One-Stop Shopping

Most Kansas Citians chuckle self-deprecatingly at the idea of window shopping downtown. Too many storefronts aren’t just unseasonably devoid of sweaters and tea sets — they’re boarded up. But art peddling is alive and well, and downtown’s gallery-district windows offer joyful alternatives to the usual department-store fare.

Outside the Dolphin Gallery, a display showcases nine square canvasses evenly spaced to form one large square. The color scheme of beige, red and white is what artist Cobi Newton describes as “cautiously incongruous” — the colors don’t come together at all. The canvasses grab attention simply because they’re what people least expect to see.

Around the corner is the Dolphin’s other window display: Hesse McGraw‘s brightly colored light boxes, some showing photographs, others glowing red, yellow, orange or blue.

At the nearby showroom for EGG Design Studios, six streamlined, ergonomic chairs form a clean, almost spartan line in the front window. Ranging from the tall wooden chair with its subtly fanned back to the flashy red rhombus-shaped seat and back atop equally red legs, each attests to the endless search for the ideal sitting apparatus.

Not far from EGG, the Telegraph and the artist-run flower shop Canary and the Rose always have something for passersby to look at. From the alley, local artist’s-apprentice Dalton Carter looks through the glass and muses, “I’m dirty, I’m standing in an alley downtown, and I’m looking at art, drinking a hippie smoothie.” The smile on his face completes his thought; he is a satisfied window shopper.