Indy Hall Continues to Grow, Offers Unique Opportunity for Area Artists

As you may have heard on the Internet, Indy Hall recently expanded to include the first and second floors of the Daniel Building in Old City. The communal decision to expand onwards & outwards (which included cutting a hole in the floor to accommodate some locally crafted bad-ass looking stairs) took place over the course of a month, and the transformation has been nothing short of amazing.

With this new front and center addition, “N3rd Street” continues to grow and it means good news for creative geeks everywhere!

Over the past few years, art has been slowly but surely infiltrating the Hall thanks in part to unofficial artist-in-residence, Sean Martorana and various industriously creative members, starting with a small but strong POST (Philadelphia Open Studio Tours) participation a few years ago. Sean really took things to the next level however when he started quite literally applying paint to any available surface in the place from murals to space dividers, interchangeable art and movable vinyl decals. It’s gotten to the point where art is literally spilling down the stairs into the new space.

As part of the opening party extravaganza, which also happened to fall on a First Friday, Sean and I curated a show of

IH members, friends & family, which focused on the lesser-known artistic side of the community. With the help of fellow artist Kirsten Harper, we pretty much pulled the show together in under 48 hours (including on-going painting parties and contractors miraculously tearing down an extra wall 24 hours before go-time). The opening party boasted hundreds of well wishers and celebrations to inaugurate the new space. (It was a seriously killer party – the art looked great & we sold several pieces!)

What this means for Indy Artists

 
Independent’s Hall has opened up a tremendous opportunity for the creative community at large. Sean, Kirsten and I have a fairly passionate vision for the direction we’d like to see the space take and are excited to be able to bring our friends along for the ride. Now that there are actual desks downstairs, we’ve opted to use only the front area for openings (though trust me, it’s plenty of room to have a solid gallery showing), and work will continue to be rotated throughout the space.
 

We’d love to become a valuable resource for the creative community, with dreams of workshops on how to price your work and live successfully as an artist, tools to help with marketing & self promotion and maybe even apps to help artists identify with their inner entrepreneur. Our goal is to help grow a diverse creative community extension to Indy Hall and more! (We dream big over here, haha).
 

And if you’re interested in becoming a member, now is a great time to get in on the ground floor action, so to speak. Being a member of Indy Hall at any level means being a part of a great community of thinkers, doers and makers. From my own personal experience, I’ve found that it is so much more than a physical space to GSD; it’s a sounding board, a support group, an extended family, drinking buddies and so much more all rolled into one. Plus, as someone who often works from home, I find it keeps me from talking to plants, pets and inanimate objects like they’re people.

Are you an artist interested in showing work at Indy Hall?
Get in touch!