Filling the Void

Hard times create opportunity for Issaquah’s budding arts community.

Photograph by Andrew Waits for City Arts.

Thanks to the economy, businesses weren’t exactly stampeding to buy the century-old Lewis Hardware store on Issaquah’s Front Street. So last month the upstart arts group artEAST was able to lease the place for five years, using the proceeds from a quickie fundraising drive that met its twenty-thousand-dollar goal.

“We raised that in ten days, in small bits,” says artEAST director Karen Abel. “It’s a vote of confidence in our grassroots efforts.” The arts don’t get much more grassrootsy than in Issaquah, where a town ArtWalk was started in 2001 – even though there was only one gallery. Now ArtWalk boasts a dozen-plus stops. And after what may have been one brew too many at the Issaquah Brewhouse in 2004, Abel and company decided to open an artists’ co-op gallery, which became the eighty-member UP Front Gallery. They hope to move across Front Street to the Lewis Hardware building on October 29, if they can pass inspection in time.

“The new space is 3,250 square feet, versus about 1,200 in the UP Front,” says Abel. And instead of sharing 175 square feet of teaching space, the artists will have two twenty-five-by-twenty-five-foot rooms.

“There’s explosive growth in the area, and there’s an unmet need for art spaces and art classes in the I-90 corridor,” says Abel. “We’ll be able to teach a lot of new types of classes: printing, fiber art, block printing, ceramics. We’ve got two jewelers from a place called Beads and Beyond that closed.”

Director Abel thinks artEAST’s new venture has more than the bad economy going for it. There’s the gridlock traffic as well. “People might want to take workshops and see exhibitions more if they didn’t have to drive to Seattle or Kirkland. They’d do it if it took them ten minutes instead of forty. Kirkland Arts Center is a long way for someone from Maple Valley.” Abel chuckles and adds, “I hesitate to say, ‘Yeah, bring on the tolls!’” •