's also made sculptures. She taught me how to make papier-mâché. Well, she taught me a ton, actually. And so a lot of her drawings and artwork are in my house. I'm so lucky. The apartment hasn't changed that much I mean, I was very lucky. The tenant who lived here before me was a really stylish guy, I think, because he had stripped a lot of the wood around the window frames, and he had done plastering on the ceiling and made some built-in cabinets. So I was super lucky about that. However, he loved the color pink, did not want anything that was not pink, and so every single room was painted like Pepto-Bismol pink. I think my style really ranges, but it's usually quite colorful, and I like to layer pattern and color and texture, so it's kind of a rich style. I don't know if there's a word that describes it all, but I would say colorful and eclectic. So this is my coat rack. Not so interesting, but I decided when the coats are not on it, it looks sort of plain, and so I hung this artwork very low and in a strange place, and then I really liked it for some reason. It's so quirky and strange. And then I went further and hung my paper recycling down super low. This is a bag that's made of paper, even though it doesn't look like paper, and I thought it was fun to use it for paper. So this whole configuration is very atypical because everything's so low. This is my sort of dress room, and I have a couple of pieces that I love here. This pot was made by my stepfather many, many years ago in the 70s, and I actually right now use it to just put my sunglasses in, but it's so big and I wanted to use it. I wanted to raise the level inside, so I put all of my balls and super balls inside of it to sort of hold up. I don't know if you can see. And then this is sort of funny. This is my buzzer, really old, funky New York bell system. This is I mean, it doesn't even work. I can hear the bell ring, but I can't buzz anyone in. And it was so askew and so funky that I decided one day to just cover it with all of this paper mache. This is a page from a gem book that I had, and I just made these protrusions so that was my attempt. Who knows? We'll see if I change it again. And then these are some drawings that my mom made. This is a drawing of my grandmother's arm, which I love. It's just a little study she did. I guess she was planning a bigger artwork. And this is kind of a this is a good example of the temporary nature of my decor. This is obviously a placeholder,I think. And then down here are a couple of other things that I made. I covered this jar with rice paper, marbled paper. And then this little doodad is such a funny thing. This bottom part was the top of a seltzer bottle. And then I made these little pieces to go on the sides. At the time, it's become a different kind of holder. This used to hold eye drops. Again,I'm just trying to hide some of the things that I have around to make them look a little more attractive. So that's how that evolved. In this photograph, I have a sister, a sister, and then two family friends from childhood. And it was taken by I think my uncle and elegant and was given to me by a friend. The finish is funky, and I really would love to refinish it someday soon and get it either to be a beautifully finished wood finish or maybe even a beautifully painted piece, maybe lacquer. I don't know. I haven't done it yet, but that's my vision for it. A lot of the items are things that I've made. A lot of the artwork are pieces that my loved ones have made. It's just uniquely me. I have my own way of doing things. I like sizzles of hot color here and there. I like sort of lowly materials mixed with really fine materials. So it just sort of has a texture that is me. This is my sideboard, but I don't exactly know what to do on the surface, but it's holding so many arts and craft supplies. I won't even open the drawers, but there's a lot of handmade elements on the top. This is a tray that I paper-machéed. It was a wicker tray that my neighbor was getting rid of, and I just decided to paper-maché to make it more interesting. This is another pot that my stepfather was throwing away. This funny little cabinet that had martini glasses as drawer pulls, and it was just sort of hideous, but I thought it had potential, and I added this whole yoke on top with paper-maché and then made little handles with clay. It holds, again, this is like meta. It's hiding a bunch of supplies, and then in it are things also hiding supplies. You know, it's just a series of ways to make things look pretty. This artwork has stayed the same for a while. This is a lovely pastel by my mom, and it's her view out of her window on a sort of rainy day, which I love. And my mom's name, by the way, is Nancy Rothstein. This is a pastel This is actually an envelope that I made. I don't know if you can see. So I found a painting that was being thrown away on the street, and I thought, what can I do with this? I don't know if you can see the really cool crackly texture in it, so I made two things