Hipso facto
Hipso facto
By Rick Kogan
Copyrigh by The Chicago Tribune
Published July 15, 2007
The man in Osgood's photo, peering through one of those old-fashioned gizmos once used for eye tests, is named Brandon Nelson, and he is yet another of the creative characters who call Three Oaks, Mich., home.
A native of St. Charles, he first visited southwest Michigan in 1995, taking a first wedding anniversary trip from Chicago with his wife, Lisa. She and her family had been vacationing in the area for generations. Indeed, her parents had a house there, and though the young couple was in the process of digging up the dough to buy the three-flat in which they had been living in Wicker Park, they fell in love with a house in the town of Sawyer.
"Buy it? It would be a risk, an immediate change in our plans and in our lives," says Nelson. Without jobs in the area or any idea of what work they might be able to find, they took the leap.
Nelson had a background in art (he graduated from the School of the Art Institute and was an apprentice to the late Chicago sculptor Eldon Danhausen) and music (he played drums with the rock-fusion band Disarray). He was also a collector of "odd items," he says, "starting with stuff I found in my grandmother's hot, musty attic."
He got a job with Lakeside Antiques, eventually taking part of the store's space to sell his own things and many more that he found at house and estate sales.
His business began to grow and so, in 2002, he took another leap, leasing a former video store/tanning parlor that had been vacant for a year in Three Oaks. He named it Ipso Facto and in it he displays an ever-changing array of antiques, art and, it's fair to say, curiosities and oddities.
"I don't specialize in anything," he says. "I trust my response to the things I see, and I love strange stuff that I've never seen before, physical fragments of history."
Lucinda Hahn knows Ipso Facto. She is a more recent transplant to the area, a former Tribune staff writer who has been editor for the past year of Lake Magazine, which covers all things southwest Michigan and places nearby.
"It's a great store and fits in nicely with what I think of as the funky feel of Three Oaks," she says. "It's such a tiny little town, and it's not terribly polished or done up, which is nice. It's just casual and, yes, funky. But it's packed full of offbeat stuff of very high quality." She went on to mention all sorts of things, including the organic soup at Froehlich's, the movies at Vickers Theatre, B Books and the live performances at the Acorn Theater.
"I love it up here," says Nelson. "We took a risk and we have been able to make a good life." He and his wife are now raising two young daughters, and he also has a new band, an electronic folk group named Squirm Orchestra, whose musicians are all from the area.
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rkogan@tribune.com
By Rick Kogan
Copyrigh by The Chicago Tribune
Published July 15, 2007
The man in Osgood's photo, peering through one of those old-fashioned gizmos once used for eye tests, is named Brandon Nelson, and he is yet another of the creative characters who call Three Oaks, Mich., home.
A native of St. Charles, he first visited southwest Michigan in 1995, taking a first wedding anniversary trip from Chicago with his wife, Lisa. She and her family had been vacationing in the area for generations. Indeed, her parents had a house there, and though the young couple was in the process of digging up the dough to buy the three-flat in which they had been living in Wicker Park, they fell in love with a house in the town of Sawyer.
"Buy it? It would be a risk, an immediate change in our plans and in our lives," says Nelson. Without jobs in the area or any idea of what work they might be able to find, they took the leap.
Nelson had a background in art (he graduated from the School of the Art Institute and was an apprentice to the late Chicago sculptor Eldon Danhausen) and music (he played drums with the rock-fusion band Disarray). He was also a collector of "odd items," he says, "starting with stuff I found in my grandmother's hot, musty attic."
He got a job with Lakeside Antiques, eventually taking part of the store's space to sell his own things and many more that he found at house and estate sales.
His business began to grow and so, in 2002, he took another leap, leasing a former video store/tanning parlor that had been vacant for a year in Three Oaks. He named it Ipso Facto and in it he displays an ever-changing array of antiques, art and, it's fair to say, curiosities and oddities.
"I don't specialize in anything," he says. "I trust my response to the things I see, and I love strange stuff that I've never seen before, physical fragments of history."
Lucinda Hahn knows Ipso Facto. She is a more recent transplant to the area, a former Tribune staff writer who has been editor for the past year of Lake Magazine, which covers all things southwest Michigan and places nearby.
"It's a great store and fits in nicely with what I think of as the funky feel of Three Oaks," she says. "It's such a tiny little town, and it's not terribly polished or done up, which is nice. It's just casual and, yes, funky. But it's packed full of offbeat stuff of very high quality." She went on to mention all sorts of things, including the organic soup at Froehlich's, the movies at Vickers Theatre, B Books and the live performances at the Acorn Theater.
"I love it up here," says Nelson. "We took a risk and we have been able to make a good life." He and his wife are now raising two young daughters, and he also has a new band, an electronic folk group named Squirm Orchestra, whose musicians are all from the area.
-----------
rkogan@tribune.com
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