This week on First Coat I share an exhibition I have up at High Line Nine in Chelsea called Handmade Landscapes: Ocean Meets Sky. I also share four ways that retail shops can feature art in their spaces. If you want to learn more about the behind-the-scenes of this exhibition, read my studio notes blog post what I learned about putting together an art exhibition in Chelsea.

How to incorporate art in your retail shop:

1) Commission an artist to do a site-specific artwork.

2) Commission an artist to do a site-specific artwork.

3) Create a public-facing community art project

4) Make the whole store an art store -- create a blended experience for artwork and other items that are for sale.

What examples of art in retail spaces have you seen? Share at the comments below or email me at stephanie(at)distillcreative.com.

As a textile artist, I get most excited about incorporating textiles into a retail space or even a home. For more ideas of how to incorporate textiles into your home, check out this post I was featured in, From Crochet to Macrame: Experts Share the Best Ways to Incorporate Textile Into Your Home.

Looking to incorporate art into your retail space or business? Check out our Distill Creative art consulting services.

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LINKS

• Artwork by Stephanie Eche

• Fashion Design by Teddy Von Ranson

• Interiors by StilNY

• High Line Nine

• The Real Real mural by Cassie Griffin, 2021

• Rotating art exhibitions at Superfine in Dumbo, Tanya Rynd in 2020 ,

• Mural at Espresso Me in Brooklyn Heights by Bethany M Gardner

• Eckhaus Latta: Possessed at the Whitney Museum, Chelsea, Manhattan, 2018

• What Are You Looking For at Eche Verde, LES, 2018

• MomaCha, Manhattan, 2018

• Tictail Store (now part of Shopify), LES, 2017

• Story (now part of Macy's), Chelsea, 2018

Your Host | Stephanie Eche, CEO & Founder of Distill Creative

Stephanie Eche is an artist and art consultant based in Brooklyn, NYC.
Follow Stephanie on Instagram (@distillcreative or @stephanie_eche), Twitter (@stephanie_eche), YouTube (Distill Creative), LinkedIn, and check out her art website.

Support First Coat by backing us on our Patreon.

Learn more about Distill Creative’s art consulting services.

Are you an artist? Sign up for our Distill Directory and you’ll be considered for art commissions and future projects.

TRANSCRIPT

Stephanie Eche  00:00

Hey. Welcome to First Coat, where we explore public realm art and how it's made and why it matters. I'm your host Stephanie Eche an artist and entrepreneur based in Brooklyn, New York, I run Distill Creative where I curate and produce site specific art projects for real estate developers. I focus on creating more equitable and inclusive projects and I want to get more exposure for the artists and developers doing this work.  What does it look like when art is in a retail space? Hey, I'm Stephanie. If you're new here, and I run to Distill Creative, I'm also an artist. Normally, I'm consulting on projects like this, bringing art into a space. But today I'm going to share a project where I'm actually the artist on the project. I'm also going to share four ways that you can feature art in a retail space. First, let's check out Ocean Meets Sky.  We're here at Ocean Meets Sky, which is a pop up collaboration curated by High Line Nine featuring fashion designer Teddy von Ranson, me, Stephanie Eche, and interiors designer, StilNY.

If you're wondering where we are, we're actually in Chelsea. I'm right under the Highline, which is pretty amazing. It's been so cool to see people come through see my artwork, see the clothing and the interiors. And this collaboration has been a great way for me to actually plan artwork for a space specifically, and to be able to collaborate with other designers.

So let's take a look at the work.  The clothing is by local designer Teddy von Ranson, he produces collections sustainably in New York City, I was super excited to collaborate with him, especially on this super special piece. It is a blazer that Teddy designed. And I actually did some special woven pieces that you can see here, and then Teddy incorporated them into the jacket. So this was a really fun piece to do actually started my career out in the fashion world in menswear. It was kind of funny to do a full circle, and come back and work on the menswear piece. I did all of these in cotton and wool that I shibori indigo dyed, and then worked on a floor loom.  I think the blazer turned out pretty amazing. So that was one collaborative piece that we did. As you can see, the artwork is on the walls, but through this collaboration, it's also on the body. And I would argue that fashion is also art. So it's really a bunch of artists in this space. And then on the walls are some of my artworks.

All of this work was created specifically for this show. And it was all inspired by the theme of water. I'll link in the show notes to my art website, and you can see all of the artwork, it is all available for purchase.  Then we also have this collaboration with StilNY. StilNY creates these beautiful blankets made out of deadstock fabric. The collaboration that we did was that I used some of the waste from the blankets, which they're already using deadstock fabric so it's like double sustainable and created this weaving. I actually cut up the remnants and then wove them together with cotton, and also some shibori indigo dyed wool, which you might be able to see here and again, I have more photos of the artwork on the website, and everything is available for sale.  This piece was my original inspiration.

