NYLON - January 2009 - (Page 72) rogueʼs gallery THE GUGGENHEIM’S BRONW HER MUSICIAN-CARPENTERYN KEENAN AND BOYFR MICHAEL POWERS, HAVE TURNED IEND, THEIR LOFT INTO A RUSTIC, CARRIA HOUSE–THEMED OASIS. BY JOSHUA GE LYO PHOTOGRAPHED BY GLYNIS SELINA ARBN. AN Bronwyn Keenan, former owner of the Bronwyn Keenan Gallery in New York City and current associate director of special events for the Guggenheim Museum, met her boyfriend, Michael Powers, in Austin, Texas, at a Terry Allen show. “I went backstage with a friend after the concert and there were all these longhaired dudes who looked like Texas outlaws,” Keenan remembers. The two of them ended up standing next to each other, and decided to head over to a local bar. They closed the place down that night, and two months later the couple moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, together, and rented a 1,000-square-foot loft housed in a converted theater. The apartment is on the ground floor, and it doesn’t get much natural light. “It can be dungeon-like at times, but early on, we said, ‘Let’s treat this like a carriage house,’” Keenan says. So they bought antique-style, four-filament Edison bulbs for the ceiling to give off an amber glow, and have candles burning almost constantly all over the apartment. When working with the large open space, the couple had to get creative on how to produce separate areas without actual walls. Powers had recently worked on a restaurant, building tables, and when the old floorboards there were ripped up, he brought them back to their apartment. He created a free standing, six-foot-high structure with the beat-up slats, stacking them horizontally with small gaps in between, mimicking a stable door. The structure functions as a bedroom divider, and has enough depth to serve as a clothing closet. The kitchen continues the theme—if the apartment really was a carriage house, then it would have one hell of a garden out back. But the countless bowls of produce and stalks of fresh herbs in vases strewn throughout the space actually come from the Amish produce market located right around the corner. They’re kept out in the open on a large, ancient-looking wooden counter. “It’s actually a prop from Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway that I found on Craigslist,” Keenan admits. That site and eBay are Keenan’s go-to sources for furniture. “The trick is to keep it local, to avoid shipping costs, and enter key words like ‘rustic,’” she divulges. One of her best finds was a pair of South American prayer chairs with cowhide seats that sit clockwise from top left: a drawing by enoc perez; south american prayer chairs sit underneath a marlene mccarty flag that represents “blue states” only; a mari eastman painting; the living room; the couple and their dog, sally; a windowsill of miscellany. 72 nesting
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