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New York artist Henry Finkelstein, who's staying at the house while his art is exhibited at the gallery. Artist Barnaby Fitzgerald arrives with his wife, Sylvie, a school director who is often her husband's muse, an inspiration for his otherworldly portraits. Fitzgerald and Finkelstein are old friends from their MFA days at Yale. Landscape architect Tary Arterburn also drops by. The co-founder of Studio Outside, a landscape architecture firm, Arterburn knew both Clarence Roy and Erika Farkac Vogel and often advises the Vogels on the garden. Cheryl is an accomplished cook, and for decades the couple have hosted a regular stream of artists, writers, architects, scholars, and musicians for dinner parties, cocktails, and impromptu brunches. The practice of entertaining both local and visiting cultural elite started with Kevin's parents 70 years earlier. "My father's studio became a place where traveling opera singers or ballet dancers or violinists would go to party all night," Kevin says. Composer and conductor Walter Hendl was a regular and often brought fascinating people with him on trips to Dallas. Valley House lacked a good piano, so Hendl took Donald to buy one, personally trying all the pianos before selecting a Steinway & Sons baby grand. The house's big, open living and dining areas have always been ideal for entertaining. "With the volumes of space and the way the windows intersect with the walls and cast shadows, it's like living in a sculpture," Cheryl says. The interiors have come together slowly — sometimes painfully — over two decades, and Cheryl has sought periodic advice from interior designers. Once, after renovating Kevin's office, the Vogels asked Paul Draper, a designer who has collaborated with such icons as Frank Welch and Max Levy, to walk through the space; he noted with surprise that the new windows they'd installed did not go all the way to the floor to take advantage of the extraordinary view. "He was right, of course, so we ripped them out and started over," Cheryl recalls. Her sister, Debbie Keffer, an interior designer formerly based in Houston, occasionally flies in from London to help. They looked for years to find the right seating to anchor the fireplace: a pair of curvy 1980s sofas inspired by Vladimir Kagan, which they re-covered in deep blue velvet to play off the blues in many of the room's paintings. Cheryl's preference for sculptural shapes is seen everywhere, whether it's an antique Biedermeier chair, a 17th-century chest, or a hammered bronze floor lamp. Some years ago, after buying four shapely 1960s bentwood chairs designed by Bill Stevens for the Yale School of Architecture, she convinced Kevin to drive a U-Haul to Kansas City to retrieve them, then on to Houston to re-cover them in leather. A pair now resides in his study. Their personal collection of art is varied and often veers to the sculptural The spiral staircase, which now leads to Kevin Vogel's office, was added in 1964. Drawings and fine prints from the 16th to mid-20th centuries rotate along a wall protected from sunlight. 71