From her west-side garage, an artist works to make art accessible to all

When Kate Jarman-Gates moved into the house on Salt Lake City’s west side that now hosts Clever Cucumber — a free art studio and workshop space — she found out that someone had left behind some hand-crafted stepping stones.

“A lot of them were actually buried on the property,” said Jarman-Gates, the one-woman show running Clever Cucumber.

Each is a kaleidoscopic mosaic of different colored stones, glass, and sometimes non-traditional craft objects — such as miniature utensils and beer bottle caps.

The previous owner was “a mad mosaic artist,” she said. “It was like a treasure hunt, and I love trying to preserve them as much as I can, because I’m an artist and I get it.”

The stones are a fitting symbol for Clever Cucumber, whose workshop space fits about a dozen people and is housed in Jarman-Gates’ garage. Inside, clear buckets are stacked in one corner, full of all different types of crafting supplies: Stained glass (organized by color), ribbon, string, embroidery floss, collage paper, vinyl and more.

The equipment in the shop — which includes a button maker, bookbinding tools, a Cricut cutting machine, stained glass tools and woodworking supplies — is all there to be shared.

The supplies at Clever Cucumber come from Jarman-Gates’ time as a teacher, along with stuff donated from the community, and sometimes items she buys herself. People often call to donate unwanted art supplies they found in their basements. A red cart that holds some of their heavy-duty wood tools has “Mrs. Gates” written on it in black Sharpie.

Because the garage space is limited, the workshop now has a wish list of donations on its website. Clever Cucumber also participates in quarterly supply swaps.

Offering access to those supplies and tools is a big chunk of what Clever Cucumber does, Jarman-Gates said. As all crafters know, the costs for supplies can add up.

“I remember when I was taking my painting class in college, I was having a panic attack because I had all my tuition covered, but I didn’t have $300 to buy all of the canvases and the paints or the brushes I was required to get for that class,” Jarman-Gates said.

For the west side

On the table in Jarman-Gates’ garage are tools she’s using for an upcoming project — putting up community message kiosks around Rose Park. Her plastic water bottle is covered in stickers for Salt Lake City icons, including the city flag, Gilgal Gardens, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Fun Time Kidz Day Care.

Jarman-Gates started the venture small, as an Etsy shop, selling what she describes as “geeky stuff.” The current, physical Clever Cucumber location started in 2021.

Jarman-Gates had worked for two years as a public school teacher, but said it wasn’t a good fit for her. Still, she missed teaching. So when people in her church community asked her to teach art lessons to their kids, she jumped at the chance.

“I came up with these really elaborate, beautiful curriculums … and the kids just didn’t care. They still wanted to come over, and what they wanted to do was just pull out all the arts and crafts supplies I had and just make whatever they wanted while I watched them,” she said.

Jarman-Gates said she felt discouraged that the kids weren’t learning anything new. Then, “my husband pointed out, ‘This is really important for them, because doing this in the space with a professional artist mentally gives them permission to make what makes them happy, to try new things, to feel like their art is more valid.’”

Around the same time, Jarman-Gates said she noticed that Salt Lake City’s west side, in spite of the various art forms on display, there was a lack of money and space for art, compared to east of Interstate 15. She pointed to such places as Salt Lake City’s Petersen Arts Center, or Workshop SLC and The Visual Arts Institute in South Salt Lake. (The west side does have the Utah Arts Alliance’s Art Castle, a recent addition.)

“Most of the opportunities to do art on the west side are if your kids are going to school and they have an art teacher,” Jarman-Gates said. “We don’t have a real art studio. We do have a bunch of independent practicing artists, but we don’t have like a community art space.”

From there, Jarman-Gates said, the mission became to provide a space for “healing and fun art experiences for the community, while building on accessibility.”

Teaching how to craft

About half of the people who come to Clever Cucumber, Jarman-Gates said, are west-side residents. The space also brings in another demographic.

“It turns out, we attract a lot of people who are on disability, either for mental health or physical reasons,” she said.

A lot of these people are on a fixed income, Jarman-Gates said, so they can’t always afford access to art supplies or spaces.

“A lot of them come here because they don’t have a job, a way to socialize with other people, and so I’ve been in talks with them trying to make this place more accessible,” she said. One of the regulars has a traumatic brain injury that’s linked to heat sensitivity, Jarman-Gates said, so they bought an air conditioning unit for the space.

As important as it is to get people supplies, Jarman-Gates said, the second part of Clever Cucumber’s mission — teaching art techniques — is more crucial.

Clever Cucumber offers free workshops, for between 7 and 12 people at a time. Jarman-Gates said she knows that’s small, but it’s the best way to provide hands-on experience.

Volunteers teach the workshops. There’s an optional “pay what you can” model for those who can contribute, but “we do free because we want them to be supremely accessible,” Jarman-Gates said.

The community operation is sustainable, Jarman-Gates said, in part because she doesn’t take a salary — she makes her money off of private commissions of her own art.

In the crevices and spare areas of the workspace, Jarman-Gates collects art projects from students who left them behind over the years. Stained glass projects hanging in a window. Elsewhere, leftover drawings can be seen, made by junior high students she used to teach.

One of her own works on display, “Lovely and Lost,” is a glass piece with big circles. Jarman-Gates said she created the work to “explore and memorialize the two miscarriages that I’ve had, and to talk about pregnancy loss.”

Jarman-Gates said she considers herself a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to art media, but she has a preference for mixed media. “My favorite art form is environmental art, where you create art with things you find in your surroundings,” she said. On top of all that, she said teaching is her favorite part of art.

Her goal, she said, is to connect Clever Cucumber with a wider audience. She said she wants to work more with arts nonprofit groups.

Jarman-Gates said she knows her venture has its limitations. For example, she said she would like the place to be more wheelchair accessible — currently if someone has to use the restroom, they have to climb two flights of stairs to get into her house.

“We’re happy [and] are looking forward to expanding,” she said. As long as it’s sustainable for her, she wants to keep Clever Cucumber running for as long as she can.

“We’ll never do more than we can,” she said. “We never bite off more than we can chew.”