Step inside the historic, Italianate home in Catskill that was recently renovated to its former beauty.
Uneven floors are a deal breaker for me," Laleh Khorramian says as she shows me around her mostly level and completely charming, yellow brick home. First and foremost a painter, her sometimes surrealistic, sometimes playful, sometimes dark vision has also manifested in collage, lo-fi animations, portraiture, as well as clothing and costume design. (She's also one third of the Viennese punk rock trio BAucH BeiN Po.) And Khorramian's been thoroughly enjoying her latest creative endeavor: the ongoing renovation and restoration of her new, old house. Built in 1840, the 2400-square-foot home features many of the classic details characteristic of the Italianate architecture favored by the whaling captains and well-to-do of Catskill and Hudson's 19th-century heyday, including generous overhanging eves with ornate, curving cornices, detailed brickwork, glass-paned double front doors topped with arching romanesque "hood molds," and a small, raised porch with beveled columns and carved molding. Inside, Khorramian's talent for creating her own distinctive world—whether in a gallery or store, whether within an animated landscape or the intimate feel of a hand-painted evening gown—makes evident that evoking an inviting and comfortable environment comes naturally to her. "I have to make a sanctuary out of wherever I live and even stay," Khorramian explains. "I care about how a place looks; I care about how things feel; I care about the world I live in. Even if I go camping, I'm going to deck the tent out."
Following the Moon
It is no surprise that Khorramian, like many painters before her, would find herself at home in the varied Hudson Valley landscape. A native of Tehran, she came to the US as a child when her family settled in Orlando. Regular family trips back to Iran often involved caravans and camping when Khorramian and her father Reza—along with local friends and family—would trek through the country's Semnan region, often hiking up into the rocky Alborz Mountain range searching for local pockets of culture and the visually striking landscapes hidden within the crags. "My dad and his buddies were obsessed with visiting very particular places during very certain seasons," Khorramian explains, "and seeing the full moon in certain regions at just the right time." This appreciation for landscape and perfect timing not only influenced her creative sensibility, but sparked her love of the natural world.
Khorramian left Orlando after high school, first attending the Rhode Island School of Design and then finishing her BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. She continued her studies at Columbia University, where she received an MFA in visual arts. The next years were fruitful ones for Khorramian: Her work was regularly exhibited both in New York City and abroad and she was invited to multiple residencies to develop her vision. A residency at the Krintzinger Project brought her to Vienna, where she remained for two years. However, the 2009 recession hit her (thriving) art career hard—she lost her long-time gallery representation in Manhattan and had to return to the city to take care of unexpected family obligations. It all eventually lead her to questioning the viability of her art career. "I had to step away from my approach to art for a while and gain perspective on what I was making and what I was feeling."
Mountains of Cloth
She went on hiatus from everything—her work, her life, even her art—and found herself regrouping on a friend's farm upstate. It was here, away from the expectations and demands of her previous life and in solitude, that another of her passions became her main focus. "Clothing design was something I'd been doing on and off my whole life," Khorramian explains. Starting at age five, when she'd begun sketching out patterns for her seamstress aunt, she would wear her own creations and eventually learned the basics of tailoring to sew those creations herself. Khorramian realized that this particular combination of material skill and creative vision might hold the key to her next step. "I just wanted to a sew in a straight line for a while," she explains. Thus Khorramian's nom de guerre and clothing design business Laloon was born. While visiting a friend in Hudson, she became enchanted with a storefront on Warren Street. She realized it was time to emerge from the cocoon she'd been encased within. "I knew that this is where I was meant to land," she recalls. Within two weeks, she opened her studio-cum-clothing store and moved to Hudson full-time.
She stumbled across the river, to the town of Catskill, almost accidentally. Her business was growing and Khorramian loved the region, but knew she needed to explore beyond the confines of Hudson. She went looking for a retreat to balance her busy professional life and found a house on a quiet side street in the center of Catskill village, which she loved. Although the two-story home had fallen into disrepair, and the property was littered with debris, Khorramian could sense treasure. "It had character," she recalls. "I saw the potential and I loved the high ceilings." It also had, even after 200 years of constant foot traffic, relatively even floors. Still, she hadn't really considered actually buying a home—and Laloon's success was taking up the majority of her attention. She didn't think of it again until three months later, when her mother was visiting, and asked, "What ever happened to that house?" Khorramian reinvestigated the property and found no one had visited since she'd been there. (It had also been the only house she'd actually seen.) She made her offer, negotiating with the previous owner to take the home "as was," rubble and all. By 2014 it was hers and she began the process of unburying.
Family Brick Works
The home's four bedroom, two-bath interior is a combination of scrappy, very, very low-budget DIY renovation and both Khorramians' creative flair. In the downstairs kitchen, her father removed tile and six layers of linoleum and then scraped away years of paint to uncover the brick walls and floor-to-ceiling copper pipes. Found scattered throughout the yard, Catskill-stamped bricks, also dating from the early 20th century and manufactured at the local Eastern Paving Brick Company, were used to block an opening between the kitchen and a 1930s back addition to the house, creating an extra bedroom. Khorramian's father cleverly interspersed the brick with cylinder-shaped ceramic tiles, found at local stone yard and bought for a hundred bucks, to create a built-in bottle rack. They installed a like-new set of cabinetry, and Khorramian's brother came for a work visit, laying in zinc countertops. A new Kohler sink, found on the property's driveway, completes the space.
The downstairs dining room, with built-in glass-paned cabinetry, opens through the original pocket doors into the front living room. Khorramian painted the walls a soft pink, highlighting the carved crown molding along the room's high ceilings. Previous owners separated the home's upstairs and downstairs into separate apartments. Khorramian joined the spaces thematically with a creative redecoration of the large front entrance hall. The home's original volute bannister leads up stair treads carved with lines from the 13th-century poet Rumi. The double-height wall is now used to display art collected from friends. Upstairs, a dining room, kitchenette, and two bedrooms are all simply decorated with objects from Khorramian's world travels. A corner bedroom with wainscoting features three walls of windows looking over the Village of Catskill and the Catskill Creek.
Although it was her need for retreat that brought Khorramian to Catskill, it is the community she's found that's really made her feel it's home. That community has also inspired her refocusing on her first love, painting and drawing. "The hiatus was very empowering," Khorramian explains. "It opened my world to a lot of things I've been wanting to do for a long time." After two years of designing and making clothes, Khorramian shut the brick-and-mortar version of Laloon but brought her business and designs to a studio space where she still makes custom works and costumes. For the past few years, her studio—the entire second floor of a refurbished factory in town—has also been the site of her return to making art. She's developing her new passion for portraiture, painting the residents of her new community as well as doing commissioned work.
Even though she's carved out her own world in her newly adopted home town, centered around the yellow brick haven she continues to restore, Khorramian acknowledges the magic she's been creating isn't all her own doing. "There was already some magic in this house," she says. "I have to have sensed it, to have created it. That magic was always here."
