Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2022 i DesignSTL

IT’S THE MIDDLE of May, one of the busiest months of the year for families with children, and the state of my kitchen reflects how hectic life is right now. Like other working moms I know, I spend a lot of time during the day shuttling between the kitchen and my desk in the living room, taking a break every couple hours or so to unload the dishwasher, and reload it from breakfast before my son and daughter return home from school. By this time of year, my kids have tired of their upstairs study nooks. They now spend more time hanging around the kitchen table, studying for finals and completing projects for their classes. Our custom wood table, which I still love for its cozy oval shape and warm…

Beneath the beloved and bustling Winslow’s Table is The Cellar Shop. The new space, which opened April 16 in University City, is owners Tara and Michael Gallina’s answer to the popular eatery’s retail business. “When the indoor dining room was closed during the height of the pandemic, we used the space for a retail shop. It did very well, but the intention was always to bring it back to the dining room, ” says Kara Flaherty, director of retail and beverage. “We tried to integrate the two, but we were so busy serving food that the retail kind of disappeared. Shopping the shelves over guests who were dining didn’t really work.” Turns out, the team had been standing above the perfect space for years. Measuring 1,200 square feet, The Cellar…

AS A LAND manager of the Kennedy Forest in Forest Park, Catherine Hu must identify plants at various stages of their growth cycle. The role has inspired Hu, 28, to paint images of some of those plants and flowers in order to learn more about their shape, color, texture, and other characteristics. In September 2021, she began selling the paintings through her company, Sedges Have Edges Art. Although the business is relatively new, Hu’s passion for nature is not. She’s had her hands in the soil since she was a little girl, helping her mother tend the home garden. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a master’s degree in conservation, she completed a graduate project at Shaw Nature Reserve in 2017. ‘When I started in the conservation field,…

THE LIVELY PATTERNED mugs, plates, pitchers, and vases that artist Caitlin Heimerl Allen brings to the table speak to her close relationship with nature and her love of color and pattern. Fat blossoms and leaves wrap in and around easy-to-hold mugs. Trilling birds sit tall on pitchers. Fish swim in a dinner plate lotus pond. It’s not hard to see why her vibrant tableware wins hearts and Best of Show awards at craft fairs and markets across the country. The girl who grew up in California’s Topanga Canyon came to St. Louis when she was in middle school. “My family moved here so that my brother and I could attend Principia School, ” she says. “My mom taught German and later English there for over 20 years.” Allen graduated from…

A LOCAL ENTREPRENEUR’S imagination and ingenuity has yielded a thriving design business. Our Local Wallpaper Studio, run by Taylor Smith and Casey Hermann, specializes in custom wallpaper designs printed on an innovative peel-and-stick material, eliminating the mess of traditional wallpaper. Smith’s husband, Jason Gorris, does custom vinyl work for the automotive industry and owns two vinyl printers. Two years ago, Smith realized that some of the newer types of vinyl on the market might also be perfect for use in the home. She tested the material by printing a design on it to produce her own wallpapers for her son’s bedroom and, later, her office. Friends and family members who saw the finished products wanted designs of their own. Smith launched Our Local Wallpaper Studio in October and now prints…

DURING HIS YEARS as a community engagement specialist with the STL Vacancy Collaborative, an organization with the mission of reducing vacancy in the city of St. Louis, Ronald Jones repeatedly fielded the same questions and concerns from residents, which all boiled down to this: What should be done about abandoned, dilapidated houses and vacant lots? Despite a desire to do something, citizens had no idea about how to address the problem. “A lot of these neighborhoods kept having the same issues, ” says Jones. “You had vacant houses where residents didn’t know how to get in contact with the owners.” As a member of AmeriCorps Vista from 2019 to 2021, Jones assisted the STL Vacancy Collaborative and the Community Builders Network by attending neighborhood association meetings and connecting residents with…

REAL ESTATE, CONTRACTORS, ARCHITECTS IN THE HEART of The Hill, a storefront full of colorful displays stands out amid the shotgun houses, restaurants, and Italian groceries, drawing in passersby. This sleek modern space is the first show-room and retail store of So iLL, a maker of rock climbing holds, shoes, and lifestyle wear owned by husband-and-wife team Dan and Hannah Chancellor. The Hill storefront opened in October 2021, but So iLL has been building a worldwide reputation among climbers since marketing its first climbing holds 15 years ago, when Dan and his brother, Dave, were students at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. In a rental house they shared, the two built their own climbing wall of holds that they poured by hand at the kitchen table. Soon they were hiring employees, developing…