ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

How to Catch a Cabin

Above: The glass-walled entry of the Shelburne Museum’s Kalkin House, in northwestern Vermont, where Queens native Richard Saja has “moved in” for the summer; Saja photographed with one of his signature embroidered toile cushions.

by Jen Turner

Photos by Laura Moss

Who hasn’t felt the need to escape from the everyday, especially in the dead of summer? A lakeside house, a country cabin, or a beach bungalow—any of these would do, so long as it’s away from the same old dreary routines.

Embroiderer Richard Saja spent many stifling nights in his Queens, New York, apartment dreaming of just such a thing. Then, out of the blue, his wish came true. About a year ago, museum curator Kory Rogers called to see if Saja would like a house in the lush, bucolic town of Shelburne, Vermont, to use for the summer. He could do whatever he wanted with it and invite all his friends, and he wouldn’t have to clean a thing. The only catch: he couldn’t sleep there.

The explanation was simple enough: Saja was being asked to curate an exhibit at the Shelburne Museum, an art and Americana museum composed of 39 structures. It’s like a high-culture adult Disneyland, where visitors go from ride to ride, or in this case, exhibit to exhibit. Saja, for his part, was given access to the Kalkin House, a prefab structure designed in 2001 by New Jersey-based architect Adam Kalkin. Constructed of corrugated-metal shipping containers and an industrial shed, the house was originally built as a temporary exhibition space but has since become a permanent part of the museum, serving as a laboratory for cultivating the work of contemporary artists. Saja took over the space in late April, inviting a group of 32 artists he gathered through Facebook, Craigslist, and good old-fashioned word of mouth (“I had never met most of them,” he says) to share in his redecorating project. The result is a smart, entertaining show titled The Bright and Shining Light of Irreverence: Richard Saja and the Historically Inaccurate School.

Being the opportunistic escapist that I am, I jumped at Saja’s invitation to spend a couple days with him at his summer digs. So on an appropriately bright and shining morning, we headed north from New York City, armed with muffins from his favorite French bakery and a stack of oddly titled self-mixed CDs (The Velvet Belltower by Night, for instance). After a day visiting some of his favorite regional haunts (see sidebar), we spent a night in the Brick House, the slightly spooky, dollhouse-like home that belonged to the museum’s founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb.

Above: Saja’s work first got noticed in urban white-box galleries, but the lush surroundings sure don’t hurt. The Protobolster chandelier dangles above a view of the grounds.



The next morning, post coffee and a short walk across the museum grounds, we arrived at Saja’s summer home. The Kalkin House isn’t as imposing as it looks in photographs, but it’s certainly no less macho. “This building is hard and industrial, and it’s a little alienating, so I wanted to soften it up a bit,” Saja says. In the glass-walled entry, we are greeted by a custom-designed tapestry that welcomes us to The Salon of Love and Horror, a “historically inaccurate” homage to the 19th-century French salon that takes up most of the ground floor.