Minnesota’s most loved Airbnb is a work of art – Bemidji Pioneer

MINNEAPOLIS – New Mexico has the “

earth vessel

.” Tennessee has a

landlocked ark

. In Minnesota, we have

the wolf house

.

most

Airbnb on Wishlist

In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, at 3359 Tyler St. NE in Minneapolis, is a bedroom with an octagonal studio, a window-covered sunroom, and a skylight in the rock-encrusted shower. And, it’s so much more.

The Wolf House, named after its concrete wolf statues and painted garage of the same name, is a performance space and living work of art, with wall-to-ceiling murals, a stone pathway embedded in the ground, hundreds of pebbles stuck to near every surface, and a mason jar window filled with tiny trinkets and toys.

When it’s just an Airbnb, it feels “less full, less inspiring,” said Minnesota-based artist and Wolf House owner Annette Schiebout, but the performance aspect of the space fuels a dynamic energy. .

Schiebout hosts artist residencies, concerts, poetry readings, a sound installation and a dance troupe. “A lot of dreamers come to me with the idea and walk around the house and get it,” she said.

Concerts are intimate, limited to around 40 in the octagonal studio. For each event, “we do this collective howl,” she added.

Duluth-born musician Venus DeMars is among the carousel of people to perform at the Wolf House. As a multi-disciplinary artist, muralist and leader of Venus DeMars and All the Pretty Horses, DeMars praised the effort it took to create the home’s “ethereal nature” and wall-to-wall vibe. .

The space “speaks well for Minneapolis, but Minnesota in general,” DeMars said. “We are much more open and experimental than I think the country sometimes credits us with.”

While Schiebout has updated the Wolf House and revolutionized its use, it aims to retain the ambiance and look left behind by its original owner. “I feel so lucky to maintain what she dreamed and created,” she said.

Stone by stone, Minnesota native Lauri Svedberg painstakingly created the Wolf House by painting murals on its walls and ceilings and pasting stones and seashells into the floors, stairs and cabinet doors.

Svedberg said she has always focused on “creating environments.”

Since reading “The Boxcar Children” series as a child, she had been in love with customizing the space that belonged to her, which as a child meant painting faux stained glass in her bedroom.

“We have so little control over so many things in our lives that I think being able to shape and control the space you find yourself in is really helpful in navigating your way,” she said.

In 1980, Svedberg bought the northeast Minneapolis home for $40,000. She eventually had the porch ripped out and replaced with a sunroom.

After a fire in 1996 caused extensive damage, and following a divorce two years later, Svedberg transformed his interior motifs of outer space, northern woods and a brothel into a unified theme.

His studio and home have become a neighborhood landmark primarily because of the concrete wolf sculptures in the yard and the painted wolf on the garage door. (Svedberg also collected lots and lots of wacky stuff, including big dogs.)

She retailed her works from there and opened her home to Art-A-Whirl attendees.

“Anyone who’s typical wouldn’t find it easy living in what I did, and certainly not with kids,” Svedberg said. “Because I was solo, I was able to pretty much ignore some of the things that might drive other people crazy.”

Due to health issues, Svedberg moved to warmer climates, where she retained her nature to create environments. (She painted “every square inch” of her Palm Springs, Calif., home, inside and out — in vibrant hues, a different palette from the Wolf’s “dark north-wood coziness.” House.)

Svedberg was thrilled when she met Schiebout after her purchase in 2015.

“The fact that Annette has opened it up to the public and creatives as a retreat, a performance space, a funky rental, all of those things make me so happy. It means more to me that it’s enjoyed by many people different than if a person had bought it and lived there alone,” Svedberg said.

“I can hardly believe the trajectory of this. I feel really lucky that it’s a bit of a legacy.

Schiebout had lived in the neighborhood for a decade when she saw a listing for the Wolf House.

“I went back for a second screening, battling the crowds of people after the list went viral, and made an offer,” she wrote on her own.

website

.

After it closed in 2015, she noticed plastic serving trays attached to the solarium windows. “The first night I stayed here as the cars were driving through the night, it’s like prisms, and it’s shooting lights all over the wall and I understood why she did that. It’s quite magical,” recalls Schiebout.

In 2017, she demolished the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. She updated the sinks, counters and stove and installed a dishwasher, a bathtub, a second bathroom and a walk-in closet.

The kitchen arch was the first room in the house that she claimed as her own, adding her favorite stones along the border. “I did my best to create an introvert’s paradise,” she said.

An artist and musician herself, Schiebout has never lived in the House of the Wolf, but she ventures there to take breaks and refuel. She’s a “binge writer” and if she’s not spouting words in the solarium, she hangs out in a hidden corner behind the staircase bookcase.

Minnesota singer-songwriter Jeremy Messersmith spends a few weeks a year at the Wolf House, where he’s written more than a third of his songs in recent years. The solarium might as well be “a conduit for the muse herself”, he said.

And as a performance space, the excitement of the audience in the intimate setting of 40 people transfers to the music. There is an element of “danger” and “sacredness” in the Wolf House, he said.

“I feel like I’m on the edge of something – of what’s real and what’s a dream. … It’s a wonderful place if you want to write or create,” Messersmith said.

For more information see

wolfhouseemps.com.