The Comfort-O-Meter of Mildred’s Lane
The Mildred’s Lane landscape is smattered with 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st-century structures, outbuildings, installations, and discreet landscape interventions, making up a transhistorical site; hence, a contemporary art complex(ity). Some structures are vernacular architecture projects – living art installations, ranging from rustic camps with no electricity; and others are near facilities and rate higher on what we call the Comfortometer ( ˈkəm fərt ‘ä me dər ) or Comfort-o-meter.
Comfort-o-meter is a term much like Thoreau’s Realometer, allowing us to measure the reality of our perceptions, to push past the “mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance ... to a hard bottom.” Mildred’s Lane’s Comfortometer does the same in seeking one’s level of comfort, relational to the naturally rustic environment at Mildred’s Lane.
Each bed environment has differing levels of comfort. These notes will help you find where you will be most at ease during your stay in this wild landscape. Generously take on stewardship for the building and bed you choose. You are responsible for leaving the place clean and set for the next guest experience – floors, beds, textiles, surfaces, etc. – leave no trace.
Thank you,
Mildred’s Lane.
MAIN HOUSE
ACCOMMODATIONS
The Kitchen Laboratory, upstairs bath & ground-level shower, three wash-closets on each floor.
Main House
The Main Lodge House is in the meadow and features eccentrically installed rooms filled with unique art collections and curiosities. Our library offers an extraordinary experience with a stone fireplace, various nonfiction and fiction works, and hundreds of books about all the artists gathered there over the years. The Kitchen Laboratory boasts a whimsical array of equipment that inspires you to craft your own Digestion Choreography.
The Kitchen Laboratory
Main House
The Kitchen Laboratory boasts a whimsical array of equipment that inspires you to craft your own Digestion Choreography in the Main House.
The Library
Main House
Our library offers an extraordinary experience with a stone fireplace, various nonfiction and fiction works, and hundreds of books about all the artists gathered there over the years.
The Sleeping Porch
Main House
The Sleeping Porch is a sizeable screened-in space on the upper floor of the Main House. It is a popular room that visiting artists request. You see and hear what is happening in the surrounding landscape from a bird’s eye. Collections in this chamber are 19th and 20th-century oil cans, antique ropes, and a collection of butterfly and fish nets. Has its own stairway access to the first level and ground.
Double bed with electricity and WiFi.
Peabody Chamber
Main House
Peabody’s Chamber is on the top level of the Main House and is the bedroom of Mark Dion. It houses many artwork gifts from friends and family. Also, it is a repository of his infamous collection and signature uniform – plaid shirts.
Double bed with electricity, WiFi, and adjacent to a water closet.
Doll House Attic
Main House
The Doll House Attic is ideal for smaller people, but everyone loves staying there. There is a vast doll furniture collection, doll clothes, and some misfit stuffed animals: no dolls, but books about such things.
Two Single futons, electricity, WIFI, ladder access in the hallway upstairs next to the water closet.
Rabbit’s Warren
Main House
Grey Rabbit D. Puett’s childhood room.
NOT AVAILABLE
Morgan Closet
Main House
Morgan Closet room is the bedroom of J. Morgan Puett on the ground level opening out into the Green Room, where there is an outside den under the porch with a wood stove. The bedroom has a collection of vintage clothing designed by Puett and a collection of antique linens.
Double bed, electricity, WIFI, and adjacent to the Green Room.
BARN LYCEUM
ACCOMMODATIONS
Sink and refrigerator. Shared access to all water closets: outdoor shower & sink, Main House upstairs bath & ground-level shower.
All other facilities are at the Main House on each level.
The Barn Lyceum
North
The Barn Lyceum is a gathering place. Original to the site and is the main clubhouse. We share presentations, lectures, performances, and events in the rustic but versatile farm building. A summer kitchen with the original Mildred Refrigerator is installed where fellows can store their beverages and snacks outside the Digestion Choreography in the Main House.
Upper Coop
The Barn Lyceum
Adjacent to the Barn Lyceum is a breezeway connecting the Chicken Coops. This building was initially built inside the barn when Nils Norman and Renee Green were partners. They started this building project when we first bought the place in 1997, but soon they divorced and left. The structure was placed in the middle of the barn at that time and went through a series of iterations, including opening the façade into a giant doll house that was the central stage for a project by J. Morgan Puett titled, Exode to the Corporeal Conversation, live streaming into Santa Barbara Contemporary Museum of Contemporary Art in 2006. Once Mildred’s Lane coevolved, there needed to be open space – a lyceum. Puett redesigned the area into a three-level chicken coop to house visiting fellows. They are cozy camps with horizontal beadboard interiors, leather floors, and padded futon platform beds.
The Upper Coop is accessible by a ladder.
Single futon bed, electricity, Barn WIFI.
