When Kirsten Aune (BFA 1992 Fine Arts) was laid off from her restaurant job after the pandemic hit, she decided it was time for a career change. After graduating from SVA, she had worked in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art (at one point, the information-desk staff all wore her hand-painted ties), lived briefly in New Mexico and ran two farms—one dairy, one permaculture—near her hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. Seven years ago, she began to refocus on her textile art, which has been exhibited around the world and is in the permanent collection of the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Tweed Museum of Art, among other institutions. 

Aune initially focused on selling her handcrafted clothing and home goods—aprons ($75) and oven mitts ($16 – $26), tableware ($15 – $35), pillows ($48 – $52), blouses ($160) and dresses ($250 – $575), all featuring cheerful, modern Scandinavian-style geometric and floral patterns—online. However, “the stars aligned,” she says, when a friend passed on an affordable lease to a space in Duluth’s Lincoln Park Craft District where, last fall, Aune opened her eponymous showroom and shop. 

The store’s most popular items are the oven mitts and aprons, which continually sold out over the holidays, keeping Aune especially busy, since she herself stencils, screen prints or sews almost everything she sells. “I print five yards of fabric at a time,” she says. “Everything is made in small batches.” This spring, she is introducing new purse designs (with different patterns inside and out), summer shirts, sunglass cases and belts. 

Aune doesn’t keep her crafting knowledge to herself—she has taught virtual hand-stenciling classes through institutions in Minnesota, Chicago, Alaska and even Estonia; her next one will be in June, for the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. After getting vaccinated, she hopes to host in-person sewing workshops at the store, including ones for local at-risk youth so they can learn to make their own clothes.

Diana Ho (BFA 2008 Illustration) was baking a lot in 2016. When she was encouraged by a colleague to start selling her cookies at work (she was operating artist Tom Sachs’ bodega pop-up at the Brooklyn Museum at the time), she paired them with another coworker’s art zines, and thus the first iteration of From Here to Sunday was born. Frustrated with the gatekeeping and insularity of the art world, Ho decided to create her own spot—“one that is inclusive, community-oriented and defies rigid boundaries of traditional art spaces,” she says. The effort was nomadic until early last year, when she opened her Brooklyn-based shop.

From Here to Sunday is stocked with art, prints, home goods, clothing and accessories by local artists and illustrators—many of them SVA alumni. (Click here!) Ho has sourced work from friends, comic fairs, Instagram and even from shoppers who want to submit work. “I tend to focus on work that is joyful and unique and I try to prioritize BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists,” she says. Some of her own work is for sale as well; her small middle-finger sculptures called “Fucks to Give” ($24), which she made as a way to channel her frustrations with the art industry, are especially popular. “They still bring me joy and feel more relevant with each passing year,” she says.

The meaning of “From Here to Sunday” is twofold. The shop is filled with gift-able items, so Ho was focused on “to and from” tags: “I liked the idea of gifting a moment ‘from here’ to another time in the future (Sunday).” It also references the range of inventory. “We’ve got everything from here to Sunday!” she says.

Keeping true to the project’s beginnings, Ho still sells her cookies. When she had to shut down the storefront in March 2020, she transitioned by promoting online orders of cookies by the dozen and her Taster’s Club Subscriptions ($12 – $20), monthly deliveries featuring a varying selection of flavors. “It worked out well because people were locked down and needed a pick-me-up,” she says. “So the demand for sweets was high.” Her subscriptions have since octupled and helped keep her business afloat.

Post-pandemic, Ho hopes to host exhibitions and an artist residency at the shop. And she will continue doing community work with her Sunday Collaborative Action Fund, which she started last summer as a way to raise funds with other artists for mutual aid groups and Black Lives Matter.

“Adaptability has been the shop’s greatest strength, so I hope that it will continue to shape-shift and survive whatever challenges that come along for many years to come,” she says.

In June 2020, Heather Ben-Zvi (BFA 1997 Advertising) and her business partner, Jaclyn Smith, opened Refill Room, located about 20 miles north of SVA in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The small Westchester County shop carries personal and household products like toiletries, detergents and all-purpose cleaners, packaged in reusable glass bottles. When customers run out of product, they can return to refill their bottles from bulk dispensers and pay by the ounce, instead of wastefully buying a whole new bottle. 

“Pre-COVID, my anxiety at night was global warming,” Ben-Zvi says. She was particularly horrified to learn that only six percent to nine percent of all plastic is recycled. So, she established Refill Room to offer an easy way for herself and others in her community to reduce the amount of single-use plastics in their lives and adopt a more Earth-friendly lifestyle. 

Though they opened in the midst of an economic downturn, Ben-Zvi and Smith have been able to find success. “People always need cleaning products,” Ben-Zvi says, and, given coronavirus precautions, disinfectants are in high demand. As a former freelance art director, Ben-Zvi also had a hand in the store’s branding. “I wanted it to feel warm and happy, fun and vibrant, with bright colors,” she says.

Refill Room aims to offer a greater variety of products than other stores of its kind. Everything the store sells is made in the U.S. or Canada and personally tested by Ben-Zvi or Smith, and most of it is organic (or close to it) and sulfate- and gluten-free. Some of Ben-Zvi’s favorite items are the reusable, machine-washable paper towels ($12) and hair conditioning bars ($32).

Looking ahead, Ben-Zvi hopes to create partnerships with related businesses, and, when COVID-19 restrictions loosen, she plans to have a huge belated grand-opening party with family, friends and other stores on Main Street. ❃