Running a serious business in a Very serious way
It’s a well-established fact…
…that ARTspot is one of the coolest spots in downtown Edmonds(1). That’s said not as a business owner, but as someone who was eight years old when the Wishing Stone opened a store in Edmonds down by the waterfront and there was finally something interesting to see in the early 2000s. I grew up in Edmonds(2). Despite traveling around a bunch and considering myself a somewhat worldly person I was always perplexed in my earlier twenties that I somehow always ended up back in Edmonds. I think it’s because I actually really like it here? Edmonds is really special to me for many reasons. One of the big reasons is the kernel of wonderful weirdness that lives in the community of artists that have made Edmonds their home(3).
To anyone outside that community, the arts may seem like a foreign concept reserved for others. The terrible truth, though, is that someone you know, and probably even someone you love, is an artist(4). And artists are weird. The weirder the better. Weirdness helps you find comfort in taking the risk of creating something genuinely awful. If you’re already weird then what do you have to lose? It’s ARTspot’s mission to provide artists with the tools and expert advice to find success in what they’re doing, but I also view it as an integral part of what we do here to encourage taking comfort in weirdness.
Just a normal guy doing normal things in a normal way.
Salvador Dali Walking an Anteater through Paris (1969)
To pivot the subject slightly, in the winter of 2021 we had all been weathering the COVID-19 pandemic to the point where the new normal felt pretty normal. It also kinda felt like we were still trudging through a swamp that fewer and fewer people wanted to acknowledge. It had been a weird time, but not in a particularly good way, and I hadn’t really made art or felt any creative drive in months by then(5). I was working at the art store, which at least afforded me the joy of being around other creative people and sharing in their joy, but it wasn’t a great time for me(6).
My background in the arts is in costume design, which is all about nudging and pushing viewers’ perceptions for one reason or another. I was stuck in a major rut, so I decided to nudge my own perception as a viewer of myself.
Wouldn’t it be fun to get really good at roller skating? (7)
So I’ve been wearing roller skates around the store almost every day for a year and a bit!(8) I started very slowly and cautiously after closing while running inventory reports, and to date I’ve never collided with a person or fallen on a display. My black Impala(9) skates, even when they were unadorned at first, were a great icebreaker for anyone coming into ARTspot with a serious attitude or expecting a serious store staffed by serious people. We take creativity seriously, but a big part of that is embracing the weird and wonderful.
These are my skates as of today! February 6th, 2023
Subject to change at an artistic whim. I could have taken a better photo of them, but I didn’t want to take them off.
By now, I’ve used POSCA acrylic markers(10) to cover my skates with more and more bits. Quotes from David Bowie and Ai Wei Wei(11), a Sex Pistols logo, and a guillotine for no reason in particular(12). They all wear off because the canvas in this case is something that gets used hard and regularly, and the only thing I always replace just the same is the bright yellow and pink of the Pistols. Acrylics are pretty durable, but if you think I skate hard at ARTspot, you ought to come out to the Lynnwood Bowl and Skate sometime for an 18+ night(13).
(1) Not for lack of competition! It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about Edmonds as Deadmonds, and I think that’s only partially because of my advancing age. Though I must say there’s still nobody down here that sells Pokemon cards, which is what I primarily thought was cool at age 5.
(2) And Lynnwood a little bit. And what I think was unincorporated Snohomish County when I was really little, but I’m pretty sure there’s a Park & Ride and a Fred Meyer there now. I know it’s just going to get more pronounced as I continue to age in the same location, but it blows my mind how much this area has changed. There were horses down the street from my first house in Edmonds. Horses! In Edmonds!
(3) It’s lowkey very cool that downtown Edmonds was marked as the first Creative District in Washington. I think that opened up some funding for further cultural development. With all this development, I’m really hopeful that people from all walks of life will find ways to visit Edmonds, contribute to the culture here, and then hopefully help to enrich wherever they call home.
(4) It’s a pillar of the ARTspot philosophy that everyone has a creative side and a right to be able to access it. It may not take the form of visual art, but we love it when it does!
(5) I think the last bit of fun I had making art for a long while was back in April of 2020 when the business I was working at at the time (not ARTspot) was compelled by the state to send its workers home on lockdown as nonessential. I ordered, assembled, and painted a custom 3-D printed miniature of Darth Vader for a tabletop game I played hoping that I’d be able to play with my friends soon and impress them all. We’ve still not been able to get back together for a real game night.
(6) And I’m the author here so my feelings matter.
(7) Like, really good. Like Gene Kelly in It’s Always Fair Weather levels of good. I think about this routine a lot and marvel at how flat the street is despite being pretty sure it has to be a 1950s MGM soundstage. If any readers have ever attempted to skate a set of quads down an Edmonds sidewalk, you’d have a new appreciation for well maintained pedestrian infrastructure.
(8) Taking off my skates at the end of the day has become the worst part of any day. To go from gliding and swooping around with little effort to manually plodding around is such a wid shift. I haven’t needed to rearrange anything at ARTspot to accommodate my skating, but I totally have started to view the layout of things as a series of arcs and straightaways I can maneuver through, each with their own speeds to be able to stop nimbly to avoid something or someone.
(9) I am, unfortunately, not sponsored or affiliated in any way with Impala skates, but they do have some very cute designs and pretty good prices considering how well they’re built. If you or anyone you know may work for Impala or a similar roller skate-making company, please consider making more of your styles in sizes larger than a US Women's 9. All my fellow Amazonian transfemme skater babes will thank you and sing your praises until our deaths.
(10) I initially wrote this entire post as an Ode to POSCA, which felt a bit too much like a smelly sales pitch. That’s not really the goal of these posts, but if y’all ever want to listen to someone wax poetic about POSCA like Lieutenant Commander Data talks about his cat, please come in and speak to either myself or Vincent.
(11) “The purpose of art is the fight for freedom,” is a powerful reminder that art and creativity is not just for looking pretty or for making people happy. While curating the Intersections show last spring, I made a point to ask for and include art that I knew may spark an uncomfortable feeling for some viewers despite being shown in a setting that is ultimately safe for them. Art can be so many different things! Whether you’re making it (and you should) or seeking it out to take in through your senses, accept that it doesn’t have to look good for it to be good. I’m a huge supporter of making bad art badly!
(12) I’m a bit of a dirty anarchist, which is shocking I’m sure, but it puts me in an awkward position of also being a business owner raised up into the petite bourgeoisie by merit of knowing a lot about art supplies and coming from a family with access to enough capital to have started a business. I have a guillotine painted on my skates and also sometimes wear a guillotine necklace gifted to me by a friend when I accepted an ownership role to remind me that nobody is inherently better than anyone else and that everything is built on the efforts of others. Maybe all business owners, big and small, should have a little guillotine somewhere to remind themselves to keep humble and honest about the work they do.
(13) If you, like me, exhibit what the young folks are calling Main Character Energy, then maybe the 18+ Night at the Lynnwood Bowl and Skate is the place for you! As a certified freak, I’ve never felt less weird than when I’m surrounded by a bunch of people in their 20s-60s who all choose to go roller skating on a Monday night.