He almost had to point out the motorcycle parked in the kitchen — by the window, behind the table and tucked behind a pile of electronic stuff. My radar didn’t scan that first and foremost.
It was the pair of wild boars’ heads that jammed my circuits, so to speak. The genuine taxidermy with the beady eyes and fur (and tongues) poking out from under the kitchen sink and appearing to be gnawing on the purple-painted pipes — that was the eye-grabber as I accompanied my host through his vintage flat in West Town, on the near West Side.
“Those are from a [local] bar, when it went out of business. They just threw them out,” says Brian Bonebrake, 42, who cracks a boyish grin but clearly is not the boy next door.
He is an artist. A painter, to be exact. Oil on canvas.
He is also an unchained spirit, which is critical to any understanding of his home.
Bonebrake does things like “equatorial travel,” in which he takes off for places foreign and southerly (for months at a time) and “follows the summer” with just a pack on his back.
And things like grinding the avocado paint off his 1970s-era refrigerator to turn the finish into something he calls “poor man’s stainless steel.” Or working till he drops.
It is not uncommon for Bonebrake to pull several all-nighters in a row, painting with abandon — caught in a typhoon of creative energy — and then drop equally long and hard onto his floating metal bed or the hammock outside in the yard. His friends refer to the yard as “Little Havana,” given the colorful jumble of stuff out there — a car carcass; three other motorcycles; ferns from his (deceased) grandmother’s yard; and a restaurant-grade cooktop, among other things.
For the record (of which he is duly proud), Bonebrake is a self-supporting artist. He never has flipped burgers or poured coffee to make ends meet. He has, though, seriously dabbled in the homemaking arts, which we will explain later.
But for now, for this record, we add another curiosity to Bonebrake’s resume: that of being Home&Garden’s Modern Man, second up.
Bonebrake (who is not married, but is seriously involved) made the cut, quite frankly, because we were seduced by his wild ways. And, yes, we’re still talking decor here.
He has managed to turn his non-conformity (and notable lack of tidiness) into a design style that is at once playful, experimental and irresistibly interesting. It is a style that happens by chaos.
(Note the loose river rocks “planted” in heaps in the living room — which is actually his painting studio — filling in missing floorboards. Yes, all those loose stones are hazardous. And, yes, we loved it.)
Somehow, that chaos works from a visual standpoint.
And it does a functional one too. With virtually no interior walls and all furniture on wheels so Bonebrake can push it out of the way to create big, open spaces perfect for painting his large canvases — this place suits him.
Of course, the fact that he is an artist helps.
He knows color and scale.
Imagine that . . .
He knows how to imagine the absurd and then build it — everything from closets on wheels to a shower enclosure made of glass blocks and tombstone remnants (pieces never made into grave markers).
And he understands creation is a process. His home is as much a work in progress as any of the dozens of canvases lining the floors and walls and stashed under the staircase.
Bonebrake owns a vintage brick two-flat (circa 1882). He lives on the first floor and rents out the upstairs, though he is easing out his tenants and expanding upwardly in the near future.
The location is West Town, just west of what is traditionally referred to as Ukrainian Village. It is one of those neighborhoods (with a checkered past) that has been rediscovered, given its proximity to downtown. It now is becoming hip and edgy to live here.
A decade ago, though, it was a different story.
“I bought this house [in 1996] for $114,000 because nobody would live in this neighborhood,” Bonebrake says.
At the time he was a recently minted artist (originally from Colorado) with a graduate degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in his pocket.
Upon his graduation, a Chicago couple who bought a painting from Bonebrake (and who now are good friends) gave him, perhaps, the biggest break of his career. They let him move into the garden apartment of their home for a year — rent-free. That allowed Bonebrake to paint, sell and stash enough money to buy digs of his own.
Which led him here, “to the worst neighborhood closest to downtown,” he says.
Bonebrake is so unrestrained on this cool spring morning of our meeting and touring of his place that he dares to add this about the time he first laid eyes on his home-to-be: “All I saw was a building I could afford. If buildings didn’t stink like . . . and look like hell, I couldn’t afford them. . . . It smelled like a building I could afford.”
With similar olfactory sense, Bonebrake picked up four other disparaged buildings in equally iffy neighborhoods throughout the city over the next four years, back in the mid- to late 1990s.
He had worked construction, when he was a student and during the summers of his young adulthood, when he was an amateur and professional skier in the U.S. and Europe. He had learned everything from demolition to installing cabinetry and flooring. So his idea was to rehab these buildings (virtually by himself) and turn them into rental apartments that would bring him income — and the freedom to be an artist.
