From Salvage to Wedding Day Hooray, the Indie Craft Experience has become well known for helping crafters around Atlanta showcase their talents and creations throughout the year. Its most popular event, the ICE Summer Market, is coming up this weekend. With hundreds of handmade creations, the first-ever Art Swap and two days of food, music and photo booth extravaganza, the market will be a great way to kick off the sure to be hot summer.
Here, CommonCreativ catches up with the co-founders Christy Petterson and Shannon Mulkey about the beginnings of ICE, their favorite projects around Atlanta and how do they balance it all.
CommonCreativ: Tell me about your inspiration to create the Indie Craft Experience.
Christy Petterson: There are a lot of festivals in Atlanta with artist’s markets but I never felt like my creations fit in. These markets were either too high end or too country. In 2003, I heard about the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago from the online craft community I was a part of on GetCrafty.com. I knew this was the type of show that Atlanta was missing. Shannon and I met in October 2004 at Young Blood Gallery & Boutique, and we discovered that we both had a strong desire to create a great indie craft market in Atlanta. We started planning in January 2005 and came up with our name on the patio of Elmyr shortly thereafter. The first Indie Craft Experience was that June at Eyedrum.
CC: How can ICE help artists around Atlanta promote themselves?
Shannon Mulkey: ICE is the largest indie craft market in the Southeast. We have shoppers that travel from surrounding states to attend our markets. That’s great exposure! We promote our vendors any chance we get and partner with local organizations when we are producing our events. Community is key.
Christy: Our goal is to give artists and crafters an opportunity to promote their business and to sell their creations. They get to sell and promote at the event in their booth, but then we promote them by posting a vendor list with links to everyone’s site and a photo showing their work that stays on our site for months. They get to put promo items in the swag bags that we give attendees and we also give a vendor map to attendees with links to everyone’s sites. And because of the reputation we’ve built over the years, we get inquiries from boutique owners and the media asking about artists they should carry in their store or feature in their publication.
I also love when we get emails that say, “I talked to this crafter at your last event that makes letterpress stationary and she has brown hair and her booth was in the middle aisle. Can you help me get in touch with her?” I love those emails because it’s from someone who attended our event, I can almost always figure out who they are talking about and it’s great for the artist to get business from our show after the show.
CC: Who are your favorite Atlanta creatives?
Shannon: There are so many! I’m a huge fan of R. Land and Jessica Swift for her amazing patters and rain boots. Also, Kelly Teasley and Maggie White of Young Blood Gallery & Boutique. Atlanta is bursting with talent.
Christy: It’s really hard to narrow it down. Right now, I’m particularly taken with 4 Sarahs…Lodato, Watts, Keys and Neuberger. Sarah Lodato of the Atlanta Institute of Stitches & Crafts is a seamstress and paper artist who helped us design our first pop-up shop and has provided décor for several of our shows. She’s also half of the creative duo behind the AISC.
Sarah Watts of Wattsalot is an amazing illustrator and pattern designer. She designed our tote bags for our pop-up shop last year at Criminal Records. She did one illustration of a girl, knitting and hanging out with her kitty and another of a boy, listening to records and hanging out with his bulldog.
Sarah Neuberger of The Small Object is an artist I admired long before she moved to Atlanta. I include her in the “famous” category when it comes to indie crafters, she’s known nationwide. She makes unique wood figures, rubber stamps, paper products and many other creations based on her doodles.
LeahAndMark.com
Sarah Keys of Ibby & Rufus creates amazing embroidered art and
really unique jewelry. I have a pair of earrings she made and I always get like 10 compliments from complete strangers every time I wear them!
CC: With the upcoming summer market, what are some things we can look forward to – vendors, activities, etc?
Shannon: I am really excited about Tuttalou press from Seattle. They make amazing letterpress, recipe cards and calendars. Sunny Little Studio from Missouri creates blank canvas plushies that you can customize. I love walking through the show after everyone has set up because each show is different. I also hope to pick up some new art at our Art Swap. The premise is that you bring a piece of art and take home something new. I can’t wait to see what shows up! And of course, tasty treats from Ursa Minor, Good Food Truck, Bookie macarons, King of Pops, music from DJ Zano and the photo booth courtesy of Leah and Mark. You don’t want to miss it.
CC: What’s your favorite DIY project?
Christy: I love printing, relief or screen. I make a lot of notebooks, since I’m a notorious list maker. And I tend to always go back to making jewelry even if I get away from it for a while. I love wearing earrings. I think because my parents made me wait until I was 12 to get my ears pierced! It was a huge deal. We went to Claire’s Boutique at North DeKalb Mall, which was called Market Square at the time. I remember I had found a pair of clip on earrings in the dress up clothes that my sister and I played with and I converted them to earrings for pierced ears before I even got mine pierced. Waiting until 12 was agony!
CC: How do you balance your jobs with ICE?
Shannon: Christy and I both have day jobs to pay the bills. I am an arts educator and creative director during the day. I am passionate about teaching and making. I think if you are following your dreams, everything falls into place. I do have weeks when I feel totally overwhelmed, but I think that’s natural. Relative balance is key and being able to say no. You can’t be everywhere at the same time!
Christy: ICE is growing and I’m very happy to focus my attention on it. While I wish I could do it all, I know I can’t. Maintaining at least a tiny bit of balance is important. I think the key is prioritizing. No one is a rock star in all areas of their life and if you have goals beyond a boring cycle of work-dinner-sleep-work-dinner-sleep, you have to find the time to make it happen.
CC: What’s the best part of working with Wedding Day Hooray brides?
Shannon: I love when people come to Wedding Day Hooray and find exactly what they are looking for. Sometimes it is the final element, the cheery on top that makes everything perfect and not something you can easily find in a chain store.
CC: What can you say about the Atlanta creative community from your experience?
Christy: Atlanta is a small big city. I love Atlanta because I’m never, ever bored — in fact I can’t make it out to all the wonderful art events that I would like to– but I don’t feel like I’m constantly fighting competitors. If you want to be that girl who starts a big, awesome indie craft market in Atlanta, you can be that girl, but you know whatever your thing is, you can be that girl or guy. When in New York or Chicago or L.A., you’re probably competing with a bunch of other people trying to be that person. I think there is a lot of enthusiasm in Atlanta.
Indie Craft Experience Summer Market will be held June 2-3, 2012 at Ambient Plus Studio.
