Knightville shop and studio Earth Angel Arts will close its doors in September. Artist Julie Bernier aid the walls re becoming increasingly bare as a closing sale cleans out the gallery. “This has been a dream come true,” she said. (Evelyn Waugh photo)
SOUTH PORTLAND — Inside Earth Angel Arts, a gift shop and “creating space” in which artist Julie Bernier sold her artwork, taught classes, and held art psychotherapy sessions, Bernier is packing up and preparing to move on.
The walls become increasingly bear amidst its closing sale, and Bernier will flip the sign to “closed” for the last time come September.
“For professional artists, the shoestring is only so long,” Bernier said. “Mine was three years long, to be exact.”
Earth Angel Arts has sat for three years at 81 Ocean St. in Knightville, embedded in the up-and-coming assortment of other galleries, coffee shops, restaurants, condos, and the salon, massage studio, yoga studio, lamp shop, boutique tattoo parlor, and brewery all housed in the strip near the Casco Bay Bridge.
“I love it here,” Bernier said.
She said the neighborhood has her heart.
But, Bernier said, making a livelihood as an artist is a daily grind, and renewing her lease was no longer practical. On top of the universal strain of creating while running a business full-time, Knightville shops face a veiled problem.
“Very little traffic travels down Ocean,” Bernier said. “The street isn’t a quick throughway to the bridge.”
That meant low visibility for Earth Angel Arts, and still does for its neighboring studios.
To the left of Earth Angel Arts is Mainely Labs Studio, opened 2014, where Jim Williams sells his paintings of Labrador Retrievers. To the right, Woodcarver Jen Holsten sells her handcrafted serving and cutting boards at Bear Isle Board Co, opened this year.
Down the street, SoPo Art Studio at 96 Ocean, opened in 2018, houses jewelers Tina Dinsmore and Lori Perkins and painter Mary Anne Cary.
Cia Cafe, the coffee-shop-art-gallery combo, sits across Ocean from Earth Angel Arts. Cia promotes is full of jewelry, ceramics, paintings, and writing of local artists.
Bernier said she’ll have a corner in that shop, for which she is grateful.
Bernier’s activity in the neighborhood is multifaceted.
She organizes Knightville’s Holiday Stroll and Ladies Knight, which are both community events that promote local business and host patrons for celebration, drinks and shopping on the Ocean strip.
She said that her next plan is likely to use her psychotherapy degree to create a small art therapy practice. Though her shop closes its doors, she remains a part of Knightville’s fabric.
Evelyn Waugh can be reached at ewaugh@mainelymediallc.com or 780- 9026.
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