The longtime lecturer at the Columbus College of Art & Design has transformed his ancestral home into a sustainable canvas for his family’s creative endeavors.
John Kortlander calls his Athens home the Angel Ridge Art House. The midcentury home, which he inherited from his parents in 1967 and is minutes from Ohio University, has always been a hub for his family’s creative side. And it remains so today, as it houses well-lit studios for Kortlander, his often-visiting sons, and his wife, Julie Taggart, a painter and provost at Columbus College of Art & Design. It’s also become a temporary home for artist residencies and short- and long-term Airbnb stays, often drawing people who appreciate the home’s art and tranquility.
Kortlander divides his time between a home in Westerville and the Athens residence on 12 acres of former farmland that is now covered in white pines and cottonwoods, walking trails and a hidden pond. His parents bought the house in 1971 and left it to him when they died in 2014. Kortlander’s father, renowned painter William Kortlander, taught studio art at Ohio University, while his mother’s role as architecture librarian at the university sparked his fascination with design and construction.
Kortlander is also a painter and recently retired after teaching at CCAD for 32 years. His large, non-representational paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous venues, including the Smithsonian Institution and the former Studio Arts College International in Florence, Italy. In retirement, he continues to paint and visits Athens to tend the garden and work on projects at his ancestral home and three other properties in the area, two of which he designed and built himself.
When Kortlander took over his parents’ house, he found it claustrophobic. “I painted the old wood paneling to brighten the space and opened up the kitchen,” he recalls of his initial efforts. “My intention was to bring as much light into the house as possible.” And while letting in natural light provided a better atmosphere for painting, it was also a step toward sustainability. “Sustainability and art are the two core principles of the house,” he says. Kortlander built a 12-foot, floor-to-ceiling picture window into the south-facing living room to illuminate it and harness passive solar energy. The existing eaves above the window shade the room in the summer, but the window is large enough to capture the sun’s warmth in the winter.
As part of these renovations, he designed a built-in greenhouse for raising seedlings and a multi-purpose studio with a wood-burning stove and a garage door for additional light. Kortlander’s son, a sixth-generation artist, uses the space to paint when he’s in town. This addition adjoins the garage, whose floor still shows paint splatters from William Kortlander’s artwork. Both spaces have an indoor-outdoor feel that’s more utilitarian than precious.
In 2015, Kortlander installed solar panels and the following year he installed geothermal heat pumps, which maintain a constant base temperature of 13 degrees Celsius year-round. “In the summer, the house cools so efficiently that we feed energy back into the grid,” he says, adding that the sun provides more energy than they need to run the air conditioning. Total energy costs for the 150-square-meter house average $100 a month.
“I wanted to impact the land as little as possible,” says Kortlander about his renovation decisions. And the actions are no less impressive than the aesthetics: Kortlander and Taggart use sustainable practices such as composting, growing vegetables and a “vegan” diet.
Kortlander’s foray into sustainability began when Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” hit theaters. “I had a vision that we would all change together,” recalls Kortlander, who taught a course on sustainable architecture at CCAD.
Staying true to its origins, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom (one with a built-in steam shower, a favorite with guests) midcentury ranch house has a predominantly midcentury-modern aesthetic that reuses many antique pieces of furniture Kortlander’s parents collected. Those pieces include an authentic 1960s lounge chair that Kortlander refurbished in bright orange, a vintage Fender Rhodes piano, and an airplane desk from Heywood-Wakefield Co. Simplicity and space are key to the design. The living room has no overhead lighting, and its fireplace is fueled by wood from the property.
While the vintage pieces are unique, the paintings bring the house to life. The collection includes works by Kortlander and Taggart, of course, but also by other family members (his parents, children, and cousin), peers, and former students. In addition, the simple lines of the mostly window-lit house give the space a gallery feel.
Kortlander, who lived in Florence, Italy, for a year, has always identified with the concept of “Renaissance man.” He says, “That was very important to me. You have ideas and you don’t just use color, words or sounds (to express them). You use whatever you have to create something that you like or feel compelled to do.”
The concept also describes his family. Together they are writers, filmmakers, musicians and painters. “I consider us as much a family of artists as a family of painters,” he says. “I don’t think it’s anything special. It’s just the family business. That’s what we do.”
In other words, built on sustainability and memories, the Angel Ridge Art House is just another work of art from the Kortlander family.
This story is from the June 2024 issue of Columbus monthly.
