At Home With Bonnie Grice

A copy of Jimmy Carter’s new book, “A Remarkable Mother,” rests on the coffee table of radio personality Bonnie Grice’s Sag Harbor area home.

When asked how she’s enjoying the book, the veteran public radio broadcaster’s face lights up brightly. “Oh, it’s great. I’m thrilled that I’m getting to interview him on my morning show tomorrow,” she says.

Not many radio broadcasters have the privilege of interviewing a former president and one of the world’s most revered diplomats, but for Ms. Grice, it’s all in a day’s work.

During the course of her 30 years in the radio business, Ms. Grice has interviewed an impressive lineup of artists, musicians, writers, actors and politicians, from Judy Collins and Anne Rice to k.d. lang and Montel Williams. But Jimmy Carter, she admits, is a definite career highlight. For the last decade, she’s been a daily fixture on the air at WLIU 88.3 FM, the flagship station of the Long Island University Public Radio Network, located on the Stony Brook Southampton campus. Ms. Grice serves as music director and program host of “In the Morning,” a daily two-hour arts and culture magazine, and “The Song Is You,” a popular weekly program that invites well-known local and national music lovers to explore the ways that songs have touched their lives. Now syndicated, “The Song Is You” airs on almost 80 public radio stations around the country. “JazzWorks,” another nationally syndicated show she hosts, also has a loyal following among public radio fans.

Although Ms. Grice’s career has planted her in such major cities as Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. (where she co-hosted National Public Radio’s “Anthem”), she has happily put down roots on the East End of Long Island. And for the last four years, she has called an airy, art-filled contemporary house in the Noyac woods her home.

“It’s a work in progress,” she says of the 1,300-square-foot, 2-bedroom, 2 ½-bath home. “I never thought of decorating it per se, it’s more about gathering things around me that feel comfortable. I like to save up my money so I can support the work of local artists, many of whom have been on my show.”

Despite its compact size, her one-story home seems spacious because of its open floor plan, high ceilings and clerestory windows that allow the outside light to flood in. By keeping the walls a pristine white, Ms. Grice has created the effect of an art gallery filled with eclectic works in a variety of mediums.

“I love this work by East End illumination artist Ellen Frank,” she says, pointing to one of her favorite pieces in the living room. “It’s a mix of copper tubing and paint and other metals and was inspired by Lewis Thomas’s essays on peace, Mahler’s symphonies, and the Medieval illuminated manuscript, ‘The Book of Hours.’”

There’s also a Hans Nagel original from the 1950s that Ms. Grice “picked up for a hundred bucks in an antique place in Connecticut” because she liked its fabric frame, and a copper reproduction of an architectural element from a Frank Lloyd Wright building.

She also loves the jazz-inspired piece by Greenport artist Vincent Quatroche, and the piece by Robert Edwin, a young, up-and-coming artist from Port Jefferson.

“And this is a wonderful work called ‘Bosque’ by Greenport artist Hector de Cordova,” she says, as she reaches down to pick up her dog Charlie, a cute Jack Russell Terrier/Chihuahua mix. “I just adopted him a few days ago from ARF. He’s a very socialized, happy boy.”

Beyond art, Ms. Grice is an avid reader and collector of books. She keeps her prized Harry Potter books and Virginia Woolf editions in an antique oak lawyer’s bookcase that she got from a music critic friend whose late husband was a musician with the Cleveland Orchestra.

“I got to know them when I traveled with the Cleveland Orchestra as a radio journalist on their world tours to Japan and Europe,” she says.

The bookcase also houses one of her most treasured possessions: the 2003 American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Allen Award she won for “The Song Is You.”

Family photos also grace the bookcase. There’s a charming black and white of Ms. Grice as a 12-year-old nuzzling her cat; a 1930s-era photo of her mother as a little girl; and one of her grandfather paddling a canoe. Ms. Grice has been told that some of her ancestors are “supposedly tied back to the Mayflower.”

“Oh, and there’s a photo of me at Platform 9-3/4 at King’s Cross in London. I’m a real Harry Potter geek,” she laughs, adding that fans of the books will know the significance of that photo.

Harry Potter aficionados also would enjoy the reproduction Lewis Chessmen chess set that Ms. Grice has on display in her living room. She went to London last year, partly to buy a set of the famed chessmen in the British Museum gift shop. Carved of walrus ivory and whales’ teeth and probably made in Norway around 1150-1200 AD, the original Lewis Chessmen were found under mysterious circumstances on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in 1831.

“This was the same chess set that Harry and Ron used to play wizard chess in ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,’” she notes.

Separating the living space from the kitchen and dining area is a dramatic freestanding brick fireplace. The round-shaped rattan and fabric chair next to the hearth provides a perfect spot to curl up with a book on a dreary day.

