Rika Hawes

Sculptor / Community college professor, house-sitter at Strawberry Mansion

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Published: Aug 19, 2009

Rika Hawes

Rika Hawes lives in Strawberry Mansion.

No, Hawes lives inside Strawberry Mansion.

Hawes, who describes her work as sculpture but really deals in a litany of media including video, performance and glass, is the 24/7 house-sitter of the museum mansion inside Fairmount Park, just south of Laurel Hill Cemetery and Robin Hood Dell. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment at one end of the museum and wears the hat of security team and maintenance worker, all in exchange for living in the museum rent-free. "Some people say it's cool, most say it's a little creepy," Hawes says.

So how does one come to live in Strawberry Mansion? Hawes landed her pad through a friend of a friend of a friend, and she's called Strawberry home for the last three and a half years. Living rent-free is a plus for an artist, especially one who makes no money from her artwork — which she started to take seriously when she got over the fact that she didn't need to be able to draw to create. She also pulls a full-time shift as a teacher at Salem Community College in Alloway, N.J. Hawes estimates she works 80 to 100 hours a week.

But living in a mansion isn't easy. Hawes is charged with cleaning up the yard — often littered with used condoms, food wrappers and the occasional needle (she has a pair of what she calls "special gloves" and steel-bottomed boots for the job). It's also her responsibility to take to shelters the dogs and cats that people abandon in the park, including two very wounded fight dogs that were left outside the house.

"Another very sad time that is still difficult to think about was finding out a woman had been murdered, her body set on fire and left on the side of the road just around the corner from the mansion. I don't know that the person responsible was ever caught," Hawes says.

Due to the city's budget crisis, many are worried about the state of Fairmount Park and city-funded museums like Strawberry Mansion. But Hawes says she's a discount to the city. Any other 24-hour presence on the site would cost the city considerably more than it does for Hawes to live there.

"Taking the job was a no-brainer," Hawes says. "I've lived here longer than any other place in my adult life and I love it!"

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