TEXAS COOL

In the Venn diagram of their lives— one that includes Hollywood A-list projects, rescued farm animals, music, and visual arts—Harper Smith and Cameron Duddy find their farmhouse smack dab in the center of it all.

- KATHY BARNES

A few miles west of Austin, in the hilly grasslands of central Texas, Harper Smith and Cameron Duddy stumbled into a storybook.

They hadn't been looking for a major move, but they had been using a real estate app at home in Topanga, CA, and a funny thing happened.

On a getaway to Austin (and) Harper's first time in Texas), "We landed, and I got a random notification that this house, one that looked like my favorite childhood book, was on the market," she says. It felt like a sign, and they bought it the next day.

They had a hunch that living a quieter life would feed their spirits and fire their creativity, so the couple loaded up their lives and their potbellied pig, Pepper, and moved to the country.

Harper says her husband, an award-winning video music director from Northern California, makes an unlikely cowboy. But his second career, as the bassist for the country band Midland, earned him his Texas credentials. Harper works on both coasts as a fashion and celebrity photographer and video director.

They craved a more peaceful life, and this rural retreat held promise.

But peace didn't come right away. The house needed an update. Harper built layered mood boards to guide what she calls a "big modification" project.

Her goals included opening rooms, adding tons of glass, and removing all signs of the varnished oak woodwork with its telltale yellow finish. Demo revealed mold in the walls, so they had to pull apart a lot more of the house than planned. "As the dominoes fell, I had to rethink my vision," she says.