The look: nearly naked
By day, a couple’s Culver City bungalow is an art gallery. By night, it’s their minimalist home.
By Janet Eastman
March 20, 2008
YOU can count the pieces of furniture on your fingers. In the living room, one bench and two tiny tables. In the dining room, another bench. And in one bedroom, nothing.
In an era defined by consumerism, collecting and clutter, the Culver City home of Fette and Matthew Green is an ode to simple living, a place where minimalism isn’t a look. It’s a living.
“It may sound weird to others, but this is how we define comfort,” said Matthew, a mild-mannered graphic artist. “It’s comfortable to not have too many possessions or be caught up in accumulation. Even the art we have is temporary.”
Indeed, part of the reason for the spare décor is the house’s dual purpose as a gallery for Fette, an art dealer and blogger. Only when she’s done receiving clients for the day do the rooms – their white walls loaded with original art – morph back into living space. Each evening the upholstered bench in the living room folds out into a bed, and sheets and blankets are laid into place.
When friends come over for Fette’s native French food, the desk in the master bedroom/office gets set in the dining room. When Fette’s favorite young artists come to town, they often sleep on the second bench, rolled from the dining room to the second bedroom.
Living this sparingly isn’t so unusual, say the young couple. They contend that most people battle to keep a home – especially a small one – neat. They just have perfected the art of ordered chaos.
Closets are stretched to their limits. In the pantry, V8 juice bumps up against bubble wrap. In the hall closet, boxes of Band-Aids lean against a leveler. In a bedroom closet, cardboard tubes of artwork rise from the floor till they meet a clothes rod and its dangling bag of packing peanuts.
And in the garage? Who needs a garage?
“We could have a lot of the regular comforts and be home every night watching TV in big chairs,” Matthew said, standing in the middle of a mostly empty living room, underneath a ribbon of gallery track lighting. “But we’d rather have art on the wall, room for people to see it and a place where artists can stay.”
EVERY month, Fette hangs new pieces of contemporary art or projects new art films onto the walls. She sends e-mails to friends and clients, inviting them to meet the artists – most of whom are from other countries – at a Friday night reception. And the narrow street outside gets lined with cars.
At her most recent party, patrons, art students and curious neighbors gathered inside, wineglasses in hand, studying the work on display. Fette, in a chic black-and-white dress with matching heels, introduced Canadian painter Margaux Williamson and Dutch photographer Melanie Bonajo, who was staying in the guest bedroom.
The room has no door separating it from the hall, and three partygoers were ensconced on what later would be her bed, but Bonajo just shrugged.
“I’m sleeping under Margaux’s painting, and I’ve had good dreams because of it,” Bonajo said. “Besides, it’s for only two nights.”
Gary Baseman, the Los Angeles artist and creator of the animated ABC show “Teacher’s Pet,” was present, celebrating Fette and her unconventional venue. He’d first heard of her a few years ago through her blog, the-flog.com, and admired the thoroughness with which she covered the local art scene. When she had her first show here in 2006, he became a regular.
“It’s always special,” Baseman said. “Always something surprising.”
FETTE, 27, always dreamed of opening an art gallery. Living in Venice, she couldn’t swing gallery space rents that ran about $5,000 a month, not if she still wanted to focus on emerging artists and dedicate 10% of her proceeds to Doctors Without Borders.
So she and Matthew came up with a solution: They packed up their essential belongings and moved into their current two-bedroom bungalow Oct. 1, 2006.
Twenty days later, she received a Culver City business permit and held her first show.
“It’s not unusual for art dealers to work out of their home,” says Christine Byers, the city’s public art coordinator. “But she’s the only one I know of in Culver City.”
In the last year, Fette has exhibited at Zoo Art Fair in London, the Art Basel/Miami Beach satellite show Aqua, and a satellite fair associated with Art Rotterdam called Project (OR). But the home gallery, she says, has provided the best exposure.
The trickiest part of running the business out of the home is appeasing the neighbors. The Greens consider themselves fortunate to have people next door who don’t mind.
Neighbor Stan Cameron even lent them a ladder when they were installing a 5-foot pigeon sculpture atop their house.
“Running down from the roof onto the walls was realistic-looking pigeon poop,” said Cameron, an attorney who likes that an art gallery is so close by. All he has to do is cross his driveway. “As much as I enjoyed going to the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, this is a lot more convenient.”
During a reception last month, the Greens’ house was lighted up more than any other on the block, but the chatter of the crowd was low enough for the faint strains of arias to come through on the sound system.
By 9 p.m. the party was winding down, and as is often the case, the last guests migrated to the kitchen. Only here, a 4-foot-long crate filled with canvases blocked the refrigerator.
No one seemed to notice.