Lower Coop
The Barn Lyceum
Adjacent to the Barn Lyceum is a breezeway connecting the Chicken Coops. This building was initially built inside the barn when Nils Norman and Renee Green were partners. They started this building project when we first bought the place in 1997, but soon they divorced and left. The structure was placed in the middle of the barn at that time and went through a series of iterations, including opening the façade into a giant doll house that was the central stage for a project by J. Morgan Puett titled, Exode to the Corporeal Conversation, live streaming into Santa Barbara Contemporary Museum of Contemporary Art in 2006. Once Mildred’s Lane coevolved, there needed to be open space – a lyceum. Puett redesigned the area into a three-level chicken coop to house visiting fellows. They are cozy camps with horizontal beadboard interiors, leather floors, and padded futon platform beds.
Single futon bed, electricity, Barn WIFI.
Ground Coop
The Barn Lyceum
Adjacent to the Barn Lyceum is a breezeway connecting the chicken coops. This building was initially built inside the barn when Nils Norman and Renee Green were partners. They started this building project when we first bought the place in 1997, but soon they divorced and left. The structure was placed in the middle of the barn at that time and went through a series of iterations, including opening the façade into a giant doll house that was the central stage for a project by J. Morgan Puett titled, Exode to the Corporeal Conversation, live streaming into Santa Barbara Contemporary Museum of Contemporary Art in 2006. Once Mildred’s Lane coevolved, there needed to be open space – a lyceum. Puett redesigned the area into a three-level chicken coop to house visiting fellows. They are cozy camps with horizontal beadboard interiors, leather floors, and padded futon platform beds.
The Ground Coop Camp floor is red shale rock, with two screened and slatted wood and screen walls connecting you to the landscape.
Single futon bed, electricity, Barn WIFI.
Bat Hotel East
The Barn Lyceum
The Bat Hotels are up in the loft of the Barn Lyceum, a ship Ladder stair. They are rooms sheathed in plywood and one original barn wall screened in with hatch windows opening to the south.
Single futon bed, electricity, Barn WiFi, ship-ladder access.
Bat Hotel West
The Barn Lyceum
The Bat Hotels are up in the loft of the Barn Lyceum, a ship Ladder stair. They are rooms sheathed in plywood and one original barn wall screened in with hatch windows opening to the south.
Single futon bed, electricity, Barn WiFi, ship-ladder access.
NORTHWEST OF BARN LYCEUM
ACCOMMODATIONS
Shared access to all water closets; Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
Corn Crib
Northwest of Barn Lyceum
The Corn Crib is another outbuilding inspired by the vernacular architecture of the site and local area. Puett designed the structure based on two local corncribs and collapsed into one with three angled sides. This unfinished installation is a favorite camp with the bed in the wood-slatted, screened-in side of the structure. The building and engineering of the design were in collaboration with Paul Bartow. He led the session, teaching fellows to build small structures in preparation for the project Mildred’s Lane Renovating Walden, 2010, a project with Tufts University and The Museum School of Fine Arts Boston. Fellows collaborated on the Thoreau House and installation at Aidekmann Galleries at Tufts University. (catalog)
Single bed, limited electricity, House or Barn WiFi, shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
Horse Shed House
Northwest of Barn Lyceum
The Horse Shed House is the first building occupied at Mildred’s Lane. J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion lived there for several years. In 1997, Puett gutted and installed the shack. This small field station is significant to their artwork revolving around small buildings, harkening back to their first collaboration in 1994, The Schoharie Creek Field Station for Art Awareness in Lexington, NY. ( Now LexArt) For Dion and Puett, this building was home until the Main House was built. The collection contains excerpts from their collection of books, taxidermy, artworks, and archives. Many are love gifts during Dion and Puett’s partnership over the years together. The Horse Shed House is still a favorite overnight stay for friends and colleagues coming and going at Mildred’s Lane.
Double futon bed, wood stove, Barn Wifi, shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
Thoreau House
Northwest of Barn Lyceum
The project, Mildred’s Lane Renovating Walden, 2010, with Tufts University and The Museum School of Fine Arts Boston now situated onsite. This project was an expanded with multiple contributors who installed two house kits based on Thoreau’s House at Walden Pond. One kit was erected in the galleries during the course of the exhibition, then rebuilt at Mildred’s Lane in 2012. The interior is still in progress, but there is a temporary installation and quite comfortable. It holds several contemporary artists’ works and furnishings – part of the original Boston installation, as well as a small reference library of books about the Transcendentalists and the characters of those times. (catalog)
Single bed, limited electricity, weak WiFi, shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
Muster Camp
Northwest of Barn Lyceum
Canvas tent room with a single bed. Furnished campsite. No electricity and some WIFI. On the site of Allison Smith’s original MUSTER 2004. Later produced for the Public Art Fund on Governor’s Island in 2005. (catalog)
Single bed, no electricity, weak WiFi, shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
Tuft’s Head Camp
Northwest of Barn Lyceum
J. Walker Tufts, a young fellow of Mildred’s Lane who lived nomadically, worked with us to install the Main House and several site projects in the early years. He carved out the roles and became the Fugitive of Archives and Recorder of Retinol Memories once Mildred’s Lane launched its pedagogical platform in 2008.
