New Art Sellers Around Old Town: 

Walking through the door of the 4th Street Mercantile (215 Fourth St., Eureka) is a surprising, almost surreal experience. The interior space seemed to me somehow larger than the actual building. As I approached the counter just inside the entryway, my eyes were drawn beyond it, in all directions, to the expertly curated displays of texture and color. Before my brain could register the objects, my senses took pleasure in the design of the whole collection, which felt dense but uncluttered, and seemed to ramble behind walls and through multiple interior rooms and passages. I wanted to go in and explore to see what else was back there.

A couple of blocks away, a familiar name in the Humboldt County art community has his own new spot for fine art seekers. Stock Schlueter, the Willow Creek native who has been exhibiting his vibrant, often dramatic oil-painted visions of landscapes for decades, just opened Stock Schlueter Fine Art (330 Second St., Eureka) with his wife, Rachel. This gallery, too, is inviting and visually rich right at first glance, full of wood and Schlueter's sweeping plein air scenes of light. I met with Rachel and Stock in their vintage-furnished sitting area at the back of the gallery.

While I glanced around the large gallery at the collection of Schlueter's depictions of vineyards and canyons, oceans and deserts (deserts? I didn't know he painted deserts!), he told me how his art practice came to its present form. In college, he said, he was interested in Pop Art, but that he "always wanted to just learn how to paint." He was working felling timber when he traded two paintings for a wagon camper and started painting more seriously. "Painting everything will teach you how to paint anything," he says.

Showing his work widely at the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco for 26 years, as well as in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Sante Fe, New Mexico, Schlueter has worked out of Eureka's C Street Studios, which he helped build, for 35 years. Driving up and down the street from his studio to get coffee, he repeatedly saw the property in which we were currently sitting and noted that it "screamed 'gallery.'" He then thought, "It might be interesting to have a gallery." The Schlueters signed the lease in October of 2024, went to work in November and opened the gallery during the Dec. 2, 2023 Arts Alive.

The Schlueters purchased some of the display furniture for the gallery right down the street at the 4th Street Mercantile. The Mercantile's owners, Aaron and Crystal Woodbury Haynes are, unlike the Schlueters, new to the Humboldt County art scene, if not to Humboldt County. Crystal is originally from McKinleyville and the two recently moved back here and opened their space in September of 2023, after operating similar businesses in Petaluma and Missouri.

The Woodbury Haynes envisioned the 4th Street Mercantile as an option for big furniture vendors (who face logistical challenges selling their products in the Eureka market or local fairs) to have a permanent point of sale. It is also an opportunity for sellers who are outpriced from renting their own storefronts locally to rent "booths" instead. The owners also offer special rental terms to members of underserved communities who may have fewer opportunities to display their work or products. The result is one-stop shopping for estate-sale finds and heaps of diverse, locally made arts and crafts. Perhaps most astonishingly for a project of this sort, the store doesn't have even a hint of rummage-sale vibes. Instead, as Aaron described it, every inch of the store is "aesthetically pleasing and smells nice." When we finished our conversation, I took a walk through the store to take photographs, but ended up shopping and left with a delicious smelling, locally made candle for a friend.

Part of the Mercantile's project includes a Rotating Arts Alive Gallery. For one month at a time, three local fine artists display their work for no rental fee and sell it for a 20 percent commission. For the month of January, the Arts Alive Gallery showcased large and small format landscape photography, abstract photographs and small, colorful acrylic paintings. The 4th Street Mercantile also hosts craft classes, such as upcoming "chunky blanket" and mosaic tile workshops.

Stock Schlueter Fine Arts also has plans for group exhibition of artwork. Currently the gallery displays some 3D concrete and glass objects, including some by Rachel Schlueter, along with Stock Schlueter's paintings. The work on the walls though primarily represents his new work, along with a huge collection of diverse landscape paintings that Stock made in 2016, while the couple traveled the country painting. He said that it made sense to open the gallery with this body of work because "signing the lease was like hitting the road — a new adventure." The plan though is to rotate exhibitions every month. The Schlueters have an upcoming group exhibition in the works with Stock and two other favorite Eureka painters.

L.L. Kessner is an Arcata-based artist and writer.