YOU SAID IT
Artist’s Mark, art and rock gift shop open for the summer
“THE CLOSER YOU LOOK AT THEM, THE MORE AMAZING IT BECOMES.”
— Peter Turner
Peter and Vickie Turner own Artist’s Mark gift shop on the Digby Neck and they’ve just opened for their third season.
People sometimes ask the owners of Artist’s Mark gift shop who Mark is.
But the store isn’t named after a person – it’s named this because all of their souvenirs are handmade.
“Everything in here has a mark on it from an artist,” Peter says.
Handmade paintings, polished rocks, handbags, jewelry, yarn and knitted clothing are just a few of the gifts stocking the shelves.
Peter is a geologist and Vickie is an abstract, mixed media artist but specializes in polymer clay.
They often comb the shores of Nova Scotia looking for interesting rocks and crystals to sell on their own or to be made into jewelry.
Peter thinks Vickie has the best eye for finding rocks.
“My eyes see something, and my brain says, ‘ Woah, you have to stop and look’ after a while your brain just knows what to look for,” she says.
Peter admits he’s learned a lot about polishing and cutting rocks from trial and error.
But the end result is all worth it.
“The closer you look at them, the more amazing it becomes,” he says, looking at the many rocks on display in his workshop.
Artist’s Mark sells yarn called Seawall Fibres.
It’s sold worldwide on Etsy and hand dyed by their daughter Lisa, in the Bahamas.
She was inspired by the cliffs and rocks of Nova Scotia, so each colour of yarn is named after a rock or mineral.
It’s one of their best sellers at the shop and online they are selling close to 3,000 skeins of yarn a year. Vickie will sometimes make knit clothing to sell from the shop’s yarn.
“I absolutely love working with it. It’s so soft,” she says.
Vickie is an expert when it comes to polymer clay, but she does it all.
She’s a process painter. She paints in layers and when you hold it up to the light, it breaks down the journey she took to get there.
“I try and leave hints on the process I took,” she says.
She usually doesn’t know what she’s going to paint, it just comes to her when she starts experimenting with different techniques.
“I paint how I’m feeling, sometimes it can get a little messy.”
The store runs an online blog where they keep customers up to date on the shop’s process and present ‘ How to’ presentations.
Since launching the blog it’s been viewed more than 50,000 times.
“We get visitors from all over the world,” says Peter.
Keep up with all the creative things the Artist’s Mark shop does on their online blog: artistsmarkshop.blogspot.ca