Michael Stipe Selling Manhattan Loft, Seeks New Art Studio

Michael Stipe has put his penthouse loft in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood on the market, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move is part of the singer’s plans for the post-R.E.M. phase of his life, as he moves away from music to fully embrace his career as a sculptor. “I wake up in the morning thinking of sculpture, not lyrics,” Stipe told the Wall Street Journal. “Lyrics are too hard.”

Stipe and his partner, photographer Thomas Dozol, are asking $10.95 million for their Canal Street space, which has two levels, a central atrium, a 2,500 square foot terrace overlooking the Hudson River and an open kitchen designed by Stipe’s friend, celebrity chef Mario Batali.

Stipe and Dozol are currently seeking out a new space in downtown Manhattan large enough to accommodate a full sculpture studio. Stipe has been working in sculpture for years now, but he has been able to focus on that work full-time since R.E.M. completed their final album, Collapse Into Now. “About six years ago, seven years ago, I woke up and thought, ‘I want to make sculpture,'” Stipe recently told Tumblr’s Storyboard site. “I don’t sit at a potter’s wheel and make vases,” he noted. “I don’t really know what to call it, so I call it sculpture.”