by BETH BERGMAN, Owner
Wet Paint
Wet Paint happily celebrates our 30th anniversary this year. It’s a great time to reminisce about where the business started and our various stages of development. We’ve done a pretty good job of changing with the times in a limited geography. At the beginning of the 70’s and 80’s, I’m sure we were the smallest art store in the Cities. Now, we’re still not the largest in size, but most definitely the grandest in reputation. We’ve watched Grand Avenue transform from a neighborhood shopping district to one of the most successful retail areas in the country. The current struggles between local, independently owned businesses and national chains are due to this success.
And I sometimes have to ask myself, Is Grand Avenue all dried up? Is Selby the new Grand? Will Trader Joe’s make Excelsior Boulevard in Saint Louis Park the new trendy retail vortex? Can a store owner on Grand Avenue ever sleep?
Thirty years has also changed many of the supplies we sell. Graphic design went from a hands on, rub down, product-centric process to quick keystrokes on a computer. Just when I thought every old dried up piece of dry transfer lettering had been sent to the dumpster, rub down screens are discovered by teenagers drawing manga cartoon strips. Just when paint makers figured out how to make oil paint water miscible and safe for the 21st century classroom, adult artists want to go paint outside (pre-photography) and paint on wood panels (pre-Renaissance). And the calligraphers that always wanted to work real vellum (animal skins) are now testing their letters on canvas.
Can an art supply retailer ever sleep?
Over the past 30 years, I have heard plenty of pretty bad puns about our name. The most common joke in reply to our phone greeting, “Wet Paint,” is, “Is it dry yet?”
Too many cups of coffee (hence the preoccupation with sleep) drive me to ask, “What does this mean?” Are we out of touch? Is our staff too old? Why don’t they make some “new” art supplies? Are stores out of date? Should we just exist in cyberspace? Are our customers too old? Where are the twenty-year-old artists? Will they come to Wet Paint? Will they come to Wet Paint when they’re 40? What do they want? Is Wet Paint dried up?
To answer some of those questions, here’s an example, of how Wet Paint is painting our future. Last week, I, the fifty-something owner of Wet Paint, am outside, under a tent, during a rainstorm in our drought summer, watching the young artists from Juxtaposition Arts test a new line of professional grade spray paint. One of these artists starts painting a big blocky “M”, with shadows to make it three-dimensional. He holds the spray can in a way I would never hold a spray can. But his arm moves up and down and he builds the color onto the canvas and I realize I have seen this before.
It is the same sensitivity as a Kolinsky brush on watercolor paper. It is the same experience as bristles stroking canvas. It is the same motivation as capturing an expression through a charcoal line.
To watch the moment an artist leaves you behind and becomes one with their art is a gift no words can do justice. And mind you, you don’t see this everyday, even at Wet Paint. But to be part of the support to get there: to help select the color, the paper; to encourage through the struggle; to share in the end results; and to congratulate on the successes, makes the sleepless nights worthwhile.
Too many metaphors? Sure. All dried up? Not Wet Paint. Not with the creativity I see coming through the door.