out of it. I made this envelope, which I like a lot and have not sent yet, but I have no idea whose painting it was, but it was fun to just sort of look at it and see what I could make, give it a second life. This medicine cabinet, which I'm actually using for a lot of vitamins and sewing supplies, was in a really industrial studio that a friend had, and it had like ancient, it did have medical supplies, but they were ancient, so when I was trying to open it, I was able to take it for myself. This is a little embarrassing, but I do love it, and I like how slim it is, and this was the original painting that was on it, so I like it for its, that it's a time capsule, you know. This is my everything table. It's my dining table. It's my studio table. It's my everything table. I sometimes even lie here and it's actually made by my friend Matt Austin, who's a genius, and it is really, it's made to be attractive, but it's made to really use and abuse, so I never worry, I don't use coasters, I don't worry about getting paint on it. It often has paper mache and glue all over it, and then I just sort of scrape it off and use it. There are stains all over it. I've drilled into it by accident. There are holes around it, and about 10 years ago, I had a dream that I took some magnets and magnetized some scissors onto it so that I would always have them when I'm sitting in my chair working on stuff, so I actually did that. These scissors live on the table, underneath the table, just on magnets, and I was telling my friend Todd Oldham that I had dreamt that and that I did that, and he said, I'm going to magnetize the scissors to the table, so I thought that was genius of me, and then on the table, I have a rotating bunch of things for the table, because I use it so much to do my work on, it really just has to get cleared off a lot, so I don't keep a lot on the table normally, but I do love this paper mache cake that my mom made. It's super light. I'm probably going to knock it off. It's a super light, lovely piece, that I can carry out whenever I'm not working on the table, because I love it. I find vegetables so beautiful. This is just some chard that I bought at my food co-op, and they're so beautiful, so whenever I can, I use fresh produce as sort of prop pieces. If they don't need to be refrigerated at the moment, I just think they're so gorgeous and lush, so I have them out like a bouquet, which I do often. They work beautifully, but they're very old and not particularly attractive, and so this is a radiator cover that my brother-in-law made, James Kava, and it's clever because it has all these spaces in between for the heat to get out, but it's attractive, and he did me a giant favor by making this and designing it. And then above it, I found this and gave it to me, and I saved it for a very long time, and I thought it went well with this ceramic piece that I found in a thrift store that's kind of bizarre. It's abstract, and I'm not sure exactly what it is. I find it super beautiful, but it had this big chip in it, so I decided to just not use it for flowers and to just sort of make an art piece out of it of my own. I have a good friend who sells a lot of things at a flea market in New York, and she sold me this lovely needle-pointed lion, which I adore, and I do feel like the black of that and the black of this and a little bit of the black of this candle, sometimes I find black grounds things, visually speaking, and so sometimes I use it to pull things together and look a little more traditional and I find closed on the other it sort of, here, maybe it'll go around. It's black and white, so it has a certain formal quality, but it's so playful, so I really like to have it here. It brings a little whimsy to this corner. So most everyone watching will not be old enough to know, but there used to be little tables that were called typing tables when people would type on a typewriter, and give you more space, and I, it was just an old relic that was sitting around my mom's, and I covered it with linoleum tile, which I don't even know if they make linoleum tile anymore, but just as a way to have some color on the top, and it's on wheels, so it's a super handy little side table. I just covered a glass dish in paper, so it's paper mache, and these are some gems I change it up all the time. For many years, when I wrote about design for magazines, national magazines, I kind of needed a blanker canvas at home. I wanted something where I was going around and looking at tons and tons of houses all the time, and styling them, and photographing them, and designing sets, and I needed something So my practice changed, and I do less writing for magazines, I'm scouting less, fewer locations, and spending less time in other people's spaces, so doing more set design, and I realized that what I kept doing on set whenever I could was make props myself, make something myself, and some of it I realized why don't I just make things at home to please me, to not have to do it for a client, but