Woodstock-based creatives McKenzie and Elliot Eddy-Smith’s first project together was 600 feet long. The objects in their latest collaboration, Pure Hart Studios, a new Woodstock storefront, are considerably smaller—colorful wall art, greeting cards, garments.
The couple met in Charleston, South Carolina, in the venue/gallery/coffee shop McKenzie had opened there after returning home from New York City to take care of family obligations. Both led lives devoted to art, music, and community, and when they joined forces, something big clicked into place. Playing music together turned into making art together. Eliot, a lifelong muralist, taught McKenzie how to make large grids, how to scan the surface for landmarks to use to orient scale, when to use a projector and when the grid of brickwork or siding would suffice.
Credit: Sixth House Studios
In 2017, they founded Headspace Murals together, and were soon on the road making murals together. “Our first project took months,” says McKenzie of that original 600-foot mural. “It was in Houston, and we actually had to go home in the middle of it to get married, then come back and finish it.”
Eliot adds: “We learned a ton about collaborating creatively on such huge projects, which translates in a really cool way to our smaller works. We really love painting murals. We’re going to keep doing it. But they’re also extremely time consuming, and we were on the road kind of all the time.” When they had their son, Hart, they had to rethink their business model, so they wouldn’t have to constantly travel, and they settled on a shop. The question, then, was where.
During her time in New York, McKenzie had discovered the Catskills, and they explored together and found that Woodstock would be home. “This area just has a vibe,” says McKenzie. “We had several real heart-opening moments when we were visiting this area, envisioning whether we wanted to move or not, and I think that really carried through into the work, influencing it in a pretty, intense, incredible way. This is where our hearts can live and thrive. And having the studio allows us to have more flexibility and independence.”
The shop is dedicated to and inspired by little Hart, and the name is full of intention on multiple levels. “The word Hart is really central to the work and to the philosophy behind it,” says Elliot. “It’s got a double meaning. Spelled this way, it’s also an old term for a mythological deer that was a figure in a lot of old stories and mythology and could walk between the unseen and the material world, and that really resonated with us.”
Encounters with the local deer population have only strengthened their sense that the folklore surrounding the hart—often considered an elusive but powerful harbinger of change—is the right message for the moment. “If we were going to do something like we’re doing now, and open up the space beyond just murals, we wanted it to have something substantive, that we felt like we were sharing as opposed to just, ‘here’s some cool designs,’” says Elliot. “And that has been it, the ability of the hart to navigate these times and the unseen forces that are swirling around us right now and the connection to nature.”
The Pure Hart team has added several pieces of public art to the larger local landscape, and they’re still thrilled by helping customers bring just the right vibe to their surroundings, whether on a wall, a fence, or a chimney; one large piece is on the chimney of their own Tinker Street Residence, another graces The Bridge, a community wellness space on Broadway in Kingston’s Rondout district.
They’re also collaborating with locals to make dreams wearable, starting with Michele Quan of MQuan Studio. “We’re interviewing different artists and other creatives and getting them to tell us about a dream and making a piece from it,” says McKenzie. “And then we’ll be releasing limited-edition pieces of apparel with that design.”
Stop in at the studio to look around and say hello, and pause for a minute to admire the exterior and that of the Narnia shop next door, just two examples of the team’s larger works.
They’re loving their new neighborhood. “When we knew we wanted to start our family, we said, we gotta find somewhere where we feel good and safe about doing it,” says McKenzie. “This area just kept pulling us back up, and then we finally just made the move. And now we have our little dude. It all just fits so well.”
Pure Hart Studio
128 Tinker Street, Woodstock
Hello@PureHartWoodstock.com
(843) 300-5459
