Home Hunter September 29, 2013

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CYAN-AOOO MAGENTA-OAOO YELLOW-OOAO BLACK 012908

Minneapolis artist is painting by (house) numbersBy Kim Ode

Star Tribune (Minneapolis)/MCT

MINNEAPOLIS Someneighbors connect over side-walk chit-chat, or having kidsthe same age. In the 5100block of Upton Avenue S. inMinneapolis, theyve bondedover Light Yellow Ochre.

Thats one of the daubsof oil paint arrayed on thepalette resting on Joe Burnslap. Swizzling his brush inits various hues and shades,hes painted portraits of more

than 40 of his neighbors thissummer.Its partly for practice, as in

the path toward perfection.But hes also had a less artis-tic, more altruistic purpose.The neatest thing for me isthat I get to spend 2 hourswith everyone on the block,Burns said. You never knowwhere a portrait, or a conver-sation, is going to lead you.

While joking that he shouldhave installed a psychiatristscouch, Burns tells no talesof revelations shared by his

subjects. Rather, you get theimpression that hes tradedhis skills for some fascinatingconversations.

Thats because his neighborsinclude an astrophysicist,a cancer nurse, a marriagecounselor, a nancial adviser,a Le Cordon Bleu (the one inParis) chef and a Pilates in-structor.

Thats the funny/risky thingabout moving onto a block:You never really know whoelse is there until youve com-mitted.

Burns, 50, has been a xtureon the block since his familymoved there about 15 yearsago. As a self-employed com-mercial artist, he worked athome, and so was the parentat the bus stop, or at the park.Hed gotten to know his neigh-bors in the way that many ofus do: gradually, haphazardly.

As neighbor Pam Gleasonput it: You start out standingand talking on the sidewalk.Then you get invited onto thefront yard. Then you graduateto the back yard, and pretty

soon its an every-Friday-nightthing.

If youre lucky.Capturing emotion in paintSix years ago, Burns decided

to shift gears from commer-cial art to portraiture. Heattended the Atelier StudioProgram of Fine Art in Min-neapolis for four years. Itsnot so much how to paint orhow to draw, but how to see

things, he said of the rigor-ous instruction. It really is adiscipline.

While there, hed run acrossa story about Rose Frantzen,an artist in Maquoketa, Iowa,whod come up with the ideaof painting a portrait of any-one in the town who wantedone. She ended up painting180 residents, with her workeventually exhibited at the

Smithsonians National Por-trait Gallery in Washington,D.C.

With Frantzen in mind,Burns was struck by a 2008survey about social behaviorthat found that people aregrowing more distant fromtheir neighbors. In 1974, morethan four in 10 neighbors saidthey spent a social eveningwith neighbors more thanonce a month. Today, that g-ure has declined to fewer thanthree in 10.

He got to thinking.

The result is the 51st andUpton Portrait Project, inwhich Burns has cajoled al-most everyone on the block tosit for about three hours whilehe paints their portrait on a 12-by 12-inch canvas mounted onboard. (After a show, everyonegets to keep their portrait.)

In most cases, he said, thetime has own, although hemakes accommodations forthe youngest kids, popping ina video of Chitty Chitty BangBang, whose running timeof 144 minutes is long enough

for him to paint a likeness.Everyone else gets to look

into a large mirror that reectsBurns canvas, so they canwatch themselves emerge inLight Yellow Ochre and otherpaints.

We all know what doctorsand lawyers do, but not thatmany of us know what an art-ist does, he said.

As part of the project, Burnspainted his own portrait,which proved revelatory.

I try to paint everyone asreal as I can, he said. So I

had to tell myself that I havewrinkles and no hair. Its notexactly a attering picture ofme, but its a picture of me.

The idea of how we preserveour images came up on a re-cent afternoon as Gleason satfor her portrait. She was get-ting a little antsy; as a Pilatesinstructor and dancer, stillnessis not her forte.

But I want to support Joe,she said. And really, howmany of us ever think to getour portraits painted?

Joe Burns is spending three hours chatting with almost every

person who lives on his block, while painting his or her portraitfeatured September 4, 2013, at his Minneapolis home. (BruceBisping/Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT)

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Your Place:When project instructions dont helpBy AlAn J. HeAvens

The Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT

Cartridge faucets use up-and-down motion to regulate waterow and left-right motion to con-trol temperature, their makerssay. A faucet with two handlesturning 90 degrees can be a car-

tridge faucet.If such a faucet drips, you can

replace the cartridge. YouTube

videos show the repair steps.Yet as one reader found, not allfaucets are the same, and Internetadvice cannot be applied univer-sally.

I have a two-handle Moenbathroom sink faucet, a modelknown as Brantford, he said.Recently, the cold-water faucet

began dripping. When I wentto the Internet, I found that thecartridge in the faucet could be

replaced easily, and I could save$75 on a plumbers call with anhours worth of work.

The reader watched videosof Moen faucet repair and ananimated version on Moens site.When he removed the faucet,though, what the instructionsshowed and what he found did

not match. There was a clip at thebase of the valve body that didntappear in any video. A wrench

didnt loosen the valve nut, either.The Moen animation showed

a $3.75 tool, a hollow brass cyl-inder, used to loosen the nut, butno clip. Trips to the store werefruitless. No one had heard ofthe tool or clip. The homeownerfound the tool online and orderedit. Still, unlike the animation, the

valve nut didnt turn when heused the tool. He feared the clipon the valve base might be why.

