A Young Family Takes Over a Hippie’s Enchanting L.A. Home
Photo by Mikael Kennedy
Artist Mikael Kennedy had spent a decade in New York City before he and his wife, musician Malena Cadiz, decided to move west. He was sleeping on a friend’s couch, looking for somewhere to call home, when he received a text in the middle of the night about a house tucked on the side of a canyon in the East L.A. neighborhood of Glassell Park. And when Mikael found himself at its door—before he even walked inside—he told the owner he wanted to live here. “I was sitting in the lower garden, and I couldn’t see any other houses,” he says. “And when the owner pulled up, I told her, ‘I don’t care what the house looks like, this is wonderful.’”
Mikael grew up in Vermont and has traveled all over the country. By the time he found himself at this address, in 2015, he was craving a balance between the city-centric demands of his photography career and the open spaces he knew from childhood. “I don’t want to live in a city, but I have to live in a city for my business,” he says. “When I’m here, I’m surrounded by vegetation, in this weird little pocket in the hills where I can still get to the Arts District in 15 minutes.”