to do it for me, and what happened was often when I realized I wanted something, I have really good taste because I've been around some lovely things on all of my photo shoots, but I can't always afford it, so that kind of infiltrated everywhere into my apartment, I made a funky little TV cozy that no one else might like, but I love, there are just examples of it everywhere, a lot of my vessels to hold things are handmade, and that was born of me practicing that on photo shoots. I live in a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, situated exactly like mine are, and they're so similar, I don't know if they use the same stone workers or designers, but much of the stone work around the fireplaces is the same or almost the same from house to house to house, so,you know, it's old and stained and funky, but it's quite beautiful, and I really love natural stone, so I think of it as a plus, and here's another thing, here's a little, you know, a lot of times I'm working on paper or cardboard, and I need to weigh it down because of glue or papier-mache, you know, I just really need some weight on it, and so I have this stack of marble blocks that some company was just throwing away, they're on the street in New York City, and so I've stacked them, they kind of hide in plain sight in my artwork, and they kind of blend in really well, and then this folder is the partner piece to that envelope, this was part, I just made it into a folder holding receipts, but it was made from the same painting that that envelope was made from, isn't it great? I love how odd it is, and I find it everywhere. I do go to a lot of museums and art shows, and for sure I'm interested and inspired a lot by artwork, but also, I often get ideas from literally trash on the street, or like a string that's shaped like a letter that's on the ground, I have a whole alphabet of trash shaped like letters, I mean, that's sort of silly, but it's just an example if you have a curious eye and a curious nature, it's kind of everywhere, for sure nature inspires me, you know, walks in the park, walks in the woods, and then just lots of looking, looking, looking, looking at, you know, everything and anything. And here we have my living room, and in the first nook that leads into it, I have a few fun things, a lovely photo which is a gorgeous portrait, and then beside it is another pastel of my mom's of our old bathroom when I was growing up, so it's a little bit nostalgic for me, this is a super old box that I got from my mom, she had it, I think most of my childhood, so I'm not sure where it came from, but it's a lovely old piece, and then this big crown box was from my dad, and it's a music box and it's a really funny thing, my dad in the 70s when he was, you know, smoking grass as they called it and doing all kinds of things would stash his drugs in this box, so I have my dad's old drug box which I use for jewelry, I have two bookshelves and this is the bigger one, it was made by a friend's father who's a woodworker, and gosh, I just have lots of stuff on it that's gathered or homemade, I'll show you, and so I made a second one and I kept this one just because it's lovely, it's paper mache, very imperfect, but there it is, I made this paper mache stand for some thrift pieces, I grabbed these funny beaded fruits from different thrift stores over the years, a friend of mine gave me this gigantic red crayon, which is, sometimes I think a little humor is good in the tableau, sometimes you want more seriousness and balance and sometimes you just want some humor, so that's why that's there, above the bookcase is a pastel that my mom made, I guess I seem to have a lot of pastels that she made of my childhood surroundings, so this is a backyard tableau that I put here recently, it's made by Todd Oldham's company called Todd Oldham Maker Shop and it's made by ribbons that are woven together, I don't know if you can see them, they sort of weave in and out and make just such a gorgeous texture and then they sit beside the second mantle in my apartment, this is a tricky little spot for me as far as making the right tableau, I mostly just use it for candles, but candles to me are not that attractive but this tableau of many, many pieces and it changes a lot because it really just reflects what I'm into right now, so I guess this is not right now, but in the fall I found this pod from an old, from a tree and just put it in this tiny little vase that I have and I think that makes it a perfect stopper, I have some dice here made of plaster and the idea is to sort of pull your interest in and take a closer look, so you know, I have this lovely crystal egg, this is, I found this in the bins of marble scraps and just thought it was a perfect shape, one summer I was eating a ton of blueberries and these are from the blueberry, those paper blueberry cups that blueberries come in so I made a little cast of them, it changes all the time and this is one of those great rocks, I thought this was a real rock and then it