The Sanctuary Screen Printing is the genius mash-up of the Sanctuary Art Center and efflux creations, and they are hanging shelves, setting up printing presses, and plugging together a make-shift music stage in a storefront window, all to get ready for the grand opening of their new Storefronts Seattle project, a 1,500-square-foot gallery and retail studio. The project opens Thursday night (August 2) as part of First Thursday’s Artwalk.
The project builds on the strengths of both of its component groups. Sanctuary has been taking homeless kids off the streets for more than a decade as a drop-in center in the U-district. They teach, and offer opportunities for, theater, painting, ceramics, printing, and other arts disciplines. efflux is a fine art and garment printer in Seattle and works with Sanctuary’s kids, teaching them screenprinting and offering them real-world employment opportunities and real-art-world printing tools and techniques.
Anyway, all this is beside the point. The point is that there’s going to be a Party, and that this PARTY is going to celebrate yet another Storefronts project taking back our blighted downtown streetscape, one empty storefront at a time.
Join Sanctuary Thursday night from 6-10 pm at the corner of Second Ave and Yesler for CMD * P (get it?). There will be delicious drinks, live music, screenprinting demonstrations, and the opportunity for you to take part in this grand retail / art / social service / entrepreneurial experiment. (By “taking part” I mean, you know, buying a t-shirt.)
It’s going to be a great night.