The Pschedelic Collection at Blunk House
A Conversation between Roman Alonso and Mariah Nielson
01.31.2026
ROMAN ALONSO: I’m sure you must be bored of answering this question, but I have to ask, what was it like to grow up in the Blunk House?
MARIAH NIELSON: Well, because it was where I was born and raised, it was all I knew. This incredible world that my father and our family created was normal. Growing up with hand-carved penis stools, a wood sink and all the ceramics that we ate and drank from made by my father. It was a total work of art and everyday life.
Of course, when I was a teenager, I wanted to live in Terra Linda in the Marin suburbs and have a “normal family” and a “normal life.” I wanted my name to be Cindy. I wanted my dad to be a dentist. I wanted him to drive a brown Acura, not a bright blue VW 1968 flatbed truck. It wasn’t until my late teens, early twenties, that I really began to appreciate the holistic and endlessly creative nature of this space and the way that my parents and brothers lived. I realize now how exceptional that was.
RA: At what age did you leave?
MN: I left home when I was 16. I moved to Japan then Europe and didn’t come back to Marin until I was about 19. Then I moved to San Francisco soon after that to study architecture at the California College of the Arts and Crafts (CCAC), which is now CCA.
RA: So, once you left and got that “normal life”, what was the thing that you missed the most? What pulled you back?
MN: The house itself and spending time in a space where everything is handmade and everything has a story and a connection to a person that is part of your life. I realize how profoundly special that is. When I look around the Blunk HouseI notice everything was made by my father or someone in our family, or a friend of JB’s, or it was something that my parents collected on their travels. The artists and designers I’m hosting at the Blunk House and are continuing to contribute to this environment.
There are just layers of memory and material and craft that contribute to the uniqueness of this space. And it’s like I was saying earlier, this holistic feeling of creativity. It’s impossible to differentiate what’s art and what’s life in an environment like this. I think it’s only artist’s homes that exude and suggest that kind of energy.
RA: It’s also interesting that you’ve decided to make a life there with your family, because it’s not the most, let’s say, up to date. You know? The toilet and shower are outside…it’s rustic.
MN: Yeah, it’s rustic. There’s a woodburning stove.It gets cold…really cold in the winter. It’s not the kind of environment that’s easy to adapt to, unless you grew up in it.
RA: The fact that you’ve made that sort of compromise to continue to have this kind of holistic creative feeling in your life is very rare.
MN: I came back from London where we had built a beautiful home with underfloor heating and indoor plumbing and all the amenities and comforts of modern life.
RA: Plus, you moved from one of the biggest, most exciting cities in the world to the boondocks. And not only that, but you opened an international gallery in the middle of nowhere.
MN: In Design Miami last December, all the booths have the name of the gallery and the city that the gallery’s based in. So it was like London, New York, Milan, Berlin…and then Blunk Space, Point Reyes Station…
RA: It’s fantastic, particularly the surprise that the work is at the level of what you find in all those cities. I love that you not only grew up in a situation where the standards were extremely elevated because of your parents, but you also moved away and then put it all next to everything else you experienced and found that it was at that level or even higher. In my opinion, the greatest thing you’ve built is that relationship. You’ve brought the world to your dad’s house, and you’ve brought your dad to the world.
MN: Yeah, that’s exactly it! I feel like the only way that I’ve been able to move back here to this small town, which by the way I swore I’d never come back to when I was 16, is by saying, ‘I will make this move back home and I will open this gallery in Point Reyes Station, but I want to use the space as a bridge to my life in London and the outside world, without compromise.’ It’s allowed me to host all these amazing artists and designers from London, Mexico, Japan, all over Europe and the US. It has allowed me to live here and settle back into this space, but on my own terms.
RA: One of the great things I find about the house is that it’s such a great vessel.
MN: Yes, it receives things with pleasure.
RA: I wanted to ask you, because many, many things have ended up in the house, through time and continue to. When you were growing up, who made the aesthetic decisions? How did things end up in the house and what made it and what didn’t? Was it your dad that was like, nope, that’s not coming into the house. Or was it your mom?
MN: That’s a great question! I think it was my father. I think that my mother cared but didn’t care enough to push back on something that my father perhaps brought into the house that she didn’t like. She moved in in 1969. My father had built the house with his first wife from 1959 to 62, and then his first wife left in 1965. So, it was my father’s space when my parents met. I think she allowed him to decide how the house was arranged and what work came in and what work didn’t. However, she did contribute as she started weaving and working with clay, her work was also layered into the space.
My father traded a lot of artwork with friends, mostly painters. And he used the house as a space to stage new work of his own. He’d bring in a painting or sculpture that he finished and put it in the house to live with for a while. I never asked him why, but I assume it was because he wanted to live with it and see how it felt. Looking at something in the morning is maybe different than how you feel looking at it at the end of the day, or a certain quality of light can affect the perception of a piece. I think he used the space very much like a backdrop for his work. He also had artworks from friends that were on loan, which was interesting.
