Sandwiches

ART BY ARTISTS WE KNOW: LISA KOWALSKI

Lisa Kowalski is a lively painter of lively paintings. Her output is awesome (scarily, intimidatingly so). Her paintings—oil-on-panels—show this relentless movement, with strong gestures and big colors. We're fans. Plus, she's perhaps the finest hostess in the city, with a massive, lovely loft (and a fridge stocked with deliciousness) and enough charm to make up for your complete lack. If it's first Friday or if she's hosting a show or an event, stop by and corner her for a chat. If you're boring her to tears she won't let on. But be forewarned: you will be humped energetically by Bodie, her Burmese Mountain Dog. Just try to enjoy the ride. Many more paintings on Lisa's site.

NIGHT PHOTOS OF THE DENVER SKYLINE (1)

Cole rooftop (20 Nov 09).

ROADRUNNER TO THE DAM

Sure, we gave the Denver Art Museum a Roadrunner before, but that was a bench and that time it was unasked for (and unappreciated, mostly). This time they asked for it, for their permanent collection in the Architecture, Design & Graphics department. This one here: our beloved Roadrunner in oiled MDF. The curator who contacted us had his pick of the Roadrunner litter and this was his choice (it's our favorite too). Well, flattering to say the least. Our hometown museum wants our chair? Of course we said yes. That was some months ago—some of the wheels at the DAM turn VERY slowly, imperceptibly so. Strange, since everyone we've interacted with there seems quick-witted, smart, and profoundly capable (including Mitchell, the Preparator—museum-speak for fluffer—who came to get the chair this week and graciously posed for the photo above). The whole DAM acquisition process makes us think of this Arthur Ganson sculpture—Machine with Concrete.

NO GRAPH

Some things are doomed from the start. Not doom-and-gloom doomed, just no-chance-they're-gonna-work doomed. Those things, if you were to graph them, would look something like this. A low-expectation beginning, a slow decline and a more-or-less steady low plateau to the inevitable end. All in a pretty, pleasant palette. Much of life is like this: doomed but lovely anyway. This graph charts the specific attempt a visitor made to ascend a ladder and get up on our storage container for a better photographic vantage. As you see from the graph, her attempt never had a chance (this image is made of the far-left slices of the photos of her ascent and descent). The full 100-image animation of the climb—like parts of life—was too dull (and too large a file) to post.

DAVID J. MCCAULEY FOUNDATION

We're small. Someday we'll be bigger but now we're pretty small. There are advantages to this: you can do a bit of everything in a small way and the these small things don't feel like they're taking away from anything big. And it's a good way to find out what you like to do and for those things to grow with you. For us? Making furniture, staying local, having a laugh. And sometimes doing a bit of charity—not enough though. All we did was donate these chairs to a fundraising auction. But if you donate after reading this—click on this link to the David J. McCauley Foundation—then the royal We have done a bit more. David's a super good guy, the cause is super worthy, and you need to help out where you can.

RECYCLING IS DOUBLEBUTTERY

We've known for a while that the steel we use in our furniture is mostly recycled since the mills that produce it use recycled scrap as their main feedstock. But we weren't sure to what extent until now. Turns out it's big. How big? Well, the flat bar we use for our line of powder-coated steel chairs and benches and for the legs on our Sheep end tables and credenzas is made from 97% recycled content, 85% of which is post-consumer. The sheet steel in our Armadillo tables and Turtle table bases? 70%. And of course the furniture is built to last, longer than you and longer than us. And if it ever gets crushed under a bus? It can always be recycled again. For the LEED-geeks among you, here's the link to the stats.

DB AND BDDW

We're both New Yorkers, at least partly. David grew up outside of Albany and Dexter lived in The City for 6 years. Of course Denver is home for us, no disputing that. We love it here and aren't looking to move anywhere anytime soon. But still, as much as we love our humble shop and our fair city, if you (yes, YOU) were to give us, say, $1.9 Million, on the condition that we use it to buy these here stone barns and move the DB operation to the Hudson River valley, sure, we'd hear you out. Assuming, of course, you brought by a six pack to grease the conversational skids (that's the rule around here). The barns were the headquarters and workshop of BDDW, the fine New York furniture company with the fancy SoHo showroom. BDDW makes pretty stuff that costs a pretty penny, but really, NYC rents and this sprawling idyllic spread for your workshop? Hmm. We're suspicious (and, yes, a wee bit jealous), sniffing a whiff of supplemental trust-fundy funding. Anyway, good for them and check the work. Lovely.

HAS THE BOULDER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT STAFF BEEN HOT-BOXING THE BUSINESS LICENSING OFFICES?

We're a furniture company. That's it. We don't want to sell anything else, period. And we wanted to try out a pop-up shop as a way to dip our toes into retail in a low-cost, low-risk way, taking advantage of a friend's offer to share a storefront at 19th and Pearl in Boulder for the balance of the year. So, being inclined to play by the rules whenever possible, we applied for our sales tax license with the City of Boulder and got this strange reply. Again, we sell furniture and that's what we spelled out, very clearly, in our application. What the fuck? Boulder is getting sticky at a stupefying rate, with the city trying to get a handle on the medical pot shops poking up like, well, weeds all over town. Is this the new boilerplate rejection letter? Just assume everyone trying to open a shop in the city wants to sell chronic? Sure, just a careless mistake, funny and no big deal. Strange, though, that a small furniture shop is verboten in that spot. Oh well, fuck it; we couldn't have staffed the thing properly just now anyway. No pop-up shop in Boulder. Next time we'll stick to Denver.