Sandwiches

SUMMER WITH THE TILLMANS: CAMP TILLMAN, PART 3

More excellent yard art from what we're calling Camp Tillman, though the Tillmans themselves are none too pleased with the name. We mean it in the best sense: it's the sort of place you wish your parents had sent you to as a kid, the sort of relatives you wish had put you up for the summer. We don't mean to imply that Horsehead Crating Company, the "business" operating on the grounds, is some sort of glorified summer camp for adults (though now that you mention it . . . ). So chill out, Clovis and Darnell, and if you don't mind pulling the cover back off the pool we're thinking a dip would break the wicked heat and mind-numbing monotony of our work on this day. See you soon, mates.

SUMMER WITH THE TILLMANS: CAMP TILLMAN, PART 2

Say what you will about the Tillmans: brash, obnoxious, cocky, little patience for social conventions, boozy, unreliable—really, we could go on. But to a person they've got an eye for the ridiculous and an eye for the sublime and when both are open and wired to a semi-sober brain some real live grace happens. Their Baker neighborhood compound, site of the informal Camp Tillman, is a case in point. The place is overflowing with the gorgeous and the strange and, happily for reckless kids with an anti-social streak, stocked with entertaining ways to injure yourself and your brother. Those we may post up later but here, some of the grace: yard art, Tillman style. We don't know the precise what and why but we are very much feeling the style. More to come as we spend more of the summer, now two days old, with our favorite clan.

SUMMER WITH THE TILLMANS: CAMP TILLMAN, PART 1

Every summer since they were wee lads Clovis and Darnell Tillman have summered with uncle E.B., the de facto pater familias of the Denver pod of the Tillman clan. Clovis and Darnell have since set up shop more or less permanently on E.B. and Dora Rae Tillman's compound down the street from our shop, running (or driving into the ground, depending on your perspective) Horsehead Crating Company from a couple buildings on the property. Anyway, growing up Tillman sounds like the stuff of fairy tale, Brothers Grimm style. We're suspicious of the stories, as we are of all things Tillman, but after seeing the inside of E.B.'s workshop, where Clovis and Darnell spent too much formative time, we're not so sure. For instance we've heard that the Horsehead boys spent an entire summer living in a network of interconnected chinchilla cages in the basement of E.B.'s house. After seeing the mummified squirrel and bat in E.B.'s shop that story starts to seem plausible.

GRAFFITI WEEK, DAY FOUR: THE HORSEHEAD COMPOUND

E.B. Tillman sobered up long enough to make this fine fence at the Horsehead Crating compound down the street from our shop (and somehow managed to keep all of his fingers in the process) so of course we got up on it immediately with our preferred graffiti tools: our brand and some MAPP gas. And where were Clovis and Darnell while all this was going on? Who knows. If you see them around town tell them we've got some furniture that needs crating.

GRAFFITI WEEK, DAY THREE: 6TH AND SANTA FE

What would otherwise be a lifeless sludge-colored wall in a sea of asphalt in the parking lot across from Santiago's at 6th and Santa Fe is anything but thanks to a brilliant set of lively pieces. Go get yourself a cheap and tasty breakfast burrito and stroll across the street to an open-air gallery that kicks the teeth out of ninety percent of the spots in the Santa Fe arts district.

GRAFFITI WEEK, DAY TWO: 10TH AND INCA

We ride by this wall all the time, on our way back and forth to one of our favorite lunch and happy hour spots, so we were duty bound to post it up. By some of the same crew who did the crazy mad-scientist mural up on the Erico building off Larimer, these pieces are in a similar style—except of course that the buxom Mexican babe with the bandolier represents the odd and the new. We'd link to GammaGallery.com, as promoted on the piece itself, if it weren't a totally pathetic site.

GRAFFITI WEEK, DAY ONE: 8TH AND GALAPAGO

The backside and alleyside of the row of storefronts on 8th between Galapago and Inca is full, or almost anyway, of mostly fine-handed work. A couple fools with skills have been busy. These pieces from the alley off the alley (the rear entrance to the building parallel to 8th) caught our eye and made us wish that all Trees of Heaven—tenacious and ubiquitous in Denver—had bark like this. Plus, a fresh door if we ever saw one. More all week from spots around the neighborhoods.

ROADRUNNER WEEK, DAY FIVE: EYEBOLTS

The last step before powder-coating: attaching the eyebolts to the base so the chairs can be hung, upside-down, for coating and baking. A strange process, powder-coating: a fine pigmented powder is applied electrostatically to most anything that can hold a charge (including wood, if the humidity is right—sadly Denver is too dry) and then the piece is wheeled into an industrial oven and baked. The process is VOC-free (or nearly anyway) and the finish is lovely and hard-wearing.