I remember the space feeling really dynamic. There was always a different arrangement of sculptures or paintings on the wall. And then we organized a series of shows in the eighties called The Family Shows, which is part of what I’ve pulled into the gallery programming at Blunk Space. My father would open the house every spring for several weekends and stage his own work, my mother’s weavings, my brother’s paintings and sculptures, and my drawings. The house and studio truly became a gallery for these weekends, and people were invited up to buy work.
RA: It’s interesting because not all artists like to live with their own work. And he obviously not only wanted to live with his work, but he wanted his work to live with other people’s work.
MN: Yes. That’s something that has really influenced me and the program at the gallery because I always felt like the work in our house was in conversation—that there was a dialogue between the ceramics and the paintings and the sculptures and the furniture.
The pairings of artists that we curate at the gallery, artist and designer or contemporary artist and historical designer et cetera, are about creating these conversations. The connections that can be made across different materials and time periods are so interesting to me.
RA: I guess you could say your dad, through his work, remains a good conversationalist. Maybe it’s the organic nature of the work but it relates well with almost anyone’s work.
MN: I absolutely agree. And I think that’s an extension of his personality. He was handsome, he was charming, he was so easy to be with. And his work is the same. I think that’s such an interesting point and observation.
RA: When you are in the house it’s hard to separate what is your dad’s and what is someone else’s. Like all the work that your husband Max (Frommeld) has done on the house or the furniture he’s made for it, I tend to forget he did it because it’s all so well integrated. There are so many things where you don’t know whose is what, like that headboard in your bedroom, it looks like it’s always been there.
MN: Yes! Rainer Spehl, the Berlin based furniture designer made that. Everyone thinks that’s JB’s, but Rainer made that in 2009.
RA: One of my favorite things in the house is that tacked pleated sheet of paper. It’s such a good story…
MN: I wasn’t there, or if I was, I was probably five or six, so I don’t remember. But what my mother told me was that Isamu Noguchi, who visited several times, was in the house and there was a bare light bulb above the record player that you turned on to pick out the record and it was really glaring, I guess it really bothered Noguchi. So, he took a piece of rice paper, folded it and then tacked in front of the bulb on the ceiling. And that’s it. And it’s still there.
RA: And it’s been there for what? 60 years?
MN: Probably 40 years?
RA: The house is filled with what are essentially artful solutions, and they could be your dad’s or somebody else’s who came to visit and was inspired by it and maybe wanted to solve a problem.
MN: That’s right, it was basically all about resourcefulness and problem-solving. And making things to live with, whether they were functional or decorative. My father always said, nothing’s precious. He wanted people to sit on his stools, eat off his ceramics,, touch his sculptures, truly live with his work.
RA: And again, that idea of the house being this amazing vessel for creative work and ideas. When we put our rugs in the house, they just looked like they had always been there. Did you guys have rugs growing up?
MN: Yeah. A lot of them were destroyed over the years by moths, but they were all textiles that my parents brought back from their travels to Peru, to Mexico, to Indonesia.
RA: I loved that photo you sent me of your son Tilo rolling around on one of our rugs. That was the ultimate seal of approval.
MN: He still asks if that rug is coming back! I think he loved having such an expansive, soft surface, at the moment there are a lot of hard surfaces in the house. And I have to say, although growing up there were a lot of rugs, we never had a big squishy sofa. We had wooden stools and there was a little built-in daybed, and some beanbags, of course, but there weren’t many places to lounge.
RA: And how did that feel? I mean, we’ve become such babies and gotten so used to softness and comfort. How did it feel to not have that, to live in like the medieval ages or something?
MN: Well, there was carpet in the loft and there was carpet in my parents’ room. But downstairs was basically a functional space. You’d build a fire, you ate dinner or breakfast, you’d do what you need to do in the kitchen, and then you’d go to the studio. It was an active space, and I don’t remember my parents just hanging around lounging. They were not loungers.
RA: I imagine that as great a welcoming vessel the house is, there must be a lot of stuff that it spits right out!
MN: Oh yeah, near the end of my dad’s life they had these Lazy Boy-like chairs that were horrible. I was so happy to get rid of those chairs. I was like, no, these don’t belong here. They were intruders!
RA: Well, I guess it all comes down to, you know, a good set of eyes. It’s like first it was your dad’s eyes and then it’s been yours.
MN:
To me, the house is the ultimate collaboration with my father. Managing the estate and inviting others here to create work inspired by him is such an important and meaningful project for me. But specifically, the home, taking care of it, and updating things, and just simply living in it feels like the ultimate collaboration. I feel the closest to him when I’m here.
