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From seeds sown after 9/11, Paper Petals has bloomed

Photographs by Mark Gilliland

Made in Fenton, Nancy Gronemyer’s colorful cards sell best in New York City. Hollywood just tapped her to create an invitation to a Screen Actors’ Guild Awards event. And with luck, her flowers will soon be blooming on such home products as wallpaper, linens and tiles.

Selling art is nothing new for Nancy Gronemyer. The daughter of E. J. Thias, architect, artist and longtime art professor, she started hawking her works at local art fairs when she was 5 years old, pulling in anywhere from $50 to $100 per watercolor.

After years of working in retail—creating windows that caused consumers to storm the stores—she decided to launch her own stationery company, featuring her artwork. For eight years, she squirreled away money to be able to quit her job and get her enterprise, Paper Petals, off the ground. Her timing? Terrible. It couldn’t have been worse.

Her first trade show was in Boston, September 9–12, 2001. “It abruptly ended [with 9/11] and I was stuck in Boston for three days,” Gronemyer says. “I lost about $7,000. Then when I got back, all the anthrax stuff started happening with the mail, and my products are tied in with the mail. It was like, ‘Do I go on?’”

She did. Her next trip, a gift show in San Francisco, turned the tide. “I found my first rep at that show, and I really started to get things going, despite the economy and small businesses going out of business based on 9/11,” she says. “I just kept going and didn’t give up.”

At first she tried art and vintage paper reproductions, as well as her own designs. The reproductions weren’t well received, but the intensely colorful renditions of flowers she nurtures in her back yard were. Aside from her work, she sells watercolor designs done by her father and cards featuring flower designs made out of cord by Japanese artist Gonzo Sekijima III.

The second collection of cards (now $3 each for the 5-inch correspondence cards and $2 each for 3-inch mini-cards) struck gold, and based on that success, Gronemyer has expanded Paper Petals’ line to include 24-by-36–inch gift wrap ($7 per sheet) and gift tags ($4). Soon she will be adding journals to the lineup. Since January, the line has been distributed by the Canadian company, Style and Papier Inc., which took her number of representatives from a paltry two and a half to more than 130. The papers are sold exclusively in more than 100 specialty stores, including such destination hotspots as ABC Carpet & Home, Kate’s Paperie and locally at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Anthropologie, Artmart, Geechi’s Florist and Pick Flower Gallery. Paper Petals’ products are also available online at www.paperpetals.com.

“I’m over the top with all this,” Gronemyer mutters with shock in her voice. Now in its fifth year, Paper Petals will turn a profit—its first. One beneficiary of the company’s success will continue to be its chosen charity, Angel’s Arms, a nonprofit organization that helps foster children who are siblings stay together.

And that profit money will help Paper Petals conquer the next mountain: “The home market, doing possible wallpapers, pillows, home fabrics,” Gronemyer says. “That is the next step.”

—Christy Marshall

From Bronzes to Bath Tiles

 Photographs by Susan Jackson

Asparagus fascinate Anne Chase Martin. The Clayton artist describes the vegetable with a reverence usually reserved for majestic mountains or shimmering sunsets. Her voice softens as she reflects on the asparagus' sinewy shoot: so strong it busts through the ground; so tender it snaps in an instant.

"Vegetables are not just about good health," Martin says, walking through her circa 1929 house and studio, where her sculpted asparagus, lemons and beets grace everything from furniture to sconces to cabinet pulls. "Vegetables are about beauty, too."

The beauty is in the particulars.

Whether a bronze sculpture or handcrafted tile, Martin's artwork captures a subject's particular gesture, attitude or movement. The muscular arch of the asparagus and the proud plumpness of the lemon adorn her dining room table and chairs. Inspired by American artist David Smith's "The Letter," the sculpted asparagus and lemons resemble the lyrical lines of cursive writing set against a static background.

Martin's taut craftsmanship has earned her awards, representation at art galleries and shows from New York City to Los Angeles, and a loyal following of clients who pay hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars for her custom tile work; bronze, clay and plaster sculptures; and sculptural pieces ornamenting furniture, gates and accessories.

