Rocky Mountain Punk Nature Art & Oddities Is the Shop of the Season

The exterior of Rocky Mountain Punk Nature Art & Oddities is rather unassuming. It's just another small business in Lakewood's Parkridge Plaza strip mall, nestled among spas, pet stores, restaurants and the plaza's main attraction: the Jefferson County DMV. A small sign in the window of Rocky Mountain Punk stands out against the white brick building, with temptations such as vintage, vinyl, plants, oddities and local art listed in neat neon letters. But a cursory peek into the glass storefront reveals far more than the sign can describe. The works inside look as if they were plucked from an enchanted forest, inviting visitors to re-evaluate the beauty of life, nature and even death.

Emily Salazar, the shop's co-owner and a resident artist, has been turning Colorado's natural debris into art since she was a child living in Morrison. "The house I grew up in was on eighteen acres that literally went straight up a mountainside. It had this beautiful trail. We had a natural spring right on the side of the mountain," she recalls. "I would just wander up there with or without my parents. I had so much fun discovering stuff in the forest; the serenity, the peace that the mountains always bring and the smell of the pine trees...everything just felt right."

In young Emily's hands, pine cones, sticks and rocks rifled from leaf litter were transformed into wreaths, Christmas ornaments and other small baubles that she would sell at the Inter-Canyon Fire Protection District. But life eventually took her away from the mountains: She moved to Littleton when she was a teenager. She met her husband, Joe Salazar — who'd relocated to Littleton from California in 1988 — at a mall when she was fourteen. They've been together ever since. Joe had a creative streak that paired nicely with Emily's artistic ventures. She calls him a "Tinker Bell"; as a child, he was always taking things apart and using the pieces to create something new. He learned how to tie-dye in a high school chemistry class, and together the pair started a small tie-dye business. They peddled brightly stained T-shirts, onesies, baby beanies and socks at a Southwest Plaza kiosk where Emily worked.

"We had a niece that was a toddler at the time. Their shirts are always stained with food, and onesies are always white, and we were like, 'That seems kind of dumb,'" Emily says, describing how their short-lived tye-die vision was born. "So we started tie-dying the little onesies for our niece and then noticed you couldn't see any of the stains once it was all brightly colored. So we started selling those with little matching socks or a little baby beanie. They were flying off the shelf."

At one point they even received an order for color-coordinated shirts for an entire children's soccer team. The kiosk went under a year after Joe and Emily began the experimental business, but the experience taught them things that have stayed with them well into adulthood. Not only lessons about selling their creations, but, more important, about the constant intersection of art and science.

After high school, they continued to create on the side while working at various jobs (mostly retail, but Emily was a body piercer at one point) and branded their art business Rocky Mountain Punk in 2013.

"I was born and raised here. I'm a fifth-generation Colorado native," Emily says. "So I wanted [a name] that reflected how I felt about Colorado. We also grow our own food; we have a huge garden in our backyard. So punk is more than great music; it's an entire lifestyle. Anything against the norm, anything that doesn't follow the lead that everything else is going for — to me, that's punk."

The couple spent seven years balancing day jobs with creating art and selling it at expos, pop-ups and markets across Colorado. But in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, both Emily and Joe lost their jobs. Job-hunting efforts were fruitless, so "we had to stay home. There was no other option," Emily remembers. "We just sat there during the quarantine and made product and made product in hopes that one day we'd get back to our normal life and then we could sell our stuff again."

Although times were tough, the loss of their day jobs pushed the couple to re-focus on their art. In hindsight, Emily sees it as a blessing. "We needed that push to put us where we felt like we belonged," she explains. "The art community is probably one of the most open and caring and accepting communities that we've ever been a part of, and it just fits. As soon as we started being our own boss and telling ourselves what we were going to do, not listening to what somebody else wanted us to do, we really started opening up. I don't know — it just felt right. It felt like something finally fit."
They continued to make art, selling at local markets and striving to make their dream of being full-time artists a reality. And it paid off: Rocky Mountain Punk Nature Art & Oddities opened its first brick-and-mortar location on February 1 this year.

The store carries vintage records, jewelry, crystals, Joe's homemade coffee pour-over stands and, of course, art. The couple crafts magical pieces out of found objects and ethically sourced bones, insects and plants, engaging in minor entomology through their work. Cat and coyote skulls coated in amethyst and quartz, mounted butterflies and gold hoops with small, dangling animal bones are just a few examples of the unique artworks the pair creates.

"These were all living spirits at one point, so we try to honor them. We try not to do anything that would make a mockery of what their spirit was, so we try to make everything beautiful," Emily says. "It's kind of life-and-death art, where we just try and bring the beauty back and honor that soul that once was."

While Emily and Joe each have a unique artistic flair and often create separate pieces, they consider their collaborative work some of their best. Joe's technical abilities mesh beautifully with Emily's artistic instincts, producing detailed, intricate pieces.
Emily notes that their creative process always involves music, which plays in the background as they work. Sometimes sheet music is even used for a piece's backdrop, vividly contrasting with a mounted butterfly or dried floral arrangement. Emily doesn't always have a vision in mind when she starts to create, she explains. Sometimes she'll examine a skull, speaking to it softly until inspiration strikes.

"Sometimes I have an exact idea, or if it's a custom piece, I have an outline of what I'm going to do, and I lay everything out — kind of storyboarding it, if you will — and then it just comes together," she says. "It's hard to explain since it's different every time, but I listen to the pieces.

"Most of the bones that we use are not perfect," she adds. "They're pieces that may have been roadkill, pieces that an animal had already found in the woods and half eaten, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful to us. We can take that and create it into something different, something beautiful. Nothing's perfect in this world. We're all a little broken and we're all a little beautiful. So it's just [about] finding that piece of art within something that's not art."

The store also serves as an art collective, selling art and products by fifteen other creators. Rocky Mountain Punk does monthly pop-up markets outside the store with community artists; the next happens on Sunday, October 22. Eventually, the couple wants to host classes (such as candle magic) and even concerts in the store. The Salazars chose to open their first location in Lakewood because of the area's up-and-coming art scene, Emily says, and they intend to help it flourish.

"Surrounding yourself with creativity and honest, loving people like the art world makes me a better person," she emphasizes. "It makes my husband a better person. We learn from everybody that comes in here."

Pop-Up Nature Art Market, 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday, October 22, Rocky Mountain Punk Nature Art & Oddities, 2099 Wadsworth Boulevard C, Lakewood; RVSP on Rocky Mountain Punk's website.