Artists Aaron T Stephan and Lauren Fensterstock renovated a historic 1820 carriage house in Portland, Maine into their home and art studios. They did much of the renovations themselves, including building furniture. The unique three-story structure now features an open living and dining area, two artist studios, and a rooftop deck. Though they frequently show their artworks elsewhere, Portland remains their home base due to its food scene and artistic community. The couple enjoys hosting dinner parties that incorporate performance art around their home.

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3. Artists Aaron T Stephan and Lauren
Fensterstock in their living room, which is filled
with art from friends, including Clint Fulkerson’s
Black Nebula. Opposite page: When Aaron
and Lauren bought the building—formerly a
carriage house, a motorcyle repair shop, and
an artist’s studio, among other things—it was
an unfinished shell of a space.

4. Building
StoriesIn one of Portland’s most
distinctive buildings, artists
Lauren Fensterstock and
Aaron T Stephan create
an artful, art-filled home.
by REBECCA FALZANO
Photography by MYRIAM BABIN

5. 54 OLD PORT oldport.com
or years I passed Lauren
Fensterstock and Aaron
T Stephan’s home on my
way to work, not quite
knowing what to make
of it. (I’m not alone—
Lauren says that people
are always peeking in the
windows.) The brick structure on the border of
downtown Portland and West Bayside stands
apart from the rest of the buildings on the street
with a front façade that has what looks to be
an arched wooden door (like one on a castle),
except that it has windows and doesn’t open.
The building’s original two stories are topped
with a metal-clad box and a roof deck facing the
street. In a top-floor window a neon sign reads
“SO SICK OF NEON.” One thing I surmised
from the outside: whoever lives here has a sense
of humor.
Aaron and Lauren met when Lauren was in
graduate school in New Paltz, New York. They
dated for two weeks, and then went on a three-
week road trip in the deep South. After living
together in New York for a couple years, the
two moved to Maine in 2000 so that Aaron
could pursue his MFA at Maine College of Art.
“We thought we’d be here maybe just a short
period of time, but we really fell in love with it,”
says Lauren.
In 2006, Aaron was working as a contractor and
a friend asked him to scope out the building,
which was being used for lumber storage, to see
if it was a feasible property for him to buy and
fix up. Aaron went to look and reported back
to his friend. “The place is a mess, don’t touch
it,” he told him. Aaron then picked up the
phone and called the owner to make an offer
himself. (All’s well that ends well; the two are
still friends and, in fact, Aaron recently went to
his wedding.)
At the time, the structure was nothing more
than a shell of a space, two stories tall with a
pitched roof. Built around 1820 as a carriage
house for the house next door, the place has its
share of folklore surrounding it. “There are so
many rumors and stories, we don’t really know
what’s real and what’s not,” says Lauren. The
couple heard that it was built by a descendent
F
The couple carved out living spaces
and added a spiral staircase that leads
to a third-floor master suite with a roof
deck overlooking the street. Opposite
page: Lauren in her second-floor studio.
Her current body of work explores shell
middens in Maine, heaps of oyster shells
formed over a period of about 1,000
years from 200 BC to 1000 AD.

7. 56 OLD PORT oldport.com
of John Proctor, who was hanged during
the Salem witch trials. It’s reportedly been a
shoe store, a Harley-Davidson repair shop,
and a balloon shop where parade inflatables
were made. More recently it was artist Alison
Hildreth’s studio, before it turned into lumber
storage. Aaron and Lauren are the first to call
it home.
The couple carved out living spaces—an open
first floor with kitchen, dining, and living area,
plus a bath that they added, leading to a back
patio; a guest suite and Lauren’s studio with a
Juliet balcony on the second floor; and a third-
floor master bedroom with a roof deck and a
tiny bath tucked into the built-ins that line the
walls. Artwork from fellow artist friends fills the
space, a lot of it local, all of it with stories.
Experienced in contracting and construction,
Aaron did most of the work himself and made
almost all of the furniture—a coffee table
inspired by an Italian one Lauren found online,
a marble-topped dining table, and a cabinet
made from an old window. “We jumped at
the chance to design something and make it
our own,” says Aaron. “We decided right away
that we weren’t really concerned with making
something that was re-sellable. We wanted to
make something, first and foremost, that we
wanted to live in.”
The two also weren’t afraid of experimenting.
“An architect would’ve probably put this roof
deck in the back, just because of personal
space, but we like having a dialogue with the
street,” says Aaron. “An architect would’ve also
probably put this bedroom on the first floor,
and the living and dining area on the second
or third floors. But we’re so food-centric, we
wanted you to be able to walk in and have
people cooking food and eating food, and to
have this big flexible living space.”
“We wanted
to make
something,
first and
foremost,
that we
wanted to
live in.”
— Aaron T Stephan

