In this exclusive extract from The Maine House II, by Maura McEvoy, Basha Burwell and Kathleen Hackett, explore the home of artists Dan Anselmi and Marc Leavitt …
Falling in love with a house isn’t all that much different from falling in love with a person. Both bring out the optimist in us as well as a kind of benevolence that serves to keep the thrill alive. Flaws? Well, they’re charming. There’s someone for everyone, goes the old saying, but the agent who represented the aged Cape on a lonely stretch of country road was not so sure. Then she met artists Dan Anselmi and Marc Leavitt. “I remember her saying very clearly, ‘Why would you ever want this place?’” says Leavitt.
A combination of five different paint colours went into the coal-black exterior of the Cape, which turns a bronze-black in sunlight.
The house, built in 1790, had been abandoned for years, a plus as far as the Boston-based couple was concerned. An orphaned old house is often an architecturally intact house, they reasoned, spared the ersatz renovations and trendy makeovers that would have been inflicted upon it if inhabited. “It was so plain and simple; everything – all of the original mouldings, fireplaces, doors, hinges – was there,” says Anselmi.
There was no heating system, no family room, no great room, no room for a refrigerator in the kitchen, an ailing roof, and a vertigo-inducing staircase. Anselmi and Leavitt looked straight past all of it, mesmerised by what was there. For these two artists, whose professional lives left little time to build their practices and whose Back Bay one-bedroom apartment offered no space in which to do it, it was love at first sight.
A classic Cape-style front door, with sidelights and a solid oak, fan-shaped crown, is painted the colour of iron oxide.
Indeed, the pair was so besotted that a full year passed before they realised the house was just a short drive from a bustling midcoast town. Anselmi and Leavitt commuted from their city apartment every weekend, taking the back route and only stopping for groceries. “We worked like dogs, refinishing walls, clearing brush, painting the exterior. We did everything ourselves,” says Leavitt. That includes learning a thing or two about country living.
“At first we painted the house in period colours, but it just felt heavy. So we painted it white to make it feel more gallery-like,” says Leavitt.
“We had to ask the hardware-store clerk what the tiny red flag on the mailbox was for,” he recalls with a laugh. Then there was the bat in a bedroom, which they released by opening a window, turning on the light, and stapling a sheet to the door jamb because the house had shifted so much that the door wouldn’t close properly. “And the mooing! The sound from the cows up the hill initially terrified us,” says Anselmi.
Classic six-over-six double-hung windows are the defining architectural feature upstairs.
When the couple eventually discovered the town, they found themselves in a community teeming with artists, which, on reflection, came as no surprise. “The pace of life here makes you feel comfortable, and when you are comfortable, you can create,” says Anselmi. “I think that’s why we are here. Because we want to be around people who want a simpler life. We still don’t have a dishwasher. And I don’t think we ever will.”
Levitt’s collection of more than a thousand artists’ monographs is shelved in a room designed to allow few distractions apart from the Maine light.
The couple did not mind the steeply pitched stairs when they first looked at the house; the original banister is a reminder to grab hold going up and down.
One of Leavitt’s abstract works hangs over the fireplace.
Sheathed in painted plywood, Leavitt’s studio is located in the ell of the house, adjacent to the viewing room where both artists photograph their work and hang it gallery-style. A pain of Anselmi’s collages and a painting are seen here.
Works collected over time are hung salon style beneath a stretch of original peg rail.
From: The Maine House II by Maura McEvoy, Basha Burwell and Kathleen Hackett, published by Vendome Press, out now.
