Art | Scene
WashU’s second-ever Art Mart: Crochet, clothing, ceramics, and more

Brandon Juarez-Ramos | Contributing Photographer
“These are amazing!” a customer called out to senior Christina Oates as they browsed her booth. A couple booths away, junior Macy Iyer was selling her ceramics so fast that she only had one piece left by the end of the event. Further down, a customer eagerly waited to buy a crochet top from junior Peyton Moore’s booth. “It’s kind of empowering to see how other people respond to what you’ve created,” Oates said.
As the sun set on the evening of Oct. 11, WashU’s Armour magazine and the Sam Fox Art Council put on their second-ever Art Mart. After their Friday classes, students circulated Mudd Field to shop at booths run by their fellow students.
Like the customer at Oates’ booth, the atmosphere was filled with positivity and support for the student artists selling their work. A constant flow of students arrived and left with bags full of purchases.
Senior Bri Lee, one of the founders of Art Mart along with seniors Sophie Floyd and Sophia Palitti, was proud of the event’s continued success. Lee said they all started Art Mart last year because they “wanted to create a creative space on campus where people could sell their art.”
In addition to being the Editor-in-Chief of Armour Magazine, Lee handles most of the logistics behind the event.
“The first time … was a lot of learning on the go,” Lee said, referencing the process of finding vendors, pitching the idea to Student Union, getting funding, and learning how to set up the event on the field. “This year went really smoothly,” Lee said.
This year’s event had noticeably high student traffic and a wide variety of artwork for sale. Students made and sold everything from wearable clothing items to prints to ceramics and sculptures.
Caroline Fong, a senior studying Political Science and Art History, sold handmade earrings and necklaces under her brand, Enoki Jewelry, for the second year in a row. Fong’s pieces included glittery beads and charms and incorporated many mushroom-inspired designs, hence the name. “I decided to name it Enoki Jewelry after my favorite type of mushroom,” she said.
Fong shared her booths with Christina Oates, a senior and Communication Design major. She sold screen printed shirts and stickers featuring 50 different original prints.
“I just love to doodle,” Oates said, and she explained that some of her designs were even sketches made while passing time during classes. “I think that there’s something so incredible about putting your hand to the page and then seeing what comes out of it.”
At the next booth, Ariell Haims, a junior studying Design and Architecture, was selling swimwear. Haimes designed the fabric of her pieces by using photos of glazed ceramics she had made.
“I took the photos of my glazing and then I put it into Photoshop and played around and then used my background in fashion and textiles to make the prints,” she said.
The watery look of the designs inspired her to make swimsuits. Speaking to the arduous process of getting her fabric made into wearable items, she explained, “Every little thing I did like 10 tries of. … Taking the time to really pay attention to detail is really important,” not to mention that Haimes funded the entire project herself.
Further down the field was an eye-catching rack of wearable crochet items. These pieces were handcrafted by Peyton Moore, a junior majoring in Design and minoring in Business of the Arts. She runs her own crochet business called PeyLou Designs.
Describing her process, Moore said, “Each piece takes me around four to five hours to make. … I try to make every one a little bit different, a little bit unique.” In anticipation of this year’s Art Mart, Moore started making her pieces over the summer so she would have enough to sell at the event.
In the printing realm, sophomore in Studio Art Sophia Frist and her business partner sophomore Levin Garson were selling their original prints on paper, tote bags, and t-shirts.
Their design process “started last year when we were inspired by a project we were doing in 2D design,” Frist said. Their prints were “inspired by the American West” because they were drawn to the style. Their designs featured deer skulls, cowboys, and other Wild West motifs, and were printed both in their dorms and in Sam Fox’s printmaking studio.
Frist and Garson attended Art Mart last year and were excited to come back this year as vendors for their company, inkwares. “We’re glad that Art Mart’s a thing. We hope that they do it more often,” Frist said.
Other students sold photography prints, like Omeed Moshirfar, a senior studying Communication Design, Supply Chain Management, and Computer Science.
“These are just a collection of photos that I’ve taken throughout my life,” he said of his prints.
Moshirfar explained that he travels frequently, which allows him to do a lot of photography. He enjoys “capturing that relationship that people have with their environment and the way that they interact with it. … It’s exciting to share it with other people.”
Macy Iyer, a junior studying Astrophysics, was selling a different sort of art: handmade ceramics. She explained that she prefers to make “functional” ceramics so that her customers can use the items in their everyday life.
“I make all of them by hand, do a bunch of hand carving, and glaze them all at WashU’s studio,” Iyer said.
Iyer described her style as colorful and stated that she likes carving textures into the clay, making a sort of “subtractive texture.” “I’ve never sold anything like this before,” she said, and she was excited that she only had one piece left by the end of the event.
As for the future of Art Mart, Lee expressed her hope that it continues to grow, and she is excited about how well it did this fall.
“We’re really excited that we increased the vendors,” she said. “We had 35 last year and we had 50 this year.” For students who missed the event, Art Mart is now a semesterly event: Lee and the other founders are proud to announce that Art Mart will return during the spring semester.