Featuring the Opening of Krik Krak Shop and Haitian Gallery

The re-opening of Amplified Art

And the City Market Studios Art Show

(including the work of Steve Coad, Doug Pietrowski, Jeannette Stevenson, Judy Stines, Melissa Poppe, Susan Skryziki, Bishop Daniels, Will McEwen, Johnny Dickerson, Paul Cory, Natasha Parker, J.D. Horwitz, and Andre Giovina.)

July 6, 2013

Make a deep conditioning hair milk for all hair textures with fresh coconut meat, milk and other rich ingredients. The rinse helps with restoring color treated hair or chlorine damaged hair. Take home your pampering treatment and share it with family and friends. For more info visit www.scentsuosity.com/infopages/events.html

Our Kickstarter Project just launched today and we’re super excited!!

After scripting, filming, editing, adding graphics, and tweaking, we can now reveal our Kickstarter video that was at least 25 hours of painful, yet exciting labor of love.

Click to Watch Video (Bonus: Bloopers at the end)

In order to grow our product line, meet increasing demand and reach a greater audience, we need your help in raising $6600+ through Kickstarter.

Click here to become a supporter now.

The sooner you pledge, the better we look -and that makes new fans eager to join the party. Please pledge early!

(TIP: We don’t get your money until the project is successfully funded -that’s less than a month from now.)

Thanks so much for your continued support. Please share with your friends!

Click here to become a supporter now.

Much gratitude,
Lisa & Andrew

Art Eclectic

June 7th, 6pm to 10pm

This show features the work of dozens of different artists. Au Courant Magazine is hosting their first anniversary exhibit and showcasing the work of talented artists from around the Triangle. Rhonda Meyers and her students are also displaying their human and animal portraits in a show titled “Fins, Flesh, Fur and Feathers.”

Rhonda Meyers and work by her Students

Work by Saba Barnard in Au Courant Magazine Anniversary show

Art from Au Courant Anniversary show

Artwork hangs from June 7th until June 28th

Have you walked into one of our shops and wanted to recapture your experience?

Well, you can now. Take a virtual walk into any of our shops with this link:

View Larger Map
Happy shopping!

Make Blake Street Shops part of your walk this evening in downtown Raleigh.

We’re excited to see the weather warm up and the night clear up for proper fun. While you’re busy working the 9 to 5, we’re bringing in a new crop of artists to showcase their work in our common areas and available studios.

Visiting Artists

Bright Realism – Galina Stockstill

and Pam Hedrick

Modern Cubism – Joe Wright

Animals and Other Drawings – Levy Vargas

and Acrylic and Oil – Thurmond and Dave Marvin

Live Music
Raiford Street – A lively folk / rock duo

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/560301423990015/

Special Shop Events:
Lisa Stewart Designs | lisa-stewart.com
Build-Your-Bag
You’ve bought a bag (or given a bag) that doesn’t work just quite right. It doesn’t fit your laptop along with the necessary gear that needs to tag along. Now, you’re in search for that perfect bag. You want a bag that works -for you. Come to our shop and help us design a bag specially for you.

Make an appointment • Bring Your Gear
It’s that simple.

Jenn Hales | jennhales.com
Kickstarter Program: Raccoons, a Fox & an Octopus in the Bathtub
Ends on May 7th! Help Jenn Hales create three new whimsical offset prints.

Hoop & Stick: On Himself

 
I’m often asked, “Why collage?” I can offer a few different explanations, ranging from that one night on mushrooms, to my frustration with wet media, or even my theory that originality is an illusion and that everything is a collage anyway. I tend to tailor my response to whomever is asking the question. Sometimes, I’ll turn one of these explanations into an artist statement or a blurb for some future manifesto – one which I’ll indulge notions of writing in my more megalomaniacal moments. While any of my reasons can suffice on their own, it is only when they are all pasted together that they provide an obvious case for me gravitating almost exclusively toward collage as an art form.

    Pasted together – see what I did there?

I’m something of a generalist – of course I have more acute interests – but overall, I tend to be spread out in regards to what I choose to explore and later utilize in my art. I’ve gone from pen and ink illustration, to screen printing and hand cut stencils, to wire sculpture, to charcoal portraits, and so forth, until I finally settled on collage. My themes are just as varied, but I often settle on philosophical, social, or emotional matters. Of course, even then it is difficult for me to articulate whether I’m being didactic, suggestive, or maybe just posing a question. Sometimes I’m exploring an idea to which I don’t subscribe, but to which I’m not necessarily expressing doubt. I’ve come to decide that this is okay; after all, we love fantasy, but most of us don’t believe in magic and dragons. In this way, certain themes like teleology, existentialism, and immaterial consciousness play out like fiction; they are great storytelling devices. Put another way: if god is my magical dragon, then I’m not always interested in slaying him, as he provides a new thematic well from which I can draw context.

I inwardly cringe when I’m asked about the meaning of a particular piece. Of course I could launch into an explanation of what I was thinking at the time, or what scrap x means when juxtaposed with scrap y, or even give general run-down of the theme. These are all acceptable and expected ways of approaching the question, but I hate giving those explanations. My reasoning is two-fold. Superficially, I worry about sounding pretentious, snobby, or worse—like a stereotypical head-in-the-clouds, all-talk-and-no-work bohemian poser. Underneath that, however, I would really like my work to be read differently by different people. Oh sure, I want to gently lead an individual toward a particular train of thought – and I do that through my title and iconography – but all the air is let out of my balloon as soon as I’m asked to spoon-feed my connotations. I am a firm believer in the postmodern, insofar as art and design is concerned; meaning is subjective, and often viewer-created. This is not to say that an artist can’t potentially create something that means the same thing to a large multitude of people, but often the reading of a piece of artwork or design is culturally (or sub-culturally) bound. To my knowledge, the only universal communication tools that we have as a species are numbers. Everything else has the potential to be subjectively understood. As an artist, I can choose to fight against that, or embrace it. Friends, it is far easier – and much more rewarding – to embrace ambiguity.

— Hoop & Stick

The city of Raleigh is hosting the fabulous World Beer Fest and closing many of the streets and Moore Square that will prohibit customers (that’s you!) from getting to our shops and enjoying our handcrafted goodness.

If you persevere- and make your way down to City Market some of us will be open (Studio 10 + Patina Collaborative + Guest Artist Studios) however many of us will be staying home tomorrow.

We regret any inconvenience that this may cause you (this sucks for us, too) but please know that we will be open on Tuesday, April 16th at 11am for your shopping needs.

Have a fabulous weekend (it’s supposed to be gorgeous) and have a brew for us!

Love animals and need to give new life to a room? How about a graduation or wedding gift? Support Jenn Hales with her Kickstarter project and take advantage of her limited-time offers.

Raccoons, a Fox & an Octopus in the Bathtub

Fund Jenn’s Project

About Jenn
Jenn has three new paintings that she’s really excited about and wants to create a run of prints of each of them.
Read About Jenn

About Jenn’s Kickstarter Project
Jenn needs your pledge to help fund a print run for 3 prints based on her original art.  The printer she wants to use is Joseph C Woodard -a family run business. No pledge, no print.

Pledges start at $5 and run up to $1,450. The rewards are sweet, so make sure to make your pledge today (before they’re all gone) so that Jenn can fund her project!

Project ends Tuesday, May 7.

Watch Jenn’s Awesome Video

Fund Jenn’s Project Now.

Thanks for your support and tell your friends!