Skip to main content
Sculpture galleries far too rarely get you high... even when it might help your appreciation of the art on display.
Thurman Street Collective's front gallery has been integral to the vision of owner Bobby Wald and wife Kanani Miyamoto—a graduate student at Pacific Northwest College of Art—since the space opened six months ago. The gallery features up to four local artists each month.
The current installment, Dazed and Glazed, exhibits ceramic work from artist and inventor Brett Stern, who lives in the neighborhood. "My goal was to create a bunch of interesting glazes and shapes that are fun to stare at while smoking," he writes. The outlandish ashtrays run the gamut from square to amorphous, earth tone to Day-Glo. Stern's bowls and teapots, however, may also please a nonsmoking clay enthusiast without any J's to snuff.
"There are a lot of artists in this neighborhood," says employee Lisa Miller. "[Miyamoto] started telling a few, and suddenly we're booked through next year." Amid new dispensaries trying to stand out—whether with foxy female employees (Cannababes) or a speakeasy theme (Brooklyn Holding Company)—Thurman Street's community approach is hearteningly sincere.
"I think it would be great if more people oriented their dispensaries toward their neighbors," says Miller, adding that their space is often frequented by art seekers instead of weed smokers. "It's important to have something more than just the product." They sometimes expand their First Saturday art events into the back dispensary, a stoner sanctum usually reserved for OMMP cardholders. "We just put all the product away and open the back room," Miller says.
So sure, they've got plenty of Sour Diesel and Alaskan Thunder Fuck for those so inclined, but Thurman Street Collective also offers a dream of a legalized future where dispensaries are judged by their communities, and not just by their weed. And maybe, you know, by the psychedelic bricks of ashtray in the window.
GO: Dazed and Glazed is at Thurman Street Collective, 2384 NW Thurman St., 971-803-7970, thurmancollective.com. Through June 5.
WWeek 2015