A Trip Inside the Home of Artist Sam Wiener

Real estate agent and longtime creative Sam Wiener never predicted she would end up in Portland—let alone her entire family.

“We’re from New York,” she says, “until the end of time.”

But she’d always had an eye toward adventure, and the world was calling. After growing up on Long Island, “I moved to Buffalo, New York, then I moved to Brooklyn, then I moved to Manhattan,” she says as she hands me a mushroom-bedecked tumbler of water. “Then I moved to Austin, then I moved to L.A.” At that time, she was working in visual merchandising for Patagonia.

So when the company offered her a position in Portland, she was open to another shift—even though she’d never been here before and didn’t know a soul in town. She’d moved to Austin under similar circumstances.

“I kind of liked the uncomfortableness of it,” she says.

But even so, Portland already had a touch of family sensibility: Wiener’s parents had visited a few years earlier. During their monthlong stay, they had become (understandably) besotted with the Rose City—so much so that they purchased a home here on a whim.

“They called and they’re like, ‘Guess what? We bought a house.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’” Wiener recalls.

Although they stayed in New York and rented out the Slabtown home, it still felt like an anchor point. “My parents obviously love it,” Wiener had told herself as she considered the jump. “Might as well do it.”

That was 10 years ago. Since then, Portland has become an out-and-out family affair. Everyone dear is near—a fact that’s echoed everywhere you look in Wiener’s home.

She meets me at the Concordia acccessory dwelling unit where she lives with her partner, construction worker and musician Justin Freund. It shares a backyard with the main house, where her sister, Alexis, lives along with her husband, Dylan, and their two young children. Mom and Dad, too, finally made the move from New York, setting up camp in the original house they bought all those years ago. Although Wiener’s father, Marc Wiener, has since died, his ashes are kept in her living room in a beautiful wooden box topped with a miniature microphone. He worked as a radio sound engineer at CBS and, while he lived in Portland, at KBOO. Creativity really runs in the Wiener family—and the ADU’s décor shows it.

A giant flower stands in the corner, Alexis’ creation, made for her older child, Isley’s, fifth birthday. “She wanted a fairy-themed party,” Wiener says, “so Lex got the idea to make all the kids feel smaller by building these large flowers that tower over you.” After they decorated the yard during Isley’s summer party, the family pulled them inside so they’d survive the winter: Along with Wiener’s home, they also decorate her sister’s house and her mom’s.

Just above the flower, you’ll find a large, yellow abstract painted by Wiener’s late grandfather, Irving Abram—Wiener calls it her favorite object in the house, but only when forced to choose. A lifelong artist, Abram both taught and exhibited art back in New York, where he was also a dentist and veteran of World War II. Although he never visited Portland during his lifetime, he is here, through this enormous painting, in spirit.

Every time I ask after a specific piece, Wiener mentions another loved one—if not a family member, a friend. There’s the “little red fox” that—spoiler—is not so little, an art trade; in exchange for this watchful creature, she crafted some colorful sound-blockers for her friend’s recording studio. (A similar one straddles her coffee table, where it serves as a foot rest. She made the throw pillows on the couch, too.)

There’s also a crochet banana, another friend’s pandemic hobby, as well as a framed sketch of a woman making out with a tiger, created by an ex-boyfriend’s mom. “I was like, OK, I’m keeping that,” Wiener says. She and Freund are getting married in September—and several pieces of the home’s hanging art are his design.

Freund also brought many musical instruments to both the ADU and the partnership (though the sitar is Wiener’s), along with the handsome radio bed the couple shares. “We use it for white noise when we sleep,” Wiener says, before demonstrating that it does, indeed, pick up channels. “It was like, ‘Oh, yeah,” Wiener says, “‘this is why I like you.’”

And then, of course, there are the many artworks that Wiener, a painter, embroiderer, seamstress, and general creative mastermind, made herself.

As we sit on her couch, Wiener points out three hanging rugs of her design: one hand-knotted and two crafted with a tufting gun. Later, I notice the many-colored skeins of yarn crowding the high shelf in her bedroom. There are also brightly colored, slightly psychedelic-looking geometric paintings on the walls—more than a dozen more of which hang or are waiting to be hung in her art studio.

It’s one of the main perks of living in a custom ADU: Wiener got to help design it, and a dedicated creative space was at the top of her list. (Other custom touches: high, narrow windows to allow more wall space for hanging art and a custom pet door for her cat Grüvis, named after the New England futurock band Grüvis Malt.)

But it’s clear to any visitor that Wiener’s home is still—and probably always will be—evolving alongside her and her loved ones’ creativity. When we wander into the backyard (which has, since the births of Isley and Mesa, been transformed into a wonderland of toys), Wiener points out some clothes in the midst of natural home dyeing—“avocado,” she says, surprising me. Apparently, avocado pits and skins stain fabric a dusty pink.

It surprised Wiener too, but that’s part of the fun of living a creative life—along with the sheer amount of beauty you get to have in your home to look at.

“I feel really nice to be surrounded by maximalist stuff,” Wiener says, beaming under the varied creations of her life and loves.

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