Inside a Brooklyn Brownstone With an Eclectic Mash-Up of Treasures

A few months before their wedding, artist Genesis Belanger moved in with her now husband Sam Vigersky, a senior humanitarian advisor for the US ambassador to the United Nations. His historic Park Slope, Brooklyn, rental was already filled with souvenirs from his international work trips, like tribal masks and handmade rugs, which weren’t an obvious pairing for Belanger’s pastel sculptures of cake slices and ice cream cones. But somehow, the items blended seamlessly.

“I had a lot of very specific objects and lots of pops of color, but somehow our stuff mixed together really incredibly,” Belanger says. “Both of us thought, ‘This is better than our individual houses were.’”

In the long, parlor-level living room, for example, an ornate, century-old light fixture illuminates a collaborative vignette. Vigersky’s lively mask collection hangs above his spindle-back Reed College Heritage Captain’s Chair, while Belanger’s contemporary Room & Board console is topped with her own ceramic hot dog and hand holding a pill.

Belanger’s bra-clad bronze bust collaboration with Case Studyo is enhanced with necklaces she and Vigersky purchased in Kenya. “We bought a bunch of beads and brought them home,” she says. “And now we joke that the bust wearing the necklaces is my collaboration with the Samburu.”

The owner ripped out the original inlaid parquet floors, revealing the knotted, nail-ridden subfloors that bring character to the home.

“A subplot that runs through my work is how we self-soothe as we feel more and more powerless in many different arenas in our lives,” Belanger explains. “I like to look at that with a little bit of humor. There is something absurd about trying to make yourself feel better and the indulgent, slightly destructive ways that we do that. So a hand, but every single finger has a ring on it because sometimes you just want to be as fabulous as you possibly could be. Or a grocery bag where everything inside is liquor and candy.”

Belanger and Vigersky lounge on a Costura sofa in their parlor-level living room, where her cake slice sculpture is on display. “A piece of cake can represent how out of touch the most powerful people are from the everyday experiences of everyone else, as well as serve as a symbol of an indulgence one might reach for to self-soothe in their daily slog,” she explains.

On the opposite side of the lengthy space, Vigersky’s squiggly blue-and-white rug and midcentury Noguchi coffee table meet an original carved wood mantel and Belanger’s bra-clad bronze bust collaboration with Case Studyo. “If I had an aesthetic goal, it was to just mix all the different time periods together in a way that somehow—maybe illogically—felt right,” the artist shares.

The eat-in kitchen, with its hexagonal terra-cotta tile floors and wood-framed windows, features another serendipitous combination: Vigersky’s oval-shaped Saarinen Tulip dining table with Belanger’s Hay Result Chairs and Ton bentwood caned armchairs. “When we first started dating, I thought, ‘That’s the exact table I would’ve bought,’” she remembers.