The venue featured 20 different vendors and food and drink for customers. (Photos by Addison Hinkle)
A new art market in West Columbia debuted Sunday with more than 20 local, creative vendors.
The market was held inside the New Brookland Tavern music hall and bar and featured food and shopping.
Leiren Pate and Brandy Elder have been working to open the market since October and hope to offer it once each month at the tavern.
”There’s only a few markets like this in Columbia,” Pate said. “They give people the opportunity to go out, and set up and sell in person. And some of them are kind of limited with space and whatnot. So, we just wanted to give people another avenue to get their art out.”
Neal Adcox and Leanne Derrick of Cayce stumbled upon the market during their Sunday morning walk. They sat at the outdoor patio of New Brookland Tavern to enjoy the venue’s hash brown baskets and libations.
”We happened to be looking at the sign and said, ‘Oh, there’s hashbrown baskets,'” Adcox said. “What’s not to like, for reasonable prices. It’s fantastic,”
Adcox walked away with a handmade, leather journal from one of the vendors.
“It’s nice to support the community and local artists,” Derrick said.
Stacey Black was one of those local artists. She started Bee Bottom Art, a miniature art company, in September 2020. Even though Black was a vendor herself, she got the chance to order some food from the stand outside the tavern.
”Lots of awesome vendors,” Black said. “I have some stuff I want to buy.”
Maneater Apparel, a local clothing store focused on female empowerment, used the market as a way to take their 2-year-old business offline, said executive assistant Jana Cummints.
“It’s exciting that we’re able to get the opportunity to go from being online retail mainly to see what we can do in-person — and get some of our shirts out there, and get the message out there that women deserve the right to bodily autonomy no matter the circumstance,” Cummints said.
The next New Brookland Tavern Market is scheduled for Dec. 18.