Moens representative, KristiStolarski, contacted Jerry Ca-passo of Moen technical supportfor me. He said the clip only heldthevalve body to the top of thedeck and does not need to be re-moved to change the cartridge.The nut removal tool is used tounthread the cartridge nut,

he said. If it didnt budge, plierscould help.

His advice: Turn off the water

to the faucet; be sure its drained.Remove the cartridge nut; pullthe blue stem extension up. Thecartridge should come out. Loos-en the screw in the blue stemextension to remove the old car-tridge; attach the new one. Notethetab on the new cartridge.Insert the cartridge and stem ex-

tension into the valve body.Pushing down, rotate the stem

extension until the cartridge en-



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Meeting the remodeling challenge:

Save history, brighten styleBy Kathleen lynn

The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)/MCT

HACKENSACK, N.J. As

an artist, Roberta Russell had avision for the house that she andher husband built in 1971. It hadto be sleek, one story, with mod-ern touches like an intercom andmirrored walls.

Oh yes, the kitchen had to beround with a circular islandand a curving wall of windowsthat allowed a panoramic viewof the yard.Now, more than 40 years later,

the Wyckoff, N.J., house haspassed to new owners who wantto respect its late-midcenturypedigree while updating it to abrighter, more open style.

The new owners, Les and SueFox, have their own colorful his-tory. Theyre art dealers, as well

as home builders and renovators,who wrote and self-publisheda best-selling guide to BeanieBabies at the crest of the Beaniecraze in the late 1990s. They hadlong admired the house RobertaRussell built, which is just up thestreet from their home, and afterRussells death last year at 75,they bought it.

We thought this house de-served to be saved, Les Foxsaid. There were four or vebuilders that were competingwith us to buy it. They wouldhave knocked it down and builtone of these McMansions there.

Roberta and Martin Russellwere living in River Edge, N.J.,with their two sons when theybought the Wyckoff property,which had been carved out ofan old apple orchard. MartinRussell worked in the garmentindustry, and Roberta Russellwas an artist who stayed at hometo raise her children. RobertaRussell was deeply involved inthe homes design and construc-tion, her son, Andy, recalled in arecent walk through the house.

For the time, it was a prettymodern house, said Andy Rus-sell, a marketing consultant wholives in Connecticut. It lookslike an anachronism now.

Roberta Russell stuccoed theliving room walls and ceilingherself and covered the walls in

other rooms with fabric fromher husbands textile business. Aperfectionist, she burst into tearswhen she rst saw the marblestones on the family roomreplace; the gray veining wastoo dark. The workmen rippedthem out, and Roberta went tothe quarry and handpicked eachstone, her son said.

The houses geometry is tricky,with the bedroom wing set atan angle to the rest of the house.The most unusual feature, ofcourse, is the round kitchen which her sons friends alwaysfound funny and eccentric. But itmade sense to Roberta Russell,who worked as a theatrical setdesigner after her children had

grown up.She liked the idea that youcould circulate around the kitch-en and have a wider panorama tothe outside, Andy Russell said.It was denitely a very uniquecreation.

Hes glad that he and his broth-er ended up selling to the Foxesrather than to builders whowould have knocked it down.

Knowing what my motherwent through to build the house,it would make her happy to hearthat the bones of the house arebeing maintained and just being

modernized for today, AndyRussell said.

At the same time, he under-stands that the Foxes need tomake it their own. As he and the

Foxes walked through the housewith their architect, the Foxesthrew him the occasional apolo-getic glance as they discussedthe changes theyre planning.

He shrugged. It was beauti-ful in 1971, he said. Im notoffended.

Its pretty common for buy-ers of ranch-style houses toremodel, especially the kitchensand bathrooms, according toMichelle Gringeri-Brown, edi-tor of Atomic Ranch magazineand author of several books onranches.

Even if people love the styleof the home, they often walk inand say, This will not work forme, she said. She encourages

homeowners to renovate in away that stays true to the homesoriginal style for example,avoiding current trends like ves-sel bathroom sinks, farmhousekitchen sinks and glass mosaictile. She also encourages home-owners to live in the house fora while before making majorchanges because they might ndthey actually like the originaloor plan and design.

But at the end of the day, it istheir home, and they get to dowhat they want, she said.

For the Foxes, the biggest chal-lenge of the new house is to openit up and let in more light. Theyalso want to extend the rooines,to emphasize the horizontalnature of the design and link it tothe Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie

houses that were an inspirationfor the ranch style.

The round kitchen is staying,though the dated counters andcabinets will be replaced. But

walls will come down to createan open ow from the livingroom, family room and eat-inarea of the kitchen. They ex-pect the renovation to take ninemonths and cost $350,000 to$400,000. (They paid in the mid-$700,000s for the house.)

We need to get light in, saidtheir architect, Michael Scro ofZ+ Architects in Allendale, N.J.The strength of the house is itsgot a solid brick facade, but itsgot relatively limited windows.Breaking into the brick would bedifcult and would also changethe homes exterior too much.

You have to be respectful ofits era, Scro said. Were goingto tear the roof off and get light

from above.Scro plans to add a vaulted

space, sort of like a mini-dormer,with high transom windows thatwill allow light to pour in fromabove.

The Foxes plan to keep manyoriginal touches for example,by framing and displaying piec-es of the dated wall coverings.This is a part of history here,said Sue Fox, pointing to theblack, blue and silver geometricwallpaper in the hall bathroom.

Though most home buyersshrink from the idea of renova-tion, the Foxes, now in theirmid-60s, crave the creative chal-lenge. Theyve built or renovated20 houses since 1975 half ofthem to sell, half to live in.



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