Los Angeles is not known for its modesty. It spreads, shouts, glitters and forgets. But somewhere in that sprawling mass of glitz and expectation is Skyfarm: a plot of land (an acre, no less) that resists all that. Contained within this quiet, peculiar patch is a century-old farmhouse, a menagerie of rescued animals and an artist who has removed the boundaries between home and studio.
When Ilse Ackermann bought the property with her husband, it had been abandoned for two decades. ‘Everything was dead,’ she says, without dramatics. ‘Just nothing growing. Nothing. That was part of the appeal.’ What she’s achieved since is neither is closer to reinvention than restoration. The house and the land around it operate by their own logic. From the chandelier (salvaged from a basement destined for demolition) that now hangs over a goat pen to a self-built pool inspired by cow stock ponds in Texas, Ilse’s philosophy is clear: ‘Even a goat barn should be fabulous.’ The exteriors, wild and heavily planted, are an extension of her interiors, which are layered, bright and deliberate. A chandelier being placed outdoors simply makes sense to her.
Ilse grew up in a saltbox house in rural New England, where her mother kept goats and her father, a painter, hung his canvases beside firewood. ‘We didn’t really make a distinction between doing chores and making things,’ she says. ‘There was always a project underway – someone was mending something or pickling something or sketching in the margins.’ That early conflation of labour and play lingers in the way she’s shaped her life in Los Angeles.
Ilse is not a minimalist, nor does she posture cluttered whimsy. Her style is a lived-in, colour-drenched hybrid of art practice, salvage, horticulture and real affection. ‘Every nook and cranny should be used, not wasted,’ she says. ‘I don’t mean over-decorated, I mean loved, considered, made into something.’ Nothing feels staged'; no object has been placed ‘for effect’. The interiors are jam-packed: books everywhere, a pair of hefty swordfish dominating two walls – ‘I’m a vegetarian,’ she shrugs playfully; these curious lamps were auction finds – but each object has weight. ‘There’s always a story and a reason something’s there. I want people to pick up the books. I give them away, actually. If someone likes one, they can take it.’
There’s no separation, in Ilse’s mind, between the aesthetic and the ethical. ‘The animals came to us,’ she says. ‘The pig was a stray, found walking the streets. Can you imagine?’ As well as these and the goats, there are chickens, too, and geese, dogs, cats, tortoises and various birds. ‘We’re not zoned for horses… yet. But I do have one, just kept elsewhere. I’m working on getting an adjacent acre.’
Forever tweaking and improving, Ilse’s not afraid of the hard work that requires: the painting, the planting, the learning. ‘There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not watching a YouTube tutorial. This morning it was how to dry strawflowers. Tomorrow? Who knows.’ And so it’s always been, in fact. ‘We bought a 100-year-old house and could barely swing a hammer. Now look at it! You just learn.’ That accumulation of knowledge – practical skills, plant behaviour, animal temperaments, structural problem-solving – is what gives the house its texture. ‘It’s constant and it’s never done; but the joy’s in that.’
Her two daughters, both artists, grew up alongside the project; they now live in separate guest houses on the acreage. The younger daughter’s residence was built anew while she was away at camp. ‘She came home to her own little house. Some people think that’s odd. But wouldn’t you want that? Privacy and proximity at the same time?’
Ilse always knows exactly what she’s doing, even when she doesn’t know how to do it yet. ‘Often I’ll just start. Then when I get panicked, I call in my husband. Everything here is a collaboration.’ There’s no manifesto: just work, daily work. ‘You have to love it. I don’t mean love how it looks. I mean love doing it. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t survive it. But I do.’ And the property gives back, too. ‘It sounds mad, but I think the house has loved us in return. It’s this living thing now, it’s taught us everything.’
In Los Angeles, land is currency, leverage, investment. To see someone using it for goat-farming, for colour, learning, for a stray pig, they might as well be speaking a different language. But Ilse Ackermann doesn’t need the city to understand her. She has her acre; and she’s filled it, slowly, with care.
