Undead Furniture CO, a pandemic project turned small business, held its grand opening Sunday featuring other local artists and vendors.
“I got sick about a year ago and I didn’t really recover,” Cassidy Roell said.
She has long-haul COVID which left her disabled and unable to work, but she’s found a way to make an income doing something she loves.
“I asked somebody to drop off furniture, and started painting on it and fell in love,” Roelm said.
That’s where the name Undead Furniture CO comes in. Roelm and the other artists at the store take dead furniture, “it’s pieces that people you know would typically think about throwing away."
And make it undead, "so it’s bringing them back to life and giving them new life,” Roelm said.
It has another meaning to Tegan Tolman, one of the artists with pieces for sale at the store.
“Instead of looking at the downside of everything, you know, move on, grow and better yourself," she said.
For some of the artists, the pieces in this store are a passion project they do on their days off, but for others, it’s freedom.
“Getting to have freedom and not working for anybody but myself and that’s a really nice thing to do,” Stacy Heavirland, one of the artists with pieces in the store, said.
The grand opening went beyond the artists with pieces inside the store to include other local artists, vendors and even food set-up in the parking lot. Tolman said small businesses have been hit hard during the pandemic and having them at the grand opening is a way to support each other.
“Really isn’t that what we’re all here for? Is to support each other,” she said.
