Artist Lisa Purdon, owner of CosMod Inc Studios, 717 E. 22nd St., sells vintage furniture and knickknacks at her store and turns them in an art installation while they’re on her shelves. She had success operating a similar store in Brooklyn, N.Y., before moving to Lawrence.

A model interior featuring vintage furniture at CosMod Inc. Studios. Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo

Several glass figures including Beethoven and a Buddha congregate among others within a wooden tray. Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo

Purdon took documents containing her personal information, shredded it and then twisted strips to string together to form giant webs. It took six months to create a physical representation of her personal identity.

Lisa Purdon collected documents among the debris from the September 11 World Trade Center attacks, and put them in zip-lock bags. They were on display in her Final Friday exhibition.

A wooden bed frame with textile works that have little pink ships. Purdon cut the ships out of a blanket from the '40s that ripped down the middle the same day she and her husband agreed to end the marriage, a casualty of 9/11.

“I can sell anything.”

With a confident demeanor, Lisa Purdon states this matter-of-factly standing among a seemingly unorganized industrial garage packed with antique collectibles, paintings, furniture and vintage and kitsch odds and ends. It had been a little over a month since the April Final Friday opening of CosMod Inc Studios, her new business at 717 E. 22nd St. that is part vintage furniture store, part installation art gallery and part creative art studio.

“My stores have always functioned as art studios, approaching the work as an ever-changing, evolving art installation, only people are allowed to touch it, study it, buy the parts, everything is for sale,” Purdon says.

To the outsider, this space may come off as a hoarder’s headquarters, Purdon says laughing, referring to the various ceramic dishes on tables, Nixon prints, stacked suitcases, a mid-century furniture display, chairs that need to be refinished piled against the wall, and shelves of lamps, old keychains, glass figurines and signs.

But to Purdon, everything is connected.

As a trained painter, printmaker, scenic designer and digital artist, she sees the connections among colors of every part and piece or even the political humor in placing a limited edition, signed vintage ceramic car in front of a Frankoma 1972 GOP mug on the table.

“To me everything is collage,” Purdon says. “Taking disparate things, making sense of them.”

At the heart of her work is home and identity. The entire room functions as an art installation of objects collected over time that could be found in any home. This connects directly to her work as an interior design consultant. Putting a price tag on all the items in the installation will empty out the space for the next exhibition. She also enjoys refinishing furniture and rewiring lamps for clients who gravitate toward those items at CosMod.

“I try to help people find what they’re all about,” she says.

As she’s doing so, she’s exploring her own self through various realms of art.

Modern living

CosMod Inc isn’t the first of its kind for Purdon.

Graduating from Kansas University in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in painting, Purdon set off to New York and spent five years as an DIY artist before pursuing a master’s degree at Pratt Institute. At the same time, she was managing a small business in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, a place known in the ’90s as a vast wasteland full of creative energy and opportunity for budding artists.

The high-end shop called Cosmo Modern functioned as a vintage shop with light fixtures that would sell for as much as $10,000. At the shop, Purdon served as a personal shopper (one of her clients was Scarlett Johansson), arrange the store’s items much like installation art, and create her own art.

Her carefully arranged vintage store items caught the attention of several publications, including New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Martha Stewart Living. Cosmo started renting out props to various television shows like “Queer Eye” to “Big Man Eats.” The store was also used for Chanel photo shoots, among many others.

“It’s insane because overnight you’re absolutely inundated with customers,” Purdon says. “We starting getting that kind of press and we never went after it. I just approached it like art, not a business.”

After many successful years at Cosmo Modern, Purdon moved back to Lawrence in 2012 to take care of her mother when she became ill with cancer.

“Talk about being yanked and having to reinvent life,” Purdon says.

Journey of an artist

For the most recent Final Friday — one month after the pop-up store’s opening — CosMod was of a minimalist gallery aesthetic. In honor of the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, she shared the day through her lens.

Living in Brooklyn in 2001, she and her then-husband Kirk Garrett saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. They went down on the ground within two days after Sept. 11 with their 18-month-old daughter, Coy, to investigate the wreckage.

Purdon collected fragments of financial documents, a piece of the World Trade Center building and other remnants of the day. Returning to their apartment, they were covered in dust and debris. She put the items in sandwich bags and then into a box she wouldn’t open until just recently for her latest exhibition.

The space showcased Purdon’s journey as an artist before and after the attack. During her time at Pratt, her focus turned to creating works that showed the fear of identity theft in New York.

“I was noticing there was a lot of anxiety,” she says. “People were shredding everything. Like you would see bags and bags on the streets overnight.”

Purdon took documents containing her personal information, shredded it and then twisted strips to string together to form giant webs. It took six months to create a physical representation of her personal identity.

At the height of identity theft anxiety, the 9/11 attack halted everything, including her work, which was forced to move in another direction.

“There was this explosion of information,” she says. “It was out of control.”

Portfolio books hold newspaper clippings of shocking headlines, photos from the ground and other documented reminders Purdon found in the box for viewers to flip through.

Inside CosMod, a wooden bed frame sits nearby with textile-work placed on top; nearby, a little pink ship appears on an apron, gloves and several other items. The ships were cut out of a blanket from the ’40s that ripped down the middle the same day she and her husband agreed to end their marriage, another casualty of 9/11.

“I was like, ‘This blanket means something,” Purdon says of that day. “Oh my God, talk about trying to make sense out of something.”

Accompanying the display, Purdon wrote a poem about their separation.

“Two people in the same space passing each other like ships,” she says. “One person goes into the kitchen, one person leaving the kitchen. It’s just that horrible feeling when something is slipping away.”

This exhibition is about rebuilding when life throws a curveball, which is a recurring theme in her work.

“I respond to my environment because environment is everything,” she says.