It’s Been a Long Time Comin’

Posted on April 14th, 2010 in Blogs by Giesla

I’ve been in business for eight years. You probably know this by now because I think I’ve said it in at least a handful of posts.

So yeah, eight years.

Three years ago I moved into my fantastically awesome apartment with the hopes that I could serve the needs of my customers by having a place that they could come to. And I hung up my art on the wall and cleaned obsessively and opened the door for the Saint Paul Art Crawl and had cheese and wine and was excited. And…inevitably, the art had to come down for art fairs. And papers piled up on the desk. And I couldn’t keep the place customer worthy because I lived there and I can be really cluttered and messy sometimes. (Yes, Mom, I know. Quit laughing.)

Art fair after art fair went by and numerous customers took my business card and when they saw my address asked me, “oh is that your store?”

Nope. It’s my “studio”. Which is my apartment.

Which is where my kind of a pain-in-the-butt dog lives and my dishes sometimes sit in the sink. Ugh. No, you can’t come by. I have to super clean first. And I’m tired. And all my artwork is in boxes for art fairs. I really really appreciate you wanting to buy something, but can’t you just do it online so you don’t have to see that I have organizational issues?

The initial intent for my awesome apartment fell flat. (It’s still an awesome apartment, though.) I couldn’t have open hours because it’s a secure entry building and I can’t prop any doors open. I could have open weekends, but it requires me to put a deposit on a community space and putting displays up and taking displays down. Everything was just inconvenient and not working right.

I thought I could do live/work. And I can. I just can’t do live/work/sell.

Enter my epiphany this year.

I need a store.

I can’t afford a store.

But I need a store.

Driving past all of the “for lease” signs around town made me A) feel really bad that so many businesses were failing and B) excited that maybe I could get a store that I could afford. After looking and looking and looking and realizing most of them were very much out of my price range or not in the neighborhood I want, I found it.

A listing buried in the nooks and crannies of the interwebs for the Northwestern Building in Lowertown Saint Paul. It made my heart sing.

Saint Paul is my love. Lowertown is an artists’ haven.
I could be amongst the awesomeness.
THE AWESOMENESS!

My boyfriend (who will eventually be sharing the studio) and I went to look at spaces. They were great, but not amazing, until I saw this one. There was old architectural detail (which I ADORE) and it was really big. Perfect for us to split the space.

The angels sang, the heavens aligned…..it. was. perfect.

And now it’s mine.

Come along with me as I document my journey of making this space a place I adore even more than I already do (except the paint….ew….)! And soon, a place for you to shop!

If you’re not a fan on Facebook, you should be! I’ll be posting a lot of the pictures/video there. If you don’t have Facebook, no worries. I’ll be posting updates here as well!

To all my customers, past, present and future…..THANK YOU!!