The first week of May, Denver will welcome a unique new showcase for the arts — visual, performance and culinary. Vibe Artisan Market, a popular arts event in Texas, is launching its national expansion in Denver.
On May 4 and 5, at the historic Sports Castle building at 10th and Broadway, the Spring Vibe Market will offer the chance to peruse and purchase beautiful artisan wares while enjoying the sights and sounds of over 100 artists, creatives and performers, along with chefs serving globally inspired foods.
The Vibe Artisan Market is the brainchild of Christina Terry, a Houston-based entrepreneur and former corporate marketing expert who specialized in organizing conventions around the country for the oil and gas industry. All the while, she was an artisan herself, packaging loose-leaf tea blends, including elderberry, her passion, for family and friends before starting a side business.
A real-life outlet for artists
When the country shut down during the COVID pandemic, Terry realized that the community of artists she admired needed an outlet to share their wares and work with the world. She organized an outdoor pop-up market with about thirty vendors (mostly friends and family); nearly a thousand people showed up, and every exhibitor sold out. She then began planning other events throughout the region and eventually the state.“That whole idea of starting the markets was to give these artists a showcase that was an in-person-connection type of showcase,” Terry explains. The in-real-life experience trumps the e-commerce exchange, she adds. “Online sales is good, but it's not as important as showing your art in person, getting to meet your consumer, and then to have that consumer meet the artist, touch the products in person.”
Post-pandemic, Terry has hosted her Vibe Artisan Markets indoors. They are a full-time operation now (in addition to raising her three kids, ages 6, 4 and 3), and her husband has quit his corporate job to partner with her.
The markets have grown, attracting more and more artists who want to be showcased. “They change every single time,” Terry explains, with different exhibitors added to each event. “We have over 3,000 different artisans under our company, and we mix and match them every single time to give them equal opportunity.”
The artists aren’t just from Texas — or, for the upcoming market, Colorado, either. “They're flying in from Hawaii, they're flying in from Barbados, St. John, New York — all over the place,” she says proudly, though she strives for 80 percent of each Vibe Artisan Marketplace to feature local talent.
“I want to make sure that every artist is being seen, heard, felt. I want to make sure that they understand that they're respected as an artist and that they're seen as an artist, not just someone who's trying to do art,” she says. “My statement basically is to diminish the stigma of the starving artist. They're not starving artists; they're making the best out of the passions that they have, and making a life out of the joy that their art brings them.”
Admission is free
To match the passion she has for her artists, the markets themselves are a reflection of Terry’s vision, and she brings an artist’s sensibility to every aspect. Admission to the market is free of charge, and it’s both family- and (mostly) dog-friendly. The food vendors serve organic and sustainable products, and the art is handcrafted. Terry likes to support small businesses and spotlight women creatives. She even requires that each market’s site be architecturally distinctive. The Sports Castle certainly fits the bill. The 35,000-square-feet art-deco landmark was the home for decades to the Gart Brothers sporting goods chain’s headquarters, and host to its popular “Sniagrab” (“bargains spelled backwards”) winter ski sale.Terry plans to fill the Sports Castle’s multiple floors with vendors, a special gallery exhibit for some of its artists to display more significant work, cocktail bars on each floor, performance stages, a coffee bar and food trucks. The Spring Vibe Market promises to be an arts extravaganza for people to enjoy at a leisurely pace all weekend. And it’s not the last Denver will see of Terry and her creative efforts: She’ll be back for a Holiday Vibe Market in November.
Terry’s goal is simple, really: “I'm actually helping people like me — someone with a family or someone with just a creative flair that they're hoping they can make it big someday — so they don't have to rely on their corporate jobs, and they can quit it fully and live within a space where they're actually enjoying their life.”
Like she did.
“Yeah, live life with joy and live with purpose. That's my big thing.”