turns out this was man-made, but it's so beautiful, so I keep this here to hold this little candle holder on and, you know, when I go on a walk in the park and I collect things, which I do all the time, this is where a lot of stuff ends up or a tiny little weird barbie shoe might end up here because it pulls your eye in and so you're looking closely and it enables me to really use some of the tiny, tiny things that I love, because I use this mantle for candles all the time, I've sort of taken apart a matchbox and so I keep my matches here and then I took off the striker from the matchbox and I just sort of fun-tacked it here so that I can light a match here, I don't think, I don't have a matchbox out that's attractive because the matches themselves are nice, but then I don't have to look at the box and if the striker wears out, I just cut off another one from another box I think it's funny to put things in places that are unexpected, so I hung this little painting on the marble mantle, which does not make any sense, but it sort of ties together this table tableau and looks very sweet there and sort of funny I have these bigger pieces of furniture and I use them to offset most of my bookcases I think of as like rectangles of happy chatter There's a lot of tiny detail in bookcases and I put a lot of stuff in them and so that's sort of a noisy little happy bit of energy and then I like to counter those with sort of slower talking pieces of furniture which are bigger and heftier I have two of these chairs and these are from thrift stores that I got recovered and this is just a little rug sample that I threw on there because it's more comfortable It's super soft silk and then this pillow is a really valuable, lovely pillow designed by Alexander Girard and he was a mid-century designer of many textiles and objects and I'm writing a book about him for Faden Press The couch is really about comfort and a little bit of pattern and what's interesting here on the couch are my pillows This watermelon print that's actually embroidery and it was based on a watermelon print that the artist Ruth Ozawa made and I loved, loved, loved it and asked this friend of mine who's a costume designer if he could turn it into embroidery which he did and he also created this pillow with the fishes on it again from an image that I loved and so I'm very lucky to have these beautiful pieces of artwork on the couch I really have a theme about trying to hide things that I have around a lot that are not so attractive I don't love a lot of packaging so on my coffee table I'm often, when I'm sitting here watching TV or reading I often, that's the time I use a regular tub and covered it in paper mache and then I also use these eardrops so that are kind of tall and some magnesium spray that's tall and I couldn't just look at these ugly bottles so I made this out of this is the bottom of a seltzer bottle this is a super ball and I covered it in paper mache I'm not going to show you what's inside and this is just a sweet little piece of coral that my friend Todd Oldham covered in drawings I don't know if you can see when he was on a beach in I think St. Lucia and I just, there's something so nice about the coral texture and his lovely little design Above the couch I really needed a lamp but I do really love putting things in odd places and so I got this lamp and it's just sort of a funny, unexpected place to have something drilled into So I find humor in that and I really like it And then next to it is a really lovely painting of my great aunt by my mom So my mom painted this of her aunt It's a beautiful portrait to me because it's very earthbound and specific because it's her and her kitchen and she cooked a lot with her in the world with the clouds and the sky behind her My favorite part of my home is that it changes constantly You know, my moods change all the time What I want to look at changes all the time And so my apartment is sort of built to be not transitory, but mobile And so I can change color schemes really easily I can change items I can move things around for a better part of a year But now I really like where they are I found some It's hard You probably can't see on camera But I found some really beautiful dried leaves that have pink spots on them And I gathered them maniacally from a wet winter walk in the park And then I painted some branches pink because they were not on the branches And then I glued this together This is a frankentwig So those are sitting next to some beloved objects These are rocks that my mom gathered And I don't know why I feel nostalgic about the rocks that my mom gathered, but I do And I love them because she chose them And then this is a really odd one of my more recent papier-mâché pieces which is based on a Grecian urn And it sort of changes throughout I don't know if I can turn it because this whole portion is an upside-down plastic tub from pretzels that I found in the trash And then I kind of made the rest of it with materials that I had at home like big