Art Week, happily now underway, is a day-by-day ramp-up to the Des Moines Arts Festival. Art Week co-creators David Safris and Liz Adelman worked with the community to host a variety of events during the week such as public art tours, culinary arts events, gallery shows, artist demonstrations, a performance by Ballet Des Moines and much more. You can find a list of Art Week’s wide-ranging events here.
Alas, as fun as it is, Art Week lasts but a week and then it’s gone for another year. But a legacy of Art Week lives on: Art Terrarium, a new downtown salon selling plants and artwork, got its start last year as an Art Week pop-up shop. Owners Andrea Metzler, Levi Biel and Shylah Statler had such fun, they didn’t want it to end. So they opened the permanent business earlier this month at “elevencherry,” a new consortium of independent ventures at 11th and Cherry streets downtown.
“We’re specializing in easy-to-care-for house plants, cacti and succulents,” Metzler says, “and we have many of them ready to go in handmade planters.” A primary market is the expanding residential population downtown, which doesn’t have easy access to soil or plants. “So we even have a little potting bar where customers can plant their own or even bring in their own containers,” Metzler adds.
And as many have discovered, in trying to keep house plants healthy, that’s an art all its own, every week of the year.
Art Terrarium is at 106 11th St. Hours and more info are available online here. You can read more about elevencherry in the upcoming issue of dsm, which will be published June 27.
