Cultivating order in chaos theory
by Whitney Warne

Todd Thelen’s past collections have included antique microphones, 300 rolling pins, transistor radios, and more than 200 aprons. Transforming his obsession into a profession, the UI graduate is now the owner of Artifacts.

The entrance to Artifacts is crowded. Vintage bar stools and lawn chairs line the front of the aging, well-kept building. Mannequins dressed in beaded ’70s garb stand majestically in the display windows with glitzy brass lamps filling the spaces between. A barricade of polished furniture rises to the ceiling two steps inside the door, the pieces stacked one on top of another in a precarious but miraculously well-balanced arrangement. No space remains in this world of ordered chaos. A lively voice calls out from behind the formidable stack of furniture, “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

Artifacts, 331 E. Market St., a coveted local treasure, is one of many small businesses nestled on the North Side. The owner, Todd Thelen, stands behind the counter in the back corner of the store. He is tall and sturdy, with short hair specked with gray. Shelves and spinning jewelry displays filled with costume beads and metal medallions rise up on either side of him. Trendy square tortoise frames rim his eyes. Sapphire-jeweled cufflinks accent his long-sleeved purple button-down shirt. Cufflinks are just one of Thelen’s many obsessions.

“I feel like I’m rescuing things [by collecting them], saving them from the landfill,” says Thelen with a wide, toothy smile. “I just think they’re beautiful.”

Right now, he’s rescuing studio pottery. Before that, it was antique microphones and transistor radios. At one time, he accumulated more than 200 aprons, 300 rolling pins, and 100 old recipe boxes, full and empty. Some collections remain; others are filtered through the store or sold on eBay to make room for the next mass of stuff.

“Our foyer [at home] was supposed to remain uncluttered, but now it’s shipping and receiving,” said Eric Dean, Thelen’s partner. Dean could pass as Santa Claus, albeit with cooler spectacles. The couple met at a gay brunch in Iowa City in 2001 and bonded over a conversation about art and mid-century furniture. Dean spends his workdays at the UI as the chief curator in the Office of Visual Materials. Both men’s jobs are artistic and organizational in nature, but each constructs space in separate ways. Thelen and Dean each designate rooms in their house to fill and decorate, polarizing the difference between the distinct viewpoints.

“[Todd] tends to hide things. He squirrels them away under couches,” Dean said and laughed. When Thelen moved in with Dean five years ago, it took 52 pickup truckloads to transfer all of his treasures into Dean’s abode.

Both agreed that a provincial childhood fed Thelen’s need to collect. Growing up in a poor farming family in South Dakota taught him to dig for the necessities at an early age. His mother took him to garage sales and auctions to buy furniture for the house and secondhand clothes for the kids.

“We didn’t have toys, so I collected rocks,” he said without a trace of self-pity or resentment. Now, he supports himself on his love of collecting. While pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking at the UI, he went to auctions, buying entire tables of items, then reselling what he didn’t want at consignment shops.

“The first major thing I got was a sterling silver plate from Goodwill that I paid $1 for,” he said. “It turned out it was a piece of 1776 English sterling from London.”

Thelen sold the plate for $300 to a consigner in Boston while visiting a friend.

“It paid for my plane ticket and got me hooked.”

This continued through his eight years in art school. When Artifacts opened under its original owner in 1994, Thelen
started consigning there. Five years ago, the owner offered Thelen the chance to buy the business.

“At the time [of the offer], I was selling on eBay. I had three months to come up with the money to buy the business, so I just purged,” said Thelen, hands waving. “I got rid of so much stuff in my house.”

He came up $1,000 short after selling most of his possessions. When he asked his bank of 15 years for a loan, it refused.

“I came home that day, and he was on the bed crying,” Dean said. “He thought his dreams were gone. He’d sold all his treasures and went through this monumental effort and then let one thing trip him up.”

Dean took him to a different bank, and the loan was approved immediately. Thelen had it paid off a week later. Now, he spends five to six days a week at the store. He wakes up at 7 a.m. to do his daily rounds at thrift shops and organize his new finds among the crowded shelves.

Artifacts opens at 11 a.m., and he spends the rest of the day chatting with customers and consigners. He addresses many people by name and tells interested guests about the pieces they’re looking at. He seems to have an endless mental library of artists and movements pertaining to his collections.

With the economy on a steep downward slide into the unknown and a push for conservation in all areas, consignment shops are becoming a trendy monetary and energy-efficient option. According to the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops, there are more than 25,000 thrift stores in the United States, with sales climbing approximately 30 percent over last year’s business.

Artifacts is no different. Under Thelen’s management, the store’s business has steadily increased every year, in equal part because of his hardworking philosophy and the shifting economic mindset.

“When the store is doing well, Todd’s doing well,” Dean said. “He wants to make people happy through his passion.”
On his days off, Thelen goes to auctions with Dean and scours the racks at Goodwill, but most of his objects are obtained through consignment. When Thelen took over Artifacts, he had around 40 consigners. Now that number exceeds 400, with most treasures being carted in by people cleaning out their houses or residences of deceased family members. The store’s second story serves as a vault for the rest of Thelen’s expansive collection, along with a storage unit he keeps off site.

“I was a collector before I was a dealer. It’s my obsession,” he said. “It’s what I do in my free time: buying, collecting, cleaning, and sorting. I don’t have many other hobbies.”

He notes his loss of personal time but immediately says how much he loves the store and the people he gets to interact with every day.

“I’ve made many friends [through the store]. I’m lucky, because there are so many people that I meet; I can be choosy.” He pauses for a moment to reflect, “Is that weird to say? That’s kinda weird.”

About the writer Whitney Warne is a senior at the UI majoring in journalism and photography. Not only does she enjoy writing about Todd Thelen and Artifacts, she frequently spends way too much money there, slowly building her own collections of jewelry and antique picture frames.