“People are always asking me ‘Is this real?’” Troy Hill Art Houses founder Evan Mirapaul reflected. “And I say, yes, the things in the houses are real in the sense that it isn’t a hologram. Often people look at them very literally. But they’re works of art.” In the ten-plus years since the first art house, Mirapaul has expanded it into three properties in Troy Hill. The count will soon be four, when a new Mark Dion project opens this fall.
A visit to Naoshima, a Japanese town where artists turn existing structures into miniature museums, inspired Mirapaul to create the Art Houses. In 2011, Mirapaul reached out to German artist Thorsten Brinkmann to create the very first house, from an abandoned structure. “Though I appreciate every artist, I am most struck by the courage of Thorsten to do the first house. He did it in a place he didn’t know and in a neighborhood that wasn’t particularly art-friendly,” Mirapaul said.
Common Misconceptions about the Troy Hill Art Houses
One of the problems Mirapaul has run into with the Troy Hill Art Houses is that visitors often don’t know exactly what they are. “Some people go into it thinking it’s a historic home tour, like the Mexican War Streets Home Tours. That isn’t what it is,’ he said. There are lots of things the Troy Hill Art Houses aren’t. They are not a high-end home tour, public art, or an immersive photogenic experience like the Southwest’s Meow Wolf. But Mirapaul synthesized what the houses actually are as “entire structure art installations by international, museum-level artists.”
The art houses are: Thorsten Brinkmann’s La Hütte Royal (1812 Rialto Street), Robert Kusmirowski’s Kunzhaus (1718 Rialto Street) and Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis’s Darkhouse Lighthouse (1913 Tours Street). The fourth, Mark Dion’s Mrs. Christopher’s House, has a unique backstory in that it’s a family home in Troy Hill that a resident sold to Mirapaul after his mother’s passing. “The Christopher family had lived there until 1956,” Mirapaul said. “Each house has its own story, and with their closeness to each other I’ve tried to create a ‘village within a neighborhood.’”
A New House on the Horizon
Describing too vividly what’s inside the Troy Hill Art Houses feels like breaking the first rule of Fight Club. They are not something to talk about but rather something that you have to experience for yourself. It’s worth it to make the steep trek up Rialto Street to really feel as if you’re exploring something hidden away in the hills. But within the art houses, I’ve found myself crawling through a tunnel, climbing up a lighthouse ladder, or watching eerie, apocalyptic scenes of a nuclear wasteland. Each artist has the freedom to make the space their own while building on its history, and the spaces each stretch the imagination of what an interior can be.
When Mirapaul started the Troy Hill Art Houses, he brainstormed which artists would be a good fit for a project of the scale he was doing. One artist he dreamed of working with was Mark Dion. But, at the time, Mirapaul figured that working with Dion wouldn’t fit in his scale and budget. Lenka Clayton, one of the artists who worked on Darkhouse Lighthouse, however, told Mirapaul she was friendly with Dion and had told him all about the project. Clayton then put Mirapaul in touch with Dion, and thus Mrs. Christopher’s House was born.
“Keep an open mind” for the Troy Hill Art Houses
Mrs. Christopher’s House features one of the Mark Dion’s ongoing projects of documenting polar bear specimens in museums as part of a commentary on climate change. Dion often works alongside his wife, Dana Sherwood, on pieces that focuses primarily on humanity’s relationship to nature. Mrs. Christopher’s House has some collaboration with Sherwood and will touch on those themes.
Mirapaul asked viewers who might be visiting for the first time to “Keep an open mind. They’re thoughtful, philosophical art pieces, and everyone will bring something different to them.” For the curious, the Troy Hill Art Houses are open by appointment and admission is free. Mrs. Christopher’s House will be accessible the first weekend in November.
Story by Emma Riva / Photography courtesy of Evan Mirapaul
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