The all white kitchen adds to the bright feel of the home, as do the full wall of windows above the sink that overlook the 1 acre of natural landscaping outside.

Nature and trees are important to Ms. Grice, who calls herself “a houseplant freak.”

“I don’t know the names of all of them; all I know is that they are happy plants and it’s a great way to keep your house environmentally green,” she said.

Off the kitchen is a small laundry room (where a work by Southampton artist Sibylle Pfaffenbichler of Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald hangs) and a half-bathroom, which Ms. Grice calls “her blue room.” Ms. Grice has packed a visual feast within the bathroom’s tiny walls: there’s a blue stained glass piece; an old-fashioned “Radio Special” sign from an antiques store in Los Angeles; a Charlie Chaplin “City Lights” poster; and a Cleveland Orchestra poster from a concert performed years ago in Japan on October 15—Ms. Grice’s birthday.

“I saw that concert that night and it’s a very important poster to me,” the music lover said.

Heading to the master bedroom off the living room, Ms. Grice points out several framed photographs—two by “the marvelous black and white photographer Stuart McCallum,” and a color photograph of a bumblebee taken in her yard by her boyfriend of two years, Steve Gould, whom she met on eHarmony (“I’d recommend it to anyone!”).

Like the rest of the house, Ms. Grice designed her bedroom to be a peaceful retreat from the stresses of everyday life.

“I think this house has always had an Asian or Indian feeling to it,” she says, pointing out the Asian-style chest of drawers topped with a Buddha head and sea glass found on a trip to St. Martin.

“I’m a shopaholic. I collect things from wherever I go—my travels, house sales, antiques stores, Pier I, even TJ Maxx.”

Also on the chest are several small sign-language “I Love You” and “Peace” hand sculptures created by neighbor and friend Dorothy Frankel.

A Mombasa-style mosquito net canopy is suspended over Ms. Grice’s queen-sized, wrought-iron bed, which is richly covered with a raspberry silk bedspread with gold embroidery. Peace Generation-era beaded curtains hang on the windows in lieu of traditional curtains or drapes, and a funky abalone shell standing lamp provides romantic lighting.

A poster for “Mrs. Dalloway,” the two-act chamber opera for which Ms. Grice wrote the libretto based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, hangs on the bedroom wall. With music by Libby Larsen, the opera had its world premiere by the Lyric Opera Cleveland in 1993. A year later, the talented Ms. Grice—who plays the flute and studied voice—wrote the book, “From Z to A: A Classical Lover’s Alternative,” a quirky guide to the great composers, from Zappa to John Adams.

On another wall in the bedroom is a framed rendering from the set design of “Mrs. Dalloway.” Draped over the frame are healing feathers given to Ms. Grice by a friend who is a psychic and Reiki healer.

“I describe myself as someone who has their toes dipped in, but their [feet] firmly planted outside,” she says of her interest in the metaphysical world. “I believe there are powers beyond us that are important and can help us, whether it’s God or Buddha or whoever else you believe in.”

In the nearby master bathroom hangs a flowery pen and ink drawing formed from the letters in Ms. Grice’s name that was created by a “really metaphysical guy”—Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band, Yes, whom she interviewed in Los Angeles in 1994.

A work of art by a Native American artist from Sedona and a whimsical framed 1940s magazine ad (give to her by a friend in Provincetown) that reads, “Bonnie’s Gay with Midol,” completes the bathroom’s creative spirit.

The second bedroom in the house has been dubbed “the boudoir” by Ms. Grice, who admits she has always wanted “a place that was garish and a bit over the top, yet warm and welcoming at the same time.”

“I love that this is a mishmosh of everything, from fur throws and lots of pillows to red feather hearts and velvety curtains,” she says.

While a sweet turn-of-the-century oak writing desk—the very desk that Ms. Grice used as a little girl growing up in Pennsylvania—has a place of honor, the va-va-va-voom room mostly pays homage to all things erotic and exotic. In addition to the Mardi Gras mask and Chinese paper umbrella that hang over the lushly covered daybed, the room has pictures of exotic entertainer Josephine Baker and actress Olivia de Havilland, and copies of several of Ms. Grice’s favorite books: D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” Picasso’s “Erotique,” and Edward Lucie-Smith’s “Sexuality in Western Art.” And for Ms. Grice’s ultimate fantasy, there’s a huge walk-in-closet that houses more shoes than clothes for the admitted shoeaholic.

“I spend a lot of time in here because it is also the computer room,” Ms. Grice says, leaving her fantasy world and coming back to reality.

After all, she does need to finish reading Jimmy Carter’s book. This radio personality has an important interview to do in the morning.