The Art Stores That Made Me Feel Like an Artist
By Anthony Scarzafava
Every time I head to Blick in Manhattan for art supplies, I get a jolt of nostalgia. I start thinking about all the old New York art stores and the part they played in my becoming an artist.
The first trip I can clearly remember was a journey from Staten Island in search of my first drawing table. I was sixteen and had saved all my money to buy a professional table and chair. There was no possible way I could get them home by myself, so I enlisted my sisters and my mother to help.
My sisters and I took the ferry into Manhattan and walked up Broadway to the old Sam Flax on Park Row, near J&R Music World. After I bought the table and chair, my sisters helped me drag everything back to the ferry terminal. My mother met us on the Staten Island side with the station wagon.
I remember feeling like a real artist for the first time.
My first set of oil paints came not long afterward. This time, I went to Utrecht Art Supplies on Fourth Avenue below Union Square. It was a tiny store that carried just the basics, nothing like the colossal art supply stores we have today.
I love doing my old-man routine for younger artists and telling them that I once bought large tubes of cadmium colors for less than seven dollars. Today, those same tubes can cost nearly thirty.
As my skills developed and I needed a wider range of materials, I finally made my way to art supply nirvana: Pearl Paint on Canal Street.
Pearl Paint was a fever dream of possibilities, most of which I could not afford. I planned my visits like military operations, clipping coupons, waiting for sales, and figuring out how to stretch every penny. I could spend hours searching through all those supplies and imagining what I might make with them.
To this day, those memories come rushing back whenever I visit Canada, one of my favorite galleries, on Lispenard Street. It sits a block behind the old Pearl Paint building, which now stands empty and abandoned. Seeing it fills me with warmth and sadness. The building feels like a monument to another era in New York, a city that can seem to change overnight.
I still have that first drawing table.
I still use it, too.
I have already told my wife that when the time comes, they will have to bury it with me.