Artist & Craftsman Supply store is being erased, removing colorful presence from Central Square
Artist Jylik Donell Buissereth hefts an “alabagster” rock with handles at Artist & Craftsman Supply in Central Square on March 1. (Photo: Artist & Craftsman Supply via Instagram)
The Artist & Craftsman Supply store is closing in Central Square after almost 20 years, its employee-owners announced via Instagram on Dec. 20.
Rent costs are the location’s primary reason for closing, store manager Tirzah Maroun said.
“Central Square and Cambridge are changing overall,” and a decrease in foot traffic that began during the Covid pandemic, coupled with an increase in online shopping, makes costs “unsustainable, given that we don’t quite need the same amount of square footage that we once did,” Maroun said.
The store’s last day of operation at 580 Massachusetts Ave. is Jan. 15. A liquidation sale, with 30 percent of the original price on all merchandise, is underway.
Employee owners at Artist & Craftsma Supply made even their 580 Massachusetts Ave. entranceway a vibrant addition to Central Square. (Photo: Artist & Craftsman Supply via Instagram)
Artist & Craftsman is “hoping not to be gone for long, much less for good,” Maroun said. The employee owners hope to find a new space of 3,000 to 6,000 square feet in either Cambridge, Somerville or Boston and are soliciting real estate leads to make it happen.
The store’s absence will be sorely felt. Users flooded the the store’s Instagram with comments and memories of what the store has meant to them over the years.
A place that supported artists
Cambridge-based artist Chris E. O’Neill shared on the post that he’s been frequenting the store for more than a decade, when he was “a broke art student” at the Art Institute of Boston (now Lesley University’s College of Art & Design).
“A&C always felt like a real signifier that Central was a real center for the arts and artists, ” O’Neill said in a message to Cambridge Day. “A place to see like-minded people across the aisle and get tips and info from the staff about new tools and materials. Especially after Pearl Paint went out of business, it was really important to feel like there was a place in the city that supported artists, was independent and cared about more than just selling things.”
O’Neill called that “For the longest time, they had small rolls of paper near the pens and markers that you could use to test the tools before you purchase them, and I’d leave a little test sketch on the roll with my signature. I remember being a young artist and seeing that they’d posted my sketch on their Instagram one day when that app was in its early days and felt like I’d ‘made it’ in the local scene. That was a big deal to me!”
Supplies can be tested before purchase at Artist & Craftsma Supply in Central Square. (Photo: Artist & Craftsman Supply via Yelp)
Their Cambridge storefront has been operating since 2003, and has become a staple of the Cambridge and Somerville arts community.
The store “has been a longtime friend of Gallery 263,” said Allison Gray, communications director of the nonprofit at Putnam and Pearl streets in Cambridgeport.
“For many years, Artist & Craftsman helped [Gallery 263] by donating art materials for special events … The gallery benefited from being down the street from this location, as artists frequently visited the gallery before or after shopping for art materials. In turn, Gallery 263 often pointed artists to Artist & Craftsman. The gallery will feel the loss of this symbiotic relationship,” Gray said. “On a more personal level, the staff and board of Gallery 263 loved shopping at Artist & Craftsman for their own art supplies.”
One of several
The announcement comes at a time of several other permanent closings in Cambridge, from the Mary Chung’s restaurant and Darwin’s Ltd. coffee shop chain to the Central Square Starbucks.
“The future of Central seems really sad to me,” O’Neill said. “Without A&C, it’s steadily becoming just another strip of bars and restaurants and chain coffee spots. I hate the thought of trying to buy art supplies online, since testing and touching the materials is such a huge part of knowing whether something will be useful to you.”
Anyone with information about a potential new space is asked to reach out to the Artist & Craftsman Supply team by email ([email protected] or [email protected]) or phone.
Another place we used to go with the kids after swimming lessons at the Y. It’s all interconnected.
Drug use – crime – legalized pot shops – safety concerns – pedestrian traffic down – stores revenue down – parking removed – closed business – progressiveness!
Central scare is real and the fear factor is accelerating Let’s hope someone or the entire City govt takes responsibility to make 2023 the turnaround year and not just watch it go down the drain.
Prc this has NOTHING to do with what you are talking about, they are closing because of the Increasing price of the rents as it says at the very start of the article. All the ‘Developers’ are causing a raising operating costs for all the businesses so that buildings can be made into bigger ones for box chain businesses.
This is about GREED of LANDLORDS.
UnquietSoul…….actually the article itself, while it does also name rising rental rates, indeed lists other factors as well.
In the next sentence it cites lower foot traffic….and while the apocalypse is a primary driver, certainly the stench of fermented piss that greets a person in that entry way has become a deterrent.
Repeat after me……developers are not land lords.
You want to talk greed? Talk to City of Cambridge and their “pot shops for everyone”. THIS puts an upward pressure on rents.
And of course rents will go up over twenty years. It is called inflation.
Oh those greedy terrible landlords not willing to run charities.
Funny how no one remembers bemoaning the loss of Pearl Art Supplies…..and then POOF we had TWO art stores…..and now we are down to one.
Wow….. it is almost like free markets work,
Sorry Sam, but you will see within the next 6 months to a year that the block is being sold to a developer behind the scenes, if things follow the usual pattern, and that the hikes were intentional to drive out the small long term stores that are not part of chains to make the process easier for the sale.
You say no one made a big deal when Pearl Left, but forget that was a matter of we had less internet public discourse back then locally. So you didn’t necessarily see it.
Conspiracy theories do not count as public discourse.
Back then, we had an actual newspaper and lots of editorials.
Sam, Pearl Arts in Cambridge went out in 2010, as part of the great 2009/2010 economic mess across the country, if memory serves.
As for newspaper, if you mean the Chronicle, it was pretty minor in circulation at that point (7500-8000 circulation).
And yeah, I was here… Been here since 1998.
^^^ so still a newcomer then…..
The gentrification of Central Square has been even sadder than that of Harvard Square. Where are artists supposed to go now?–the few, amateur or professional, who can still afford to live in Cambridge (because they bought an apartment in the 90s, are sharing one with 7 others, whatever their strategy).