The owner of Purple Paisley Local Artisan Shop said that her shop helps local artists by “giving them a place to help create their success.”
Purple Paisley opened in 2019, right before the COVID lockdowns, but Loretta Helfrich and her team stuck it out, and they will be celebrating their fifth anniversary this year.
Right now, the shop has 76 artists from across the Greater Cincinnati region installed, and Helfrich described the shop to LINK nky as a “great little place for them [artists] to have their artwork for sale so the community can see what they do, but also for them to interact with the community.”
On the weekends, the shop offers art classes, and Helfrich said she encourages community members and artists to come, even if they aren’t taking the class, and just hang out.
“It’s a lot of good mental health going around,” said Helfrich. “If you’re sitting, focusing on some art, it’s very therapeutic.”
From paintings to nature photography to jewelry, pottery, mosaics and more, Purple Paisley has room for everyone’s art.
Beth O’Connor told LINK that she wasn’t sure Helfrich would want her pottery.
A registered nurse for 35 years, O’Connor began her pottery career 11 years ago after receiving a gift card from her son. After her first class, she said, “I just fell in love with it.”
Find things to do across NKY and a collection of our latest arts and culture reporting.
She was still working at the time, and after work, she would go to the studio and create.
“After a couple of years of doing this, I think I had given every person I know a mug or a bowl or something, they always said ‘ oh a gift from Beth, I bet it’s going to be a bowl or a cup or a mug or something’.”
That, she said, was just when she was going to the studio once a week. After retiring three years ago, she started making even more. “I’m creating these things that I love, but I’m like, ‘I don’t have any more shelf space’.”
Then she stumbled across Purple Paisley, first seeing the shop when dropping something off at the Post Office in Covington, and then discovering its online community. She then reached out to Helfrich about selling at the shop.
“I’m thinking, she’s not going to want to sell my stuff. There’s no way, you know, I can’t compete. The other artists in here are just so good. The things that you see, they’re so creative,” said O’Connor. “But she said, ‘No, no, no.’ She said she really liked my things.”
Now, O’Connor has a shelf of her wares at Purple Paisley, and she said the whole experience “has been a wonderful experience.”
And, she said, her friends and family are happy to get a little more variety in their gifts from her. “On so many levels, I’m selling my things down there, so my shelves are not filling up anymore with pottery.”
Elizabeth Herrmann is now an abstract painter whose art is available at Purple Paisley, but for 40 years, she was a decorative painter in the region.
“I gave that up because it’s just a lot of work, and I had done it for a long time,” said Herrmann. “So it started selling my own art, and that’s a totally different animal than working in people’s homes.”
Herrmann said she was looking for a way to get her work out there and stumbled across an ad for Purple Paisley. She “causiously contacted” Helfrich and went to meet her.
She was slightly worried about her art because her pieces are large, mixed media, and “intuitive, but they don’t look intuitive.” Herrmann describes them as “very whimsical, dreamy, bright colors.”
When she met with Helfrich, she said she was nervous, but Helfrich was “extremely welcoming.”
Now, her art has been at Purple Paisley for six months, and Herrmann said she is “happy to be a part of the community.”
The community is a significant part of what makes Purple Paisley work, and Helfrich is asking for its help.
On Aug. 16, the shop is hosting a fundraiser to “raise funds to help sustain the shop’s mission of providing a space where creativity thrives and supporting Northern Kentucky’s local artists.”
Helfrich said that the costs of everything from advertising to inventory software have been increasing, so “instead of just throwing up my hands, I thought, ‘Well, if the community really likes this place, let’s just throw a fundraiser to try to help meet some of our costs.’”
During the event in August, attendees can expect a “lively evening filled with community spirit, local flavor and artistic expression.” It will feature silent auction baskets with goods and services from local businesses.
The funds raised during the evening, Helfrich said, will go directly toward supporting artists and meeting the essential needs of operating the shop.
The fundraiser is set for 4 to 7 p.m. Purple Paisley is located at 715 Scott St., Covington. Find more information at
purplepaisleyartisanshop.com
.
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