I was tired when I got to Sprout for my shift yesterday, but it ended up being a fairly nice shift, mostly due to various customer interactions. The young man who made a horror-themed card for his girlfriend (he worked on it for at least half an hour), the two tween girls who sat down at the card-making table after their shopping and proceeded to make cards for at least 45 minutes, chatting the whole time. Just fun to watch.
Another young man bought that first pic, a collage botanical hanging piece — yay! I wasn’t sure those would sell, but now I’ll make a few more. I like making them; it’s meditative, deciding where to place each component.
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I hope he won’t mind if I talk a little about our interaction. He was in my little booth looking around for a while, and I popped over from the cashier’s desk just to say, “Hey, this is my booth, if you have any questions, let me know.” I always hesitate a little to go say that, because when I do, sometimes people seem to freak out and quickly leave the booth. But he’d been looking for a bit, so…
…and he had earpods in, so he took them out and I repeated it, and then he responded, and we started chatting about the incubator project, and it turns out he’s wanting to change careers and become a jeweler, so we started talking about silver clay, which I’m excited to try once I sell a few more things (because the raw materials are expensive), and it was all very nice…
…and then he said something along the lines of, “You know, when I’m in a new place, I usually wait to see whether anyone approaches me and how they interact, because I’m not sure I’m welcome. I’m happy to spend a little more money to support local artists…”
And it just made me sad. Because he was a young black man, and an artist, and here we were in a space that was full of artists, and he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome. Kind of broke my heart.
Anyway, we exchanged contact info, and if I ever open up a little multi-artist shop in Oak Park, maybe he’ll come be a vendor there. He’s just starting his artist journey, so we’ll see how it goes.
This world we live in. Sigh.
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On a cheerier note, I brought some nice items into the store (if you want one of the Pinky-Winky hydrangea paperweights, let me know…). And I’m really happy with the new packaging for the candles — I think it’ll be nice for people to be able to walk in and just buy one all wrapped and lovely.
