THE MILWOOD MANSION

For my first big drawing in color, I chose the Milwood Mansion in Venice, California. On a long skinny lot, three bungalows had been built between 1916 and 1926. The current owner initaially lived in the back house (on the left), while renting out the others. As the tenants moved out, he took them over, remodeling the old garage into a dining room and (from left to right) a kitchen and greatroom, bedroom, and office and consulting room. All this is linked together by wooden decks between buildings.

Here, the outside and the inside really co-mingle! With no air-conditioning and no screens on the doors or windows (“I have never been bothered by any bugs” the owner says), the outdoors have been decorated with a collection of hundreds of swag lamps hung in the trees. The owner is a collector of all sorts of objects, which he is constantly moving around and editing, painting rooms over and such. I decided not to try to update all the changes made, so this is the Mansion frozen at a particular point in time.

Milwood Mansion
Scott Mayers, Designer
Venice, California, 1989-ongoing
Exploded view
2009
65” x 26”
Ink on paper