How'd You Like to Live in a Concrete Sculpture?

A handful of homes built or enhanced by creative types recently hit the market, allowing buyers to live with (or in) their favorite art form.

TEXT BY SARAH STEBBINS

From the January 2022 issue of Down East magazine

an off-grid monolithic dome house by sculptor Daphne Pulsifer — Photograph by Firefly Aerial Solutions

SCULPTURE

Setting: Kennebunkport, on the Road to Misery (a joke inspired by the peaceful wooded surroundings). 2003 off-grid monolithic dome house. 1,477 square feet. Three bedrooms, one bath, 2.7 kW solar array, deck. 42.96 acres

Handmade Highlights: Sculptor Daphne Pulsifer thinks of the half-moon–shaped concrete retreat she and her family built by hand as a giant sculpture. Designed with input from Texas’s Monolithic Dome Institute, which promotes the energy-efficient concrete forms, the home has soaring mottled plaster walls; railings, posts, and beams fashioned from the property’s trees; handcrafted oak and pine doors with jewel-like glass cutouts; ruddy porcelain floor tiles inlaid with a compass rose; and a 12-foot-long steel pot rack, welded by Pulsifer and her husband, Daniel Bates, that accentuates the curved kitchen wall.

Asking: $690,000
Agent: Josephine Power

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summer cottage by painter and sculptor Buckley Smith — Photograph courtesy of Penney Read

MOSAICS

Setting: Greens Island, off Vinalhaven; accessible by private boat. 1990 seasonal cottage. 1,980 square feet. Four bedrooms, half bath, fireplace, bunkhouse, boathouse (with boats included). 3.79 acres

Handmade Highlights: Painter and sculptor Buckley Smith spent years crafting his summer cottage, which appears plucked from a storybook. Lichened beach stones, rock quarried from the island, and mosaics of brick, stone, and glass decorate the gabled front facade. Beyond a masonry threshold inlaid with cobalt glass, the house, partially renovated by the current owner and sold as is, features a double-sided stone fireplace with a weathered-wood mantel and, in the upstairs hall, a mural of a pirate scene from Treasure Island. On the bunkhouse, “shingles” made from old records mingle with wavy hand-hewn clapboards.

Asking: $589,000
Agent: Penney Read

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MURALS

Setting: Stockton Springs village of Sandy Point. 1976 raised ranch with Penobscot Bay views. 2,732 square feet. Four bedrooms, two baths, deck. 2.3 acres

Handmade Highlights: After hobbyist painter Tina Pesce died last August, neighbors discovered a treasure trove of murals in her home that few knew were there: a village and towering lighthouse tucked among fluffy autumn trees that stretch around an entire room; a seascape dotted with spruce-spiked islands and a lone sailboat above a water-facing window; and a corresponding work on the opposite wall with a fishing shack covered in colorful buoys. “The right person [needs] to buy this house of masterpieces,” one admirer wrote after photos of the paintings were posted on Facebook.

Asking: $250,000
Agent: Evelyn Conrad

Real Estate