Calling all collectors: 35 Utah artists will put their art skills to the test this weekend, at the first StickerCon.
The event on Sunday is hosted by Copperhive Vintage, a vintage and indie artist shop in South Salt Lake — and owner Jacqueline Whitmore said the inspiration came from one of the store’s popular vendor markets.
“Copperhive Vintage kind of essentially got started by doing flea markets and [other] markets,” Whitmore said, and applying that model to their brick-and-mortar store was a natural fit — with the added benefit of creating a community space.
Several times a year, she said, the shop hosts markets. Their biggest is Small Biz Bash, an entirely independent, local, vintage and artisan vendor market.
“It’s our most profitable day of the year,” Whitmore said. While planning for this year’s event, Whitmore said they wanted to curate their market to be specific and fill a niche, since there are so many different indie art markets happening across the state.
“Our stickers [are] one of our best-selling categories,” she said, “So I was like, ‘Why don’t we have an event for it?’”
StickerCon, Whitmore said, fits with Copperhive’s “culture of collecting and nostalgia. … It will just be like a fun day of celebrating like indie illustrators and artists.”
Some 35 artists will be displaying and selling their work in sticker form. (A full list of participating artists is available on Copperhive’s Instagram account.) There will also be a “trading table,” so artists and attendees can trade stickers.
“It’s a really accessible way for artists to try their new artwork, just because it’s fairly inexpensive to make stickers,” Whitmore said. “It’s a fairly accessible market, because stickers range anywhere from $1 and up.”
Rachel Ostler, of Snail Days Club, is one of the participating artists. She started her art account almost a year ago, and said she is still figuring out how to build up an audience. Being accepted into StickerCon was exciting, Ostler said, because she has been following many of the other artists involved in the event for a while.
After getting laid off from a corporate job, Ostler said she started creating stickers because “I was looking for a more structured way to have a creative outlet.” She ended up buying an iPad and taking a chance on her passion.
“Stickers just felt like a really accessible way to start,” she said, “especially for my art style.” That style, she said, can be described as “cute little doodles rooted in some joy” — rooted in expressing her “inner child” alongside some nature moments.
“I like to say that Snail Days Club is where my obsession for snails and self-compassion kind of meet in the middle,” she said.
StickerCon will take place Sunday, noon-4 p.m. at Copperhive Vintage, 2709 S. State St., South Salt Lake.
