A Charging Station for Kindred Spirits

We started in 2019 by renting out the upstairs unit of our home to help defray some of the costs of living in a 200-year-old house. Rev was trained in housekeeping by a mom who grew up flipping motel rooms and the first decade of Nora’s career was spent balancing work as a teaching artist with jobs in the service and hospitality industry… so running an AirBnB around our day jobs just made sense.

The trouble was, we weren’t interested in painting the walls gray and pretending to be a hotel. We missed a time before all places started to look the same; when you could stop somewhere off the beaten track and find a key under the mat at a family friend’s house. We missed that feeling of unlocking a side door to find dust motes dancing in a beautiful slant of light, and a handwritten note on the table that said “raid the garden and the pantry and be sure to try the good coffee shop across the street.”

We’ve spent the past six years hosting travelers from all over the world and many, many artist residents. Our paying guests make our work possible as we offer as many free stays as we can afford through our friendsidency & giveaway program and more free & funded residencies with a stipend and studio space through our neighbors at the Kirkland Art Center.

We’re also slowly growing a bigger dream for Folkist Space. We’d love to build more experiences to help kindred spirits recharge, from backyard sauna parties for local folks to collaborative experiences with our neighbors at Local Foods Mohawk Valley and workbooks on folk art & practice for our friends in far-off places. In the meantime, Nora’s newsletter Folkist Work offers monthly meditations on mostly-free, mostly-analog folk tools that can help us balance making a living and making a life.

We think that something gets lost when you try to make something for everyone, so we’re not for everyone.. But—

A stay at Folkist Space might be for you if:

  • You like curling up with a book (or for a nap) in cozy spots. Bonus points if you like an in-house library—we have one!

  • You like a place with a giant bathtub and a window seat.

  • You’re looking for more than a crash pad. You want a place to rest, relax, and recharge for at least three nights.

  • You want to experience a quaint, walkable college town.

  • You like having a kitchen stocked by people who actually cook (yes there’s a wine key, olive oil, a baking sheet, a can opener, coffee options, kitchen scissors… you get it!)

  • You’re into recommendations for the best local spots and experiences (we’ve been known to lend a kayak or two if you have a roof rack, and to drop a pin to the best paddle)

  • You like wabi-sabi gardens, small artsy touches, and line-dried linen sheets.

  • You want to support a place where every paid stay supports our free creative residencies!

A stay somewhere else might be your thing if:

  • You get antsy if you don’t have a TV with a cable package.

  • You’re looking for a quick crash pad (fewer than 3 nights.)

  • You’re uncomfortable staying in an apartment above your hosts and sharing a driveway.

  • You’re uncomfortable navigating stairs (The Garret is on the second floor.)

  • You love a golf-course style lawn (ours is a little… for the pollinators?)

We hope you’ll reach out and say hi, and come stay with us sometime. Every stay supports our dream of subsidizing space for artists who need it and with building our someday-dream of a place where we can host community dinners, saunas, music parties, and more.

Your Hosts

We’re local natives who spent 15 years living in Boston, Ireland, Pittsburgh, and New York City before making the move back home.

Nora is Director of Product for Foreign Affairs magazine by day and plays fiddle by night. In 2019, Nora founded our artist residency program as a way to serve working, caregiving, and folk artists. Since 2020, that program has provided stipends and off-site studio space through a partnership with The Kirkland Art Center, a historic community art & music organization three doors down.

Mike has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and manages to fit a day job in Instructional Design at Hamilton College around the edges of his freelance writing for children’s television and acting as our town historian.