This is one of the first pieces I made using shibori indigo dyed cotton. I just really liked the effect that it made and creating a landscape using fiber. I got a little ambitious and decided to make a much larger piece. And I'm thinking a lot about the effects of water, with climate change how we use water, and how we could better appreciate and conserve water because it is one of our most precious resources and we are not doing a very good job right now in either conserving it or treating it well. And I also was thinking about indigo dye and the fashion industry and how much waste we have from dyeing clothes like dyeing jeans, but really dyeing any kind of clothing uses a lot of water. Those are just a few things I was thinking about when creating this piece but you can check out my artist statement on my website. I'll put the link in the bio and you can read more about what was inspiring me. 

This piece back here is probably one of my favorite pieces called Jubilee. And I just was really thinking about repetition, and creating imagery using a minimal selection of materials. And then these three pieces, I really wanted to create some freestanding sculptures that hang on a wall, and are also related to the same inspiration that I talked about earlier. 

It's been pretty cool to be in this space and have really interesting conversations with people who come by, and also see my work next to these amazing clothes. Ocean Meets Sky was curated by High Line Nine. And so High Line Nine actually found me and paired me with the other designers for this shop. We had to cover things like insurance and hired an art installer to install the work, we also have been managing the hours, so making sure someone's always in the shop. It's been interesting to see how art can live next to clothing and how it enhances the space because someone can come in and check out the clothes, look at the artwork, talk to me if I'm in the gallery, and learn a little bit more about the brands. 

This is a pretty traditional example of how to put art in a retail space. It's basically putting art on the walls. While there's also something else being sold in the shop, I'm going to share four other ways that you can have art in the retail space. 

The first way is to commission an artist to do a site specific artwork. I've seen some really great examples of this. And I'm going to share two examples that I've seen recently. So one is a tile mural installation at the real real at their shop in Brooklyn. They commissioned a local Brooklyn artist Cassie Griffin to create a mural using tiles. It was really exciting to see her work on the wall because you don't expect to see original artwork on a wall in a retail shop. You can see it works seamlessly in the space. Another pretty common way to bring art into a retail space is with a mural. This is a mural by Bethany M Gardner at espresso me which is a coffee shop in Brooklyn Heights. 

The second way you can bring art into a retail space is by having rotating exhibitions. So this is kind of similar to what we did at Ocean Meets Sky. One example is at one of my favorite bars Superfine in Dumbo. This is an exhibition by Tanya Rynd. And it was up in 2020 during the pandemic. We weren't spending time inside the bar, you could go in with a mask. And it was really cool to be able to see our at that time because there weren't a lot of places where you could see art. But in normal time, Superfine does rotating art exhibitions, there's always new work to see.  I really love it because you don't often see art in bars, and especially not in a really well curated and well displayed way. Another example is MoMaCha. MoMaCha was a cafe in the Bowery. This photo is from 2018. I actually don't remember who this artist was. But you can see they have art displayed within the shop within the cafe. And I believe it was all for sale. Another example is TicTail, which is also no longer around. But they were actually bought by Shopify. TicTail had a shop in the Lower East Side. They would do really nicely curated rotating exhibitions inside their shop, along with having a pretty well curated shop. They also had rotating murals on their roll down gate. So when they close the shop and put the gate down, they would have really fun things to see every every month or so would be a different piece of artwork.

The third example of having art in a retail space is to create a public facing community art project. One thing I did at a retail shop me and my husband used to have in the Lower East Side is we actually put up a sign asking a question on the storefront window and then we had post its and sharpies available for anyone outside to use and so you could write your answer to the question and then stick it on the storefront door. Obviously, if it rains, this won't work. But for some reason, it didn't rain during the time that we did it and it was amazing. It was really it was a really cool way to see what the community was interested in; to ask them questions and get answers and I highly suggest doing something interactive that is public facing as a community art project for your retail space.

The fourth example of how to bring art into retail spaces to make the whole store an art store. I think there are lots of examples of this where basically it's like is this art is this a store are these things for sale?, are they not for sale? I think the important thing when you do this is making it clear that everything is for sale if you want to sell things. Being in New York City, sometimes you walk into stores and you really have no idea what it is. Two examples I've seen in the past few years are Eckhaus Latta: Possessed, which was an exhibition at the Whitney. They actually had a store created in the downstairs gallery at the Whitney. And it was all of their designs. And they collaborated with a lot of artists to create different pieces in the store, like the cover for the room where you try on clothes, or the rug or the fixtures, and it was a really beautiful space. And I highly suggest checking that out. Another example is Story, which is now part of Macy's. Both of these spaces were up in 2018. And Story was a shop that completely changed every few months. So they were basically like a magazine in physical form. So they would pick a theme and then create the entire store around that theme, which I thought was so interesting. And one thing that I really appreciated about Story was that it was very clear that everything was for sale, it looked like a store. It just was around a theme. And so to me, that's a more artful way to do retail because you're actually being very specific about what you put in your store. And it's a limited time experience. Just like an art exhibition. You can only see it at that point in time, Macy's. Macy's now has a story inside of their shop and I'm not sure how it's doing but the concept originally came from story the store. 

I hope these ideas help you in thinking about how you can bring art into your retail space. And if you have any questions or ideas or just want to share your own thoughts, leave your comments below or email me at Stephanie(at)distillcreative.com. Thanks. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of first. If you like this podcast, please leave a review. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And follow us on Instagram at First Coat Podcast.