When artists Kim and Scott Cunningham of Hancock first saw the site of their future home on a sunny slope off of Old Dublin Road, there was “nothing but a pile of sawdust,” Kim said.
The couple, who have lived in the Monadnock region for 50 years, lived in several other houses in Hancock before purchasing the site of a former logging operation in 1987. Having restored two historic homes in the past, the Cunninghams drew on that experience to design and build a home and workspace tailored to their creative lives, surrounded by the conserved forests and wetlands of the Harris Center for Conservation Education’s Supersanctuary.
The Post-and-Beam Home
The Cunninghams designed and built a traditional Cape-style post-and-beam home, raising the frame with the help of friends. They sited the structure to maximize southern sunlight, with wide views across a meadow that now serves as Scott’s outdoor sculpture garden.
“We built the basic box, and then we added on to it, but it looks pretty old,” Kim said. “You wouldn’t know it’s a relatively new house for this area.”
Inside, the home reflects the couple’s talents and is filled with bright colors, handwoven textiles, and art. Scott hand-carved the interior woodwork — including the staircase, banisters, trim, and shelves — while the walls display the couple’s paintings, Kim’s ceramics and collages, and pieces collected from artist friends.
The guest room and office feature more of Kim’s work, including a selection of her ceramic fox faces. The sunroom is lined with Scott’s paintings of Monhegan Island in Maine, where the couple spends time each year with artist friends. Kim also creates collages from “found objects” that washed up on the beach at Monhegan.
The dining room features a massive live-edge wood table that Scott created from a tree trunk he salvaged at a transfer station in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
“It was a very old piece of ash. People had cut the tree down and just dropped off the trunk, and my friend and I got a two- man chainsaw, and we slabbed it up, and we made the table,” Scott said.
Outside, an outdoor shower and the garage exterior are decorated with more than 100 of Kim’s hand-crafted ceramic tiles, faces, and totem sculptures.
Dedicated creative studios
Beyond the main residence, the property houses two distinct studio spaces, providing each artist with independent workspace.
“We each have a studio, which is super healthy for our marriage. It’s like, go to your own building,” Kim joked. “Scott’s studio is kind of like his man cave.”
Though identical in size and shape, the two studios reflect their owners. Scott’s metalworking studio was built first on the property using lumber felled on-site and milled in nearby Greenfield; the studio features wooden workbenches, anvils, stacks of scrap metal, and sculpture, with neatly arranged tools hanging from the walls. Outside, an open storage shed contains Scott’s stash of metal. Inside hangs a prototype of the weathervane he created for the Harris Center for Conservation Education, with the familiar bobcat logo. He also made the weathervane for Greenfield Elementary School.
A short walk up the hill, Kim’s studio is light and airy, with yellow walls and a black-and-white tiled floor. Her workspace for commercial design and fine art production houses paintings, prints, collages, and ceramic pieces. An illustrator, graphic designer, and author of “Block, Paper, Chisels: Prints from the Monadnock Region,” Kim has created several calendars, including 2025’s “In the Garden.”
Across the property’s upper field, Scott’s metal sculptures are installed throughout an open-air sculpture park. Many feature geometric frames designed to capture views of the surrounding Monadnock landscape across changing seasons.
“The sculptures look pretty great in the wintertime, when they stand out clearly against the snow,” Scott said. “We want to be able to mow the field, so we keep the sculptures to this area, and there’ s plenty of space left.”
Scott says the sculpture garden has no overarching theme. “It’s just whatever I like to make,” he said.
