Dees Custom Art

About a week ago I noticed a business I had never seen before in the building just north of the former Chyrsler dealership. A year or two ago this building housed J&L Antiques, which is now downtown. The building still has a big sign for the defunct Chrysler-Dodge dealership. (How long do you think that will be there?) Now there two offices in the building. On the right is the office for Habitat for Humanity. In the front is Dee's Art Studio.

 

The sign on the door said that it was open from noon until 4pm, Monday through Friday.

  

Last Tuesday I was able to stop in. The owner of the shop is Dee Martin. Most of what she has displayed on her walls is older work that she did many years ago. She has only recently returned to painting in a serious way, and rather than paint and sell what she likes, she wants to do custom painting. In the window above you can see the picture of a motorcycle. She painted it for a man who was selling his motorcycle and wanted something to remember it. She also does houses, scenes, and just about anything but maybe not portraits. 

The wall is made of thin oak planks that her son made. He has a sawmill and sliced up the trunk of a dead oak tree.

  

She has just a small corner of the building. Her son is renting a larger section for storage. (I have a post coming along soon on storage.) Until recently she was renting a booth at Jasper Junction, and some of the things she was selling there are in her windows.

Below you can see the view from her window as she looks north on McKinley. If a truck failed to make the curve on McKinley, it could end up in her shop. (The guard rails would probably stop it.)

 

The intersection of Merritt and McKinley is an interesting location. It has a lot of traffic going by, and businesses have been attracted to it. However, when I go through this intersection, the curve makes me focus on the traffic, so I tend to ignore what is along the road.