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At the new Google Visitor Experience, which opened at the company’s Gradient Canopy campus in Mountain View in October, you can, as you might expect, check out the Google Store, full of the latest tech products and branded Google merch. But nearby, tucked next to a cafe and community space, is a quite different type of store. Here, quirky, handmade art, home decor, skin care products, jewelry and much more are on display – from scented candles to crochet keychains.
This is the MOMENT Marketplace pop-up shop, showcasing the work of more than 75 Bay Area indie makers with a theme that changes every three months. The pop-up is curated and operated by the team behind San Jose Made (SJMADE), which has a long history of working with artists and small businesses (the MOMENT brand also operates several micro-retailer projects in San Jose.)
Featured now is the Clay & Craft Pop-up Shop, highlighting clay-based goods as well as other products featuring “natural and Earth elements,” which will be up through April 22, according to MOMENT project coordinator Audrey Yeung.
Read on to meet a few of the makers featured at the MOMENT Marketplace right now.
‘Everything cozy’: Light & Flicker
@lightandflicker.
‘Mushrooms and moons’: Midnight Cottage Co.
Melissa Szwec-Rowland, the maker behind Midnight Cottage Co., describes her work as having a “witchy, cottage-core” aesthetic with natural elements and celestial vibes.
midnight_cottage_co.
‘Unabashedly feminine’: Little Shop of Florals
Erin Salazar’s “unabashedly feminine” work – stylized, colorful florals, often against bold black backgrounds, hand-painted on candles, earrings and even vinyl records – immediately stands out amongst the MOMENT Marketplace offerings, with each piece one of a kind.
“My work in that context revolves around this particular type of folk painting called one-stroke floral painting, a technique that is largely used in the decorative arts” (such as on bowls, plates and other decorated utilitarian objects), said Salazar, who is also a muralist. She paints with awareness of and appreciation for the generations of uncredited female artisans who came before her.
“Women’s work has not historically been valued in the way men’s has,” she noted, so for her, “the essence of the work is rooted in paying homage to the anonymous women who helped define visual culture through the decorative arts.”
The technique also helps her keep up an active painting practice even when life gets hectic. In addition to being a working artist, Salazar is the executive director of the San Jose-based arts nonprofit Local Color (which, among many other endeavors, hosts community art-making experiences at the Google Visitor Experience).
“I just like to paint a whole lot,” she said, but since she’s extremely busy, “I need something that goes fast, that’s rewarding immediately.”
She sees the “little commodifiable goods” she makes for spaces like MOMENT Marketplace under the name Little Shop of Florals as creating “an entry point into seeing my bigger, more expressive studio and gallery-related work,” she said.
“It’s been really wonderful to watch our businesses grow at the same point,” she said of San Jose Made and Local Color, “doing the good work of keeping the creative community going.”
Instagram: @mauv.es.
MOMENT Marketplace (at Google Visitor Experience), 2000 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View; Monday-Saturday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Instagram: @momentpopup.
Source: paloaltoonline.com