8. Opposite page: Aaron waters the plants outside. Unlike
Lauren, who prefers to work in her home studio, he needs
the routine of getting out of the house to create. His studio
is located near Back Cove. Clockwise from top: A tiny
bathroom is tucked into the master bedroom built-ins made
by Aaron, a former carpenter. Jolene, a former stray who
landed in Aaron and Lauren’s bed after a meal of smoked
trout, poses on the marble dining table. On the wall are two
of Aaron’s pieces from 2011, Tangled #6 and #5. Aaron
built the iron gate that leads to the back patio. Aaron
admired Katherine Bradford’s Men Waiting to Vacuum on a
visit to the artist’s New York studio. “A few years later, when
we bought the house, we had Kathy over for dinner and
she brought it as a house-warming present,” says Aaron.

9. 58 OLD PORT oldport.com

10. “We’re so food-centric, we
wanted you to be able to
walk in and have people
cooking food and eating
food, and to have this big,
flexible living space.”
— Aaron T Stephan
From left: The kitchen, a work in progress, features repurposed cabinets and
a custom butcher block that Aaron built for Lauren’s birthday. One of the
couple’s unconventional design decisions was a roof deck on the front of the
house, rather than in back. “It’s inspired by places where the idea of sitting on
the stoop out front is part of the culture,” says Lauren.
With her studio on the second floor, Lauren
doesn’t have to go far to work. She prefers to
be at home where she has everything she needs
(to cook, garden, read), while Aaron requires
the daily routine of getting out of the house
to his studio near Back Cove. “I need to go
make stuff and I need a different place to do
it,” he says. After a day in their respective
studios, the two eat out or cook together—
often something pretty elaborate. “A lot of the
artwork I make is really long term, so the ability
to make something beautiful in a few hours is
appealing,” Lauren says. In the summer, they
prepare fresh seafood like uni pasta or clams
with pesto sauce.
The couple’s food obsession is one of the things
that keeps them in Portland. The two love to
host dinner parties and have recently started
doing performance art that’s centered on the
idea of a dinner party. They’ve hosted three of
these events in their house, one of which they
named “Farm as Table;” they grew the whole

11. 60 OLD PORT oldport.com
“I feel really
hesitant
to buy into
ideals of
authenticity,
because
who gets to
decide what is
authentic?”
— Lauren Fensterstock
dinner on the table. “I think, for me, the
dinners are kind of based on this house as
well. They’re all about building a structure
around people eating and having each
course of the meal take place in a different
location of the structure, and the structure
is very much like this house,” says Aaron.
Today, Lauren and Aaron primarily show
their work out of state, which means
they travel frequently and get to see a lot
of other cities. But Portland is the place
they come home to. They’ve watched the
neighborhood change over the years. “Right
after we bought the place, the Whole Foods
went up,” says Lauren. “Cities change, and
that’s what happens; that’s what makes
them interesting and great,” says Aaron.
“Strangely a lot of people we know are fairly
resistant to change.” Lauren agrees. “In
Maine there’s this idea of authenticity that
keeps coming up,” she says. “I feel really
hesitant to buy into ideals of authenticity,
because who gets to decide what is
authentic? I think it’s at best sort of naïve,
and at worst a way of censoring things that
you don’t want to see or include. I want to
see the mark of our time left on the city,
which is part of us working on this place
and adding to it—blending a historic past
that’s in direct dialogue with something
from today.”
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