When Jacquelyn Miccolis opened her “small shop with a big heart” Sparkles n’ Sawdust on Argyle Street in April, she had high hopes for helping local artists sell their creations.
But the familiar first rule of retail — location, location, location — decreed that by the end of the year, she’d be making other plans.
The shop was filled with a varied and brightly coloured array of unique artwork, crafts and clothes, much of it made by artisans with physical or mental health issues that prevented them from keeping up with the demands of regular retail outlets. But being one storey above street level, over the downtown block’s bars and bistros, limited the number of curious browsers and casual shoppers necessary to keep the register ringing. The immediate area’s ongoing construction and parking issues didn’t help either.
Miccolis knew she had to make a change, and after discussing possibilities with her community of artists and customers, she took note of the relative shortage of accessible and affordable art classes in Halifax.
At one end of the spectrum there are courses at NSCAD that require a dedicated financial and time commitment, and at the other, there are art classes for kids. But she found there’s not a lot in between.
“There’s nowhere you can go and take a recreational art class that’s affordable, inclusive to everybody and just for fun,” says an animated, enthusiastic Miccolis over cup of custom brew at the nearby World Tea House. “The demand is there, we started asking around among friends and family, and everybody said yeah, that was something they’d be into.”
Through the store, now dubbed the Sparkles n’ Sawdust Art Centre, she’d established a network of artists who were eager to share their skills. She’d also amassed a social media network of followers from which she could gauge interest in different kinds of classes and workshops.
Jacquelyn Miccolis arranges items in the Sparkles n’ Sawdust Art Centre, featuring work by many makers not found elsewhere. – Tim Krochak
Plus, she could still maintain a boutique that’s open when classes are taking place, covering a variety of forms and techniques at a rate of one to three per day.
“Right now, life drawing is full every single time we have it, so we have at least one of those per week,” says Miccolis.
“Macrame usually sells out within a couple of hours; macrame is a thing right now, it’s come back strong and we have a great instructor. … She left her job because of issues with anxiety and depression, but macrame brought her happiness, and she found her way to our little shop, and she’s doing classes at least once a week.”
Switching from daily retail to a service-based outlet also frees Miccolis up to work on other things during the day, including work at the Halifax Seaport Market, freelance web design as well as marketing and hosting networking events, rather than trying to fit those activities into a weekly daytime schedule.
“Now I have a better balance of life, and I’m going to keep going with it and see what happens. We had some holiday classes and holiday markets that were a big hit with decent attendance and everyone making sales,” she says.
“The boutique sold for a lot of the artists who have stuff there, like a woman from Cape Breton who couldn’t find anywhere local to sell her jewelry. She has some physical disabilities and needed a source of income, and I offered to put it in the boutique, and she said it was just sitting in a box under her bed, and sent it down with her sister.”
The latest steps for Sparkles n’ Sawdust include hosting yoga classes dubbed The Art of Movement starting on Saturday, Jan. 4 — combining movement and drawing while on the mat — and blacklight life drawing with models in neon body paint.
Some classes have proved more popular than others (a crochet class didn’t generate the kind of interest that Miccolis had hoped for) and the downtown location still has issues in terms of noise from the street and music from the businesses below, which aren’t ideal when you want to hold nighttime yoga or meditation sessions.
She’s already looking around for a new space that better serves the new model of Sparkles n’ Sawdust when the lease is up this spring, and hopes to make an easy transition that suits participants who’ve found a welcoming, inclusive space to express themselves and stretch their creative muscles.
“Some people have told me that this provides something they can look forward to, or it’s a rare chance to get out of the house,” says Miccolis, who’s glad the business can still help others, like a yoga instructor who had recently moved to Halifax from Toronto and was having a hard time getting settled.
“She came to my record painting class, and we just connected instantly. She saw the course online, she wanted to meet people and doesn’t really know anyone here.
“Every single class, someone tells me they just moved here, and it’s heartwarming to me just to think that Sparkles n’ Sawdust was where they wanted to be because it seemed welcoming and like a place they could meet people
“That’s just what I wanted to create, a space where anyone could feel welcome, from all walks of life.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
