RIVER…an event space with a crush on creatives
An echo rings off the walls as CRÉATEUR’s owner and publisher Aria discusses the essence of RIVER, an event space for Seattle creatives, with Jessica Ghyvoronsky and Erika Vazquez Jun, River’s founders.
“We want to be the source of why people want to continue to even do what they’re doing,”
Erika says when discussing how they came up with the moniker RIVER. “I had a dream . . . of having this overflow of a river into the city . . . a space where creativity is almost birthed or almost growing and there’s an overflow out of that door and into the city . . . A dream of water running through Seattle and . . . our space was one of the sources.”
With the help of Seattle Restored of Seattle Good Business Network, that dream manifested into the 3000 square foot, industrial, blank canvas building that is RIVER. Jessica and Erika repurposed River out of a 100 year old building into a place where creatives can live out their dreams and really be seen. Their mission of accessibility by marginialized groups and creators who typically can’t afford spaces to showcase their work is heavily backed by their personal backgrounds as creative people of color. Jessica, a Korean-American who identifies as an artist, makes it her personal mission to pursue people who don’t have many opportunities available to them to make a profession out of their creativity. Erika, a Latina, immigrant, and vintage clothing curator, relates to those who are ingrained to work harder than everyone else. She uses RIVER to fight the “starving artist” archetype and provide a platform for creatives to do what they love for a living.
In 2014, before RIVER, when Jessica was
still new to Seattle, she started “Seattle
Art Post” on Instagram.
She had just discovered the vast pool of Seattle creatives lurking beneath the surface and felt a calling to promote the “talented but unrecognized.” She realized that Seattle creators had unique needs that weren’t being met and resolved to create the space to eliminate that. It started as shout-outs, and over time, evolved into a meeting of the minds where people could network, critique, and share resources.
Erika curates her own vintage pop-up shop, Frida, which the two coupled with curated art shows at the Seattle Art Post pop-up gallery in Kirkland.
With the success of these pop-up projects, the model for RIVER was born.
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