Every few months Shopclass owners Sally Breer, Jeff Garbs and Ellen LeComte host a wonderful event co-curated with Sheryl Cancellieri called Eastside Handmade. Eastside Handmade is the brainchild of Sheryl, who’s an artist herself, bringing together an array of vendors to sell their ‘handmade’ wares. This isn’t your backyard craft show either. These vendors are established artisans who have been creating beautiful leather goods, letterpress, wood products, ceramics, jewelry, florals and much, much more! We sat down with Sheryl at her Downtown L.A. studio in The Unique Space to discuss Eastside Handmade, what makes it special and how all your Christmas shopping could be done at these kind of events! With up to 40 vendors at this particular event, how could you go wrong?
What brought about the idea of doing Eastside Handmade?
I’m a local Highland Park resident for about 9 years now and as I’ve watched the neighborhood change, I’ve always wanted to start a craft show there. There are so many artists and I’m an artist myself so felt it would be a great thing to do for the neighborhood. I meet so many artists every day and would benefit from another place to show off their wares.
I approached a couple brick and mortars trying to find the right space and one day I was jogging with my friend and she said you have to go check out Shopclass. She mentioned they had a great space where we could possibly hold a show. So I went to Shopclass and once we met it was like literally a 10-minute conversation…“Yeah, lets do it and call it Eastside Handmade”… and it’s been really fantastic since. This show in December will be our third and we get a lot of great, really strong and talented vendors and it constantly surprises me that all of them are from the Eastside. We’re just living around artists right and left! There is so much talent out there.
How do you find talent?
In the beginning, for the first show, I did a lot more outreach and it was people I knew of, friends, artists that were in the same school as my kids, asking them if they wanted to do it and asking them ‘who are your other friends and do you think they’d be interested’. By the second show, people were coming to us. And now I have to turn people down as we don’t have enough space and their stuff is great. It’s really just so surprising the need out there for people to showcase their stuff.
This upcoming show seems like a later start, is that intentional?
We’ve done it 3 different times for each show. The first show was 10 am to 6 pm and the next one was nighttime, 3 pm until 9 pm. This December show we decided with so many functions that go on, it was best to stick with daytime shopping hours so it’s 12 pm until 5 pm.
Eastside Handmade seemed like something you’ve been wanting to do a long time, how does it work with Shopclass, are they fully involved?
It’s very collaborative. They refer friends over to Eastside Handmade and we do curate it together. I’ll come to them and we’ll talk about who we all feel is a good fit for the events. I do manage most of it for them as they are running Shopclass on a daily basis as well!
You had an event you did prior to this a few years back, in Eagle Rock?
90041 Handmade, I did that with a couple of my girlfriends but it was a little more neighborhoody type of event. We had different visions as I really was hoping to have it more curated and they were feeling it was more of a neighborhood gathering that became a ‘fun’ event.
Eastside Handmade seems to take a different approach for sure, it’s seems like it’s definitely something worth going out for…
Yeah, totally! It’s definitely encouraging. Living in LA is obviously such a great place for artists because everyone is very conscious supporting local art. There are so many good vendors at this as well as other events that people really should consider doing their Christmas shopping at these events. Echo Park Craft Fair and Renegade Craft Fair are both coming up as well as Unique. It’s just way more fun.
How often do you plan on doing Eastside Handmade?
It will be quarterly. It works out really well. The time goes really quickly and we really want to aim to not dilute it as it makes it more special.
You are loyal to the vendors who were at the first one, do you ever see switching them out?
Luckily what’s great is that just with peoples scheduling sometimes they can’t do every event. They sometimes have other obligations so they can’t do that particular show. It balances itself out nicely. If it ever becomes a problem, we can always explore another system.
How long does it take to put a show together?
It starts about 2 months before where you get all the applications in, your reviewing photos, then promoting, reaching out to media, etc. The set up is easy but leading up to it takes some time. Once it’s all filled up it looks really great back there. It’s great to see the parking lot transform.
What are some of your favorite shops in the neighborhood Besides shopclass?
I love Platform, I really like Matters of Space, I love Thank You Comics, the Zine shop, & of course Café de Leche who was the pioneer of movement into Highland Park!
It’s been really fun working with Sally, Jeff and Ellen. It’s been a good marriage.
