THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX Combining creativity and business savvy can lead to lucrative collaborations and enterprises.
by Darin M. White, photos by Steven Hertzog
One of the most beautiful things about the city of Lawrence is that the world has come to us. This is second best to actually traveling to those other nations. As Mark Twain wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” As a local, even if you struggle with the influx of thousands of students every fall, the University of Kansas (KU) draws many of these students from countries all around the world. With this convergence of nationalities comes an influence of other cultures, including different, if not creative, ways of thinking, living and, of course, eating. 58
I close my eyes, I am in Paris, France, with my wife, Shannon, when I have the opportunity to not only show my artwork but curate the hanging of the work in the basement of a converted convent-turned smoke-stained discotheque-turned gallery. In my memory, I jaywalk across the street diagonally just off Rue de Rivoli and enter the café. I order the pastry and espresso, and sit at a table looking out onto the freshly rain-dampened street. I bite into the pastry, the delicate flakey layers crunching, covering myself in the bits of pixie dust and savoring the flavors, only to open my eyes and realize that I am actually in the 1900 Barker Bakery and Cafe, in Lawrence, Kansas. Owner, pastry chef and baker, Taylor Petrehn, is a four-time semifinalist for Outstanding Baker in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards. In James Beard’s words, “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” Prior to opening the bakery, Petrehn was a pastry chef in Kansas City and making bread as a hobby in his Lawrence home
