At Luna, coffee time gives way to restorative creativity
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Erin Rosales wants you to stop saying that your paintings suck. The owner of Luna Coffeehouse and co-owner of Dare to Dabble in North Kansas City is something of an expert, after all. She has for several years taught art classes to adults — you know, the kind where you drink wine and clumsily try to re-create a painting by an actual artist.
Rosales and her business partner, Sheryl Godsy, were two of the first people in Kansas City to hand wannabe artists booze and a paintbrush, renting spaces in various buildings before moving earlier this year into their permanent location on Swift Avenue. Now, painting parties have sprung up around town, in a fashion akin to “the cupcake explosion,” Rosales jokes. (Her own paintings are a bit more complex than most, incorporating art-history influences and techniques such as shading, the better to show students.)
During each of her classes, Rosales hears a familiar refrain. Her students don’t think their paintings are good enough. They’re worried about messing up — a fear that trumps the creative impulse.
“You’ve almost got to hold hands and talk people over the edge,” Rosales told me when I met her at Luna one afternoon. She had given birth to her first child, Iris, in early October and, on this day, was moving a bit slowly but was obviously eager to be back at work. As we chatted, she organized and rearranged the studio, returning various art supplies to their respective places. “The point is not to mimic the pros,” she said, “but to have fun and be creative.”
Rosales and Godsy’s business depends on imagination and inspiration. There’s a lot going on in the warehouse-size space, which used to house an embroidery manufacturing company and which Rosales calls “perfect for artists.”
In many ways, Luna is like any other coffeehouse. The espresso bar serves Roasterie beans and pumpkin-spice lattes, and locally made pastries fill the bakery case. The space has plenty of tables for spreading out for a while to read or write. A number of locally made goods are for sale, including Dick Daniels’ bold and amusing illustrations, beeswax lip balm from Messner Family Farm, and Rosales’ own otherworldly paintings.
But the similarities to a typical coffee shop and artsy marketplace stop there. The rest of the large room is lined with enough craft supplies to entertain nearly any creative whim. The mosaic station, for instance, glimmers with shiny bits of glass and tile, the paper station features countless colors and patterns, and the fiber station has hundreds of spools of yarn stacked high. The space functions as an open studio — anyone can come in, choose a project and get busy during the shop’s hours.
“It’s kind of a new concept for Kansas City,” Rosales, who is a KC native, told me. “You don’t have to invest a lot of money to be a maker. You can use what you need for your project, and we clean up the mess.”
In the center of the room, a large wooden table and elegant blue chairs provide an inviting space for a variety of art classes, from metal stamping with Gigi Moon Gems’ Garnet Booth to Halloween silkscreening for kids. On the day I visited, a number of colorful mosaics from a class earlier that week sat on the table, shining under the light.
Customers travel from as far away as Olathe or Lee’s Summit to attend classes at Luna, but in terms of miles, they can’t beat the Tibetan monks who created a sand mandala in the space last April. Rosales offered them the location on a whim, relishing their wonder as they explored her studio. Many of the monks returned to Luna to paint when they were in town in September, bringing gifts for Rosales’ daughter.
Rosales hopes that people from across the metro area will make the drive to her North Kansas City neighborhood, which she says could summon the artistic vibe of the Crossroads. She eagerly mentions several spots planned for the area that she’s excited about: two breweries, Chicken n Pickle (an entertainment complex and chicken restaurant) and Restless Spirits Distilling. “And it’s just a 10-minute drive over the river,” she said.
By the time I left Luna that afternoon, I was convinced. I even vowed to sign up for an art class, though I live near Swope Park. But for a moment, my old anxieties took over, and I worried that whatever I turned out wouldn’t look like real art. Then I remembered: Even for bona fide artists, that’s never the point.
Luna Coffeehouse and Dare to Dabble
1329 Swift Avenue, North Kansas City, 816-533-4718, daretodabble.net
