Ryan Taylor and Nicole Kehrer were interested in buying an old church building. They wanted a place they could call home, and a place where they also could create art.
They found what they were looking for in western Illinois.
Unloved properties
Taylor said the couple from Denver, Colo., spent more than five years talking about buying an old church building. They spent three years actively looking.
“We had been looking all around the country for a church to give some love to,” he said.
Taylor said he’s read that two churches close in the U.S. every day, which adds up over the course of a year.
“So that’s 700 pieces of property, potentially like this, that are going unloved,” Taylor said. “And people don’t see that they could be something beyond just a church.”
He said they searched all over the country for a building they could give their love to for the rest of their lives.
“As you probably know, the cost of living in Denver is really high. So we just had our feelers out. We’re lucky to live in an age where the internet gives us access to every property available anywhere in this country,” he said.
Taylor said sometimes a building caught their attention, and they would fly or road trip to check it out.
Then, they came across one in Macomb.
“I actually rode the Amtrak out here from Denver 14 hours before I saw this place in person. We put an offer in before my wife had even seen it. After all the searching, this was the one,” he said.
Carpenter Gothic
The building had been St. George’s Episcopal Church. It’s on East Carroll Street, just off the courthouse square.
The original sanctuary space was built in 1895.
“This style of building is called Carpenter Gothic. I never heard that term before, but once I researched it, this is a very similar style to other places in this part of the country. Similar architecture, and the colors are also very important as far as that particular style goes,” Taylor said.
Taylor, whose background is in construction and architecture, said he will do some repairs to the building, but will maintain the reds and creams used on the exterior.
It’s a large space with 5,000 square feet above grade and another 5,000 square feet in the basement. The building includes an office and commercial kitchen.
Taylor said the former church section of the building will eventually be a gallery with limited hours. He said the former sanctuary is what attracted them to the building and brought them to Macomb.
“This beautiful, beautiful church. The woodwork. We’ve got 30 pieces of original stained glass. Not original to the date but original to the building,” he said.
“We look forward to being caretakers of this space for as long as this church is standing. And it’s been here 130 years. I think we’ve got some time.”
They closed on the place on Feb. 29, 2024.
Specializing in sofubi
The former sanctuary is also now his shop where Taylor works as a toy maker and toy painter. He specializes in sofubi.
“And that’s essentially the Japanese translation for soft vinyl,” he said.
These are hollow, soft vinyl collectible toys, often inspired by Japanese pop culture.
Taylor said the toys are popular overseas, especially in Tokyo and Hong Kong. And he said his toys are all original.
“They don’t really have a backstory. The thing I specifically like about the stuff I do is that I can sculpt a toy, and it can have the feel and the quality of a toy that maybe has been around for 40 years, it looks like it may have a backstory, but it’s really something that just came out of my own heart and soul,” he said.
Taylor said themed art is huge in Asia. It’s a good market for him, and he likes knowing his work is displayed on the other side of the globe.
“They’ll have something all the way from Macomb, Illinois, in Tokyo, and it’s really fun to be able to ship stuff all around the world and live in people’s collections like that,” he said.
Red Dragon Gallery
Taylor’s creations are currently sold under the name Ophelia Toys.
But they plan to transition to a new name: Red Dragon Gallery. It’s inspired by a red dragon depicted in one of those beautiful stained-glass windows.
“I think it’s about the most beautiful piece of glass I’ve really ever seen in my life,” he said.
Taylor wants Red Dragon Gallery to be an inclusive space. He said they hope to meet other artists who want to show their work and collaborate on projects.
Creating handmade toys
Taylor said the toys are handmade and hand painted, one at a time. They are slush cast vinyl, which is essentially a liquid plastic that’s poured into a metal mold.
“And then that mold is heated. The fellow that does mine uses molten salt. And that solidifies the plastic inside the mold,” he said.
It’s pulled out of the mold while it’s still warm. Once it dries and hardens, he can clean it and paint it.
Taylor said it’s a process that artists have been doing for 50 or 60 years.
Taylor did not study art. He went into construction, and through that, he picked up a lot about color theory and making things look nice.
“And then, I also do digital sculpting for people, which was pretty easy to pick up after my years of CAD and drafting background. Modeling is modeling. So, I was able to pick stuff up sort of on the fly,” he said.
“But yeah, nothing formal.”
Fans of smoosh-faced dogs
To promote his work around Macomb, Taylor has created a sofubi toy modeled after Western Illinois University’s mascot, the Rocky bulldog.
“We’re big fans of smoosh-faced dogs, and we saw that the Leatherneck was a bulldog, and one of my toys is modeled after our 15-year old pug,” he said. “So I took the Leathernecks’ colors, I took the purple and the gold, and I had 20 made just specifically for this town.”
WIU’s colors are swirled into the toys, and no two are exactly the same because they’re handmade and because of the way the plastic is marbled in the mold.
“I’ve been kind of stashing them around town with some notes hoping folks find them. These I’m kind of giving away in hopes that folks around town will see them and draw a little bit of interest to what I do,” he said.
He’s hidden them in places such as the beard on the Lincoln topiary sculpture outside city hall and in locations on the courthouse square.
The toys are for the finders to keep. They do provide a link to him on Instagram. At the time we talked a couple weeks ago, he had heard back from about half the people who’ve found the toys.
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