Particulars are so important to Martin that she once rented a Black Rat snake to study while sculpting the reptile. Although her slithering houseguest required live mice for dinner, the artist believed rooming with a snake worth it.

"It was just a small, 20-inch snake but his forms were so powerful," says Martin, who studied art in St. Louis, Baltimore and Florence, Italy, and teaches at John Burroughs. Her work can be seen at www.martin.design.com.

Martin's tile work began during the late 1990s. Her mother was dying from liver cancer at the family's house. To make their surroundings more comfortable, Martin created bathroom tiles of Fifi, their beloved poodle. Each tile is a stunning relief. Together, the poodles undulate into one another like an intricate piece of lace.

A poodle. A snake. An asparagus. An eggplant. A rooster. Martin's art transcends the ordinary into the sublime.

—Kristina Sauerwein

Where Do I Go...To Get A Copper Cupola?

From cupolas to gothic dormers topped with whimsical weathervanes and fancy finials, copper has come back in style in St. Louis. Ken Berkel and son Greg aren't surprised. They claim it's a solid investment that lasts a lifetime.

The two "tinners," as purveyors of the metal fabricating trade were once called, work out of the same small Dogtown shop founded by Berkel's grandparents almost 100 years ago. "Grandpa and Grandma used to live in the back room," Ken says.

Berkel's copper, zinc and lead cupola creations rest upon architectural gems on both sides of the river--from the Grant's Farm Bauernhof to the French gatehouse at Belleville's Country Club Place.

"Nothing ages better than copper," says Ken. "These days it takes about 25 years to obtain a green patina. Before 1950, copper aged much faster because of sulfur-saturated rain from St. Louis' ubiquitous coal heaters." Today the Berkels sometimes mist copper with special chemical recipes to instantly create red, blue or green aged copper for those impatient souls who just can't wait.

At $5 a foot plus the cost of fabrication, St. Louis is once again flaunting a rich copper architectural heritage, just as it did more than a century ago. However, there is one major difference: The Berkels no longer sleep in the back room. They saved their copper pennies and purchased a fine home. Ken even put a cupola on top.

—John Pertzborn

Berkel Sheet Metal Co., 6631 Manchester, St. Louis, Mo 63139, 314-781-2702

DWR: Now Within Reach

If your springtime dreams are full of Le Corbusier leather sling chairs and Nelson Bubble lamps, rub the stardust from your eyes: Next month, Design Within Reach is opening a 5,000-square-foot store at 44 Maryland in the CWE (the old Greenberg gallery). For those not familiar with DWR (we are sad if you are not), they’re a Bay Area design company, a favorite with designers and famous for offering innovative, high-end modernist furniture at affordable prices. As Maryland Plaza’s first tenant, they’re a bellwether of things to come, says Sara Powers, Koplar Properties’ director of retail development. “St. Louis had a very strong online business with Design Within Reach,” she says. “That pushed it over the line, but they also liked the unique architecture, the vitrolite on the building.” Get a preview at www.dwr.com.

—Stefene Russell

Spring Landscape Cleanup

Just removing dead vegetation, clearing beds and adding a little fertilizer can make a world of difference to droopy-looking yards that have spent months frozen and hidden under moribund mulch, leaves or snow. For those who prefer more ambitious landscape cleanups, there are a number of area lawn and garden service companies more than happy to truck to your rescue. Aside from basic mowing or fertilizing, several of these companies will mulch beds or remove stumps; Horticultural Jobs Partnership will even do storm cleanup.

In addition to the cost of mulch, fertilizer and herbicides, many companies charge a flat rate per hour for labor. Some (e.g. Munsch Outdoor Maintenance and L.R. Walls) bid the cost of the job. Several pride themselves on their special services: Basile Landscaping and Lawn Care claims they'll take care of anything related to the outdoors, and Munsch Outdoor Maintenance's policy is to return calls within 24 hours. Though special services vary, all of these companies will come in and infuse life into your yard and flower beds, at reasonable prices.

—Stacy Frankenberg and Sarah Baicker