“Now, no matter what happens [with sales of art], I can just duck,” says Bonebrake, noting that the rental income covers his expenses and cost of living.
`Flair’ follows function?
So let’s talk about that living — in this 2,200 square feet he calls home.
“If you notice, nothing around this house has flair,” says Bonebrake, who is commandeering the bean grinder and the espresso maker in his kitchen, the heart of the place.
There are 14 colors of paint on the walls in this kitchen — and not all applied in nice, even strokes. The maple cabinets (which he designed and built) are cerulean, a deep sky blue. And illuminating the inside of his refrigerator is a strand of Christmas tree lights.
And did we mention the nine world globes in this room alone? Bonebrake insists he doesn’t collect them; people just give them to him.
But please do not confuse all of this for “flair.”
“The house is divided up into eat-work-sleep. And that’s it,” Bonebrake says. “There is no couch. . . . There is nowhere to lounge. I take [several] months off a year” to travel and watch the sun rise and set and otherwise relax.
And indeed, while sipping a cappuccino medley (his special blend of beans) and downing the Italian cookies he furnished, I am alerted to the obvious.
Bonebrake’s home is a machine-for-living-to-paint.
There is no place to curl up. No conversation pit. No visible TV. It’s all about his artwork and creating a cocoon to support it.
Works in progress
The front two-thirds of the flat (where other people would have a living and dining room) is his working studio. It is disheveled and turbulent — overflowing with canvases in all stages of completion, paint, brushes, trowels and rags. Gooseneck lamps coil and snake from the ceiling. Bonebrake typically paints at night, after spending the day tending to his properties; light is essential.
The back third of the place houses the support functions — the live-space.
The kitchen is to the far rear.
There is one tiny but interesting bathroom.
And there is one small bedroom, offering up a Spartan bed and a couple of metal cabinets on wheels. They are Bonebrake’s idea of closets.
Interior walls are few and far between, save for those enclosing the bed and bathrooms. Bonebrake, who did nearly all the demo and reconstruction work solo over the course of four years, downed all the walls shortly after he moved in.
It was the “first thing I did, since the stench [of the house] was so bad,” he explains. “All the walls came down to the brick. All the ceilings came out, all the windows came out, all the flooring came out.”
Instead of recreating the honeycomb that existed, Bonebrake went for loftlike openness and 10-foot ceilings. He superinsulated his cocoon, installed radiant heat and freed the boarded-up windows, giving him more generous light.
He made all the furniture-on-wheels (including the rolling pantries in the kitchen), most of it in lightweight carbon steel.
He made the steel bases housing his Thermador cooktop and the double sink.
The rustic concrete sink in the bathroom is his creation as well, as is the mosaic tile floor.
Says Bonebrake, who recently hosted several Art Institute-sponsored day tours of his and other artists’ homes: “It’s like a base. I’m most comfortable here. . . . Sports were a window of youth. Travel is about opportunity and when you have the money and time. This is for keeps.”
– – –
MEET THE MEN
Here is our lineup of Modern Men:
Next
June 27: Meet Paul Berlin, a 43-year-old entrepreneur (he has his own life insurance business; divorced; father of two), credits the 1996 movie “Ransom” for kick-starting his domestic style. Taken with the slick, elegant apartment inhabited by the main characters, Rene Russo and Mel Gibson, Berlin went to town on his own digs — some 4,000 square feet in the former Mayfair Hotel in the Gold Coast. Berlin first worked with a designer and then went solo to turn his condo into an oasis of urban chic, complete with modern millwork, art, a piano and a 200-pound marlin.
Other upcoming stories
Thomas Foertsch: Buy low, sell high — the options broker in Foertsch, 40 (and single) steered his domesticity down the right path. He bought a unit in an old graystone in the Gold Coast — and then rolled up his sleeves and got to work, turning the rough into a diamond with new lighting, crown molding and even wainscoted walls. Foertsch sold that place, bought a second in the same building and found yet another gem up his sleeve.
Parker Lienhart: Passions can’t be explained always. And so it goes with Lienhart’s insatiable desire for all things 18th Century. Muskets to maps to mirrors to furniture — to a certain classic colonial house in Clarendon Hills where this 43-year-old art director lives with his wife and three children and where he has labored-in-love to get everything period-right — down to the hand-forged rose-head nails in the floorboards and the bed hangings he sewed.
Previous stories:
Cary Zartman: “Well-designed stuff can be for everyone. IKEA and Target have certainly taught us all that,” says this 38-year-old (single) art director, who is nothing short of Everyman’s hero when it comes to decorating on a budget. (See the March 28 issue of Home&Garden.)
— Karen Klages