tinfoil tin And these are from rope that I wired together So this is I really do love Corinthian Egyptian pots And I was obsessed with them And looking at all But I used as many as I thought worked for this one piece And it's sort of For me, when I get an obsession with something like a period of art I just need to, you know, ingest it And then make something of my own And then I can kind of let that go Otherwise, I just keep It keeps going around in my head This is a little vessel that doesn't always hold a rock It's currently holding a rock that's actually a fossil And then I added these arms And it's different colors on different sides And then the only other important thing here I mean, I do love a tiny little pencil like this Because how did they sharpen that down so low But also it's beside a sculpture of a pencil that a friend of mine Barbara Weisberger made which I really love so much So these live kind of together This is another pastel that my mom made And it's of a woman outside of a fruit stand And I love it for many reasons But one of them is We grew up in a neighborhood of working class immigrants Many from Europe But really from all over And to me, she captures the, you know, a woman who is maybe not super beautiful But in the way that my mother sees a lot of these people And the way that she draws them You sort of see the beauty of who they are as people To me, this is a romantic view of a very hardworking woman immigrant Very typical of the neighborhood I grew up in So this is my TV And, you know, like everyone else No one wants to look at a black rectangle when you're not watching TV So I thought a lot about what I could do to make a cover for my TV And then I just got impatient And thought, you know, let me just make something today So I can cover it And then I'll make a textile one later Which, of course, I never did But so this is just These are just two or three bread bags Just paper, just sort of regular old paper And then I just glued a grid of sequins on it to make it a little more interesting And again, I don't know if I can make a fabric one to replace it So it's kind of a pain that it's not fabric Because if it were fabric I could just sort of whisk it off and throw it away when I watch TV But given that it's paper it takes up a little room So it's not the perfect solution Now I'll give you a little peek to my little bedroom Come on in When I first moved in here my bedroom, this tiny little room was a closet And he asked me repeatedly Are you sure you don't want a door on your bedroom He just couldn't really believe it But finally I convinced him that was 27 years ago I have no idea where that door is But now I just use a curtain And I only close it for air conditioning when I need to keep it cool in here Otherwise it's open So my tiny bedroom is really hard to configure There's really a lot of wall space This is the only wall space here that the bed lies against In the early years I had it a couple of other ways But it's really awkward Even this is not ideal But with a headboard I can sort of keep it floating against, away from the wall And, you know, have it work This lamp is lovely And I don't remember It's from a photo shoot I bought it from a photo shoot I can't remember where it's from But I really like it Because you can sort of swing it Side to side And have it be above you Exactly where you want You know, being into patterns and color Of course I think about my bedding all the time I'm never pleased I never have exactly what I want But I do really love this wool blanket That I found at a thrift store in London And I think it's called Gosh, I hope I'm right I think it's called an overshot blanket But it's not really It's really attractive And so there's a certain way That it's woven And I think that's why It's called an overshot blanket So I love it It's a very strange shape I don't know why If that has anything to do With the fact that it was in England Versus our beds Because, you know, beds are different sizes In different countries But I use it as much as possible Or versatile enough To sort of express themselves through it And I think it's really important And so even if it's A unique way That they like to arrange flowers Or their lack of pattern Or their abundance of pattern I think once a person Starts really coming through their space That's when it really gets full And that's when it's the most interesting You know, I've seen so many beautiful Expensive, expertly designed homes That really don't Say a lot Because they're beautiful But they're a little bit Void of humanity I think to me, home Is not so much a place But an idea Home is, you know, where I get ideas Where ideas start to bloom Where I feel fruitful And creative And also relaxed You know, for sure I find my home A wonderful escape from the world I sort of take myself back And escape sometimes And just be here But still, it's more A place in my mind Than a physical place Thanks for watching Go to homeworthy.com For exclusive content And shopping guides