{"id":222083,"date":"2026-05-06T15:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/222083\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:51:10","slug":"taking-a-deep-dive-into-a-connecticut-ranch-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/222083\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a Deep Dive into a Connecticut Ranch House"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of our Design special section<\/a> on retrofits.<\/p>\n

They were a quintessential New York City artist duo \u2014 united by decades of looking, creating and refining \u2014 in search of a rural home where they could live and work from morning to night. Zeroing in on northwest Connecticut, Janis Provisor and Brad Davis made many trips from their loft in Tribeca to inspect, but ultimately rule out, nearly 50 properties.<\/p>\n

Three-story houses in town had too many stairs for a couple in their 70s. Farmhouses had barns that could be converted into studios \u2014 if only the couple had the budget.<\/p>\n

Then they spotted a real estate listing for a 1950s ranch house in Litchfield, about 30 miles west of Hartford. A friend was dispatched to check it out. The residence sat in a housing tract just up the street from a gas station and a liquor store. \u201cAbsolutely no,\u201d the friend called to report. \u201cYou do not want this house.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a hunch, they drove up to see it for themselves. Entering through a side door, they walked into a room dressed like an English pub, with a drinks bar and faux-Tiffany lamps suspended over a pool table, then wandered through a warren of cramped spaces carpeted in white wall-to-wall shag. They liked that the house was on a single level, and the cedar-plank ceilings reminded them of traditional Japanese homes.<\/p>\n

But other features puzzled them, including a double-sided fireplace that blocked the flow of the main living area and a closet and small room equipped with panic buttons. \u201cThis is not great,\u201d Provisor recalled thinking. \u201cAnother failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then they found what had intrigued them in the listing: an indoor swimming pool encased within a 2,500-square-foot atrium. Skylights flooded the space with natural light, while sliding doors to the outside were large enough to haul oversize canvases in and out. The pair, whose early work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum<\/a>, looked at each other and simultaneously exclaimed, \u201cStudio!\u201d Recalled Davis, \u201cIt was instantaneous. It was love.\u201d<\/p>\n

The house, he said, \u201chad good modern bones.\u201d But taking the plunge on a pool-to-studio retrofit \u2014 and renovating the ranch house into a home where they would feel at ease \u2014 was going to be a project. Provisor, who turns 80 on Thursday, and Davis, who is 84, were determined to get back into the studio as soon as possible. \u201cWe both thought we had one more house in us, but we felt the necessity to get it done quickly,\u201d he said. \u201cWe moved in four years ago, on my 80th birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, they had only recently returned to painting full time after a significant detour. Both were successful artists when they met in the 1970s through their Manhattan gallerist, Holly Solomon. Davis painted in the avant-garde style known as Pattern and Decoration, while Provisor produced abstract works with thickly sculpted surfaces.<\/p>\n

They married in 1983 and, after many years exploring a shared interest in Chinese art, moved to Hangzhou, southwest of Shanghai, in the early 1990s with their son, Alec. There, they worked with Chinese artisans to create hand-knotted silk rugs based on their artworks. Their company, Fort Street Studio, soon had clients like Madonna and Brad Pitt. Provisor also introduced a jewelry line, mixing gems she sourced in Jaipur, India, with sculptural, rock\u2019n\u2019roll-tinged settings.<\/p>\n

Throughout their marriage, they continued to make art and set up studios wherever they lived \u2014 from a space in the award-winning postmodern house<\/a> they built in Colorado in the 1980s (Davis painted the stucco facade with purple pigment from an art supply store) to a small studio in a run-down industrial building in Hong Kong\u2019s Wong Chuk Hang neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, they published a coffee-table memoir of sorts, \u201cA Tale of Warp and Weft: Fort Street Studio<\/a>,\u201d then sold the business a quarter-century after founding it. They were coming off a Covid year in which they were shut out of their studio in Industry City, Brooklyn \u2014 \u201calthough still required to pay rent,\u201d Provisor noted \u2014 and brought their materials home to their downtown loft.<\/p>\n

By June, they were \u201ccabin crazy\u201d and rented a converted Connecticut barn for the summer, living downstairs and making art on the second floor. \u201cBy the time we had to leave, we were hooked,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After closing on the ranch house in April 2021, they focused full time on the renovation, with a goal of finishing within a year. A team was assembled: Provisor\u2019s cousin, Cassie Spieler of the Brooklyn-based Tabula Studio, oversaw the architecture, while Richard McCue, a local contractor who has worked on homes and studios for artists including Terry Winters, Alexis Rockman and Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, managed the renovation.<\/p>\n

Eager to get back to their art, they moved into an apartment next to the garage and made the studio makeover their first priority. Spieler proposed that the retrofit be reversible in case they wanted to restore the swimming pool in the future. \u201cI said, \u2018Let\u2019s frame a floor over it,\u2019\u201d McCue recalled, \u201cand it was happily ever after.\u201d<\/p>\n

In truth, it was a bit more complicated. Once emptied of water, the pool cavity was injected with high-end spray insulation to protect against moisture and underground vapors. It was then spanned with I-joists and topped with exterior-grade plywood. Architectural lighting was mounted on the ceiling.<\/p>\n

Finally, a partial-height plywood wall was placed in the center of the room, giving each artist a sense of privacy without detracting from the openness of the space. \u201cWe flipped a coin to see which side of the studio would be for each of us,\u201d Provisor said.<\/p>\n

Turning to the rest of the house, a concept emerged: to make the squat, busy interior feel more like a loft. Once the central fireplace was removed, the main living area became a single room that stretched from the kitchen at one end to the living area at the other.<\/p>\n

The house was emptied of its contents \u2014 furniture and appliances filling two semi-trucks were donated to Habitat for Humanity \u2014 and the couple began ordering tile, bidding on vintage furniture at auctions worldwide and reimagining every corner as though they were painting a canvas. The door was removed from a panic room, creating a space where they display paintings and ceramics. \u201cIt\u2019s like a Japanese tokonoma alcove where they put a vase and a painting,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n

Provisor made sure the house would have the walk-in closet she always wanted, while Davis, who loves to cook, designed his dream kitchen by mixing and matching three different lines from the Danish company Reform \u2014 one in brushed aluminum, one in ash and a third in pink cast plastic. They also designed several custom rugs, including a Thai silk one in the living area consisting of overlapping, multicolored shapes based on a Provisor watercolor.<\/p>\n

For now, they are holding on to their New York loft, heading into the city for doctors\u2019 appointments and gallery openings \u2014 frequently, their own. The pool studio has catalyzed their creativity. Last year Provisor displayed her large-scale watercolor canvases in solo shows at Magenta Plains in New York and Fahrenheit Madrid in Spain, while Davis privately exhibited his eight-foot-tall works at Schwartman& in Manhattan. But for the most part, the ranch house is now their full-time home. Their days begin and end in the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt night we have dinner, watch TV and then go back into the studio before bed to look at the day\u2019s work,\u201d Provisor said. \u201cJust last night, I said to Brad, \u2018I finished that painting. Come with me. Come and let\u2019s just sit and look at it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In a room once built for swimming, it is their artwork that keeps them fully immersed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits. They were a quintessential New York City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1149,87392,2222,87391,85210,87394,9,24,55,54,56,87393,578],"class_list":["post-222083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-art","tag-brad","tag-connecticut","tag-davis","tag-home-repairs-and-improvements","tag-janis","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-provisor","tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}