I grew up in a town north of NYC and spent most of my free time as a 1980s teenager tromping around the West Village and the Lower East Side, soaking up culture on foot, by visiting small stores and art galleries. I sometimes joke that stadler-Kahn, my shop/gallery hybrid in Philadelphia is an attempt to recreate the creative industry I saw in those storefronts.
As stadler-Kahn has developed over the last four years I’ve realized that it performs several different functions, it is a design laboratory for my own work, a social space for my friends and the artists and designers who show their work here, and (for some of my customers) a place to be surprised or delighted or educated by work that is new to them. For my younger artists and customers I feel that I am giving them a link to a more improvisational, less processed way of thinking.
stadler-Kahn is happily, purposefully, layered and complicated. For most people it takes at least three passes around my small space to take in all the different objects and works of art. I am always working to create an experience of discovery, coupled with human connection.