Small raised screened-in room with self-composting toilet and water cistern, single bed, no electricity, weak WiFi, shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE
The Alchemist Shack
Northwest of Barn Lyceum
The Alchemist’s Shack a project ongoing by Robert Williams of Lancaster, England. Like many projects at Mildred’s Lane, it has been emerging over several years and was conceived initially with Puett and Dion. Williams and Dion have several collaborations in the main house and our mutual love for collecting for this curiosity cabinet and the history of alchemy. OM: Theatricum Chemicum Britannicum project is ongoing over many sessions at Mildred’s Lane, starting in 1998 and beginning the tradition of our fantastical fire constructions. A giant stick man, Belinus, was ceremoniously burned over a barn foundation as we broke ground on the Main House. (catalog)
Single futon, no electricity, no WIFI, located at the edge of the woods, shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower.
CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE
The Department of Interstitchiaries
West of Barn Lyceum
This is an ideal gathering and lecture space for in climate weather. Also, ideal for meditation, yoga, or other .
The archive of Mildred’s Lane is now installed in the rear chamber of this installation where someone commented, "It’s Judd meets Mildred’s Lane!"
COMING SOON
SOUTHWEST OF MAIN HOUSE
ACCOMMODATIONS
Shared access to all water closets: Main House, outdoor shower, outdoor sink, upstairs bath, ground-level shower. Shared access to Mildred’s Outhouse.
Bird Blind Hide
Southwest of Main House
The Bird Blind Hide is a conglomerate structure, primarily the house of Dion’s original Blind/Hide work for InSITE 2000, San Diego, at the Tijuana River Estuary. The Bird Blind was later moved into Manhattan, becoming The Urban Wildlife Observation Unit in 2002 for Art in the Park, Madison Square Park, with the Public Art fund, NYC. It was later resurrected in 2006 as a guest house to Mildred’s Lane called Bird Blind Hide.
Double bed, no electricity, no WIFI, located at the edge of the woods
Fancy Camp
Southwest of Main House
The Fancy Camp is a canvas wall tent bedroom based on the original guest camp Puett and Dion constructed for friends visiting in 1998. That camp was published in The World of Interiors, the first of many publications documenting the course of Mildred’s Lane over the past twenty-two years. That camp was dressed out in antique ticking cloth and linens. Though we have built several camping iterations over the years for what is now popularly called glamping, this hopes to have a longer life set up high on a platform overlooking several projects; the Mildred’s House, Grafter’s Shack, Radical Apiary, and Pignut Pond.
Double bed, no electricity, no WiFi
The Mildred House
Southwest of Main House
Mildred House is the original homestead of the Lillie Family, dating back to the 18th century. Though the remaining structure today is technically an 1830s house, the ground-level hearth has the makings dating back to the 1790s and possibly earlier. The Lillie family were some of the earliest white settlers to the region, moving here on a Connecticut Charter in the 1750s. Fighting with the indigenous people then chased them off for decades. The Lillies finally settled and farmed the land for over a century; when in 1902, the Steffen Family purchased it and raised nine children in the house. Mildred was the youngest and last to leave. She shacked up with Vincent Miller mid-century, locally known as the Old Miller Farm. But it was Mildred who lived on here alone for a solid twenty-five years; so, we renamed the site after her remarkable farmer life here, Mildred’s Lane. The house is now becoming a hybrid project housing an ongoing excavation of the site titled Mildred (Lillie) Archaeology; in the tradition of, or pressing against, the genre of house museums.
Double bed, no electricity, no WiFi
The Grafter’s Shack
Southwest of Main House
The Grafter’s Shack is a Puett project originally sited at Wave Hill in the Bronx, NYC, in 2002 for Generated @ Wave Hill. The structure was rebuilt in 2005-6 and reoutfitted to accommodate visitors. The project is based on the collective memory of the Puett family and how they imagined their deceased father’s work studio in the pine forest of South Georgia, where they grew up. He was a fourth-generation Beekeeper and queen bee grafter, a specialized science in apiarian practices. It is full of the histories, tools, and other paraphernalia of beekeeping, with a small library and collection of artworks by brother and beekeeper Garnett Puett.
Single futon, no electricity, no WIFI. Rustic Camp Shed.
The Lunar Research Station
Southwest of Main House
The Lunar Camp is a vintage camping trailer donated by local artist Anie Stanley. Cameron Klavsen, a former fellow and artist-in-residence, took over the damaged structure. During his long-term residency, Klavsen gutted and reinstalled it as the future home for archives of collaboration with his partner Alex Jones. It will hold a series of journals titled Lunar Insurrection. We are still in progress with this installation, but it is becoming a favorite, with a more modern interior. Near the vernal pools created by the University of Penn. Students collaborating with landscape architect Mark Thomann. It is a liminal site near the old shooting range at the Mildred Archaeology project. Also, the best pond access.
Single futon, no electricity, no WIFI, compost toilet.