Slice of Life Serves Up Community and Culture for Artists and Arts Lovers on the East Side

Allegedly, it’s an artists’ studio, gallery and gift shop. But in practice, Slice of Life is more like a networking hub for East Van’s most interesting people—because there’s much more than art-making going on here.

“Speed dating is so perfect. And pinball nights are so fun, too,” says Sheena Botelho, creative director and founder of the brightly coloured arts hub on Venables Street.

It’s a space that’s come to defy categorization over the past nine years. For instance, it’s also a school—you could take a linocut-printing workshop here, or sit in on a life drawing class. Or, you could make the argument that it’s a theatre, thanks to the comedy events you’ll find on the sched. Or maybe we’ll see you there, laptop out, for a co-working session.

The multifunctional space that’s here today is a swerve from the shop’s original identity as a screen-printing studio, a business that Botelho ran in 2015 with then-roommate Ben Knight, a sign maker and self-taught screen printer. Botelho grew up in Toronto loving textile arts (“I practically gave myself scoliosis as a teen from leaning over crocheting and rug-latching,” she says) but also brought an event and logistics background to the operation—her resumé includes stints working for LiveNation, the NHL and the NBA.

The printing business didn’t go as smoothly as the pair had hoped. “We honestly sucked,” says Botelho. “The printing was good but we sucked at dealing with the commercial clients. We were just dragging our own name through the mud and I said, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this anymore and I don’t think you do either.’” The two went their separate ways, each keeping a screen-printing press, and Botelho looked around at the studio space—and the local artists who rented their own workshops within it—and tried to figure out what would come next.

“My vision was ‘radical inclusivity,’” says Botelho. At first that manifested itself in a too-wide spectrum of gallery shows: anyone who wanted to display their work was welcome. But other artists suggested that the lack of curation was ultimately hurting the scene, and Botelho pivoted the open-door policy. Today, she’s still practicing that radical inclusivity, but in a broader way. “I want everyone to get a ‘yes’ in some way, even if they’re not ready to do a show. Maybe that’s teaching a workshop, or selling in the gift shop, or selling at our Mini Mart [pop-up market]. Everyone gets an opportunity if they want it.” Now, more than 400 artists sell out of her shop, and 30-plus members use the studio spaces and co-working option in varying degrees. 

She gets hundreds of applications to participate in some way or another—applications that are low-barrier by design. Botelho doesn’t charge for folks to apply for gallery shows or space in the gift shop, and she keeps the writing requirements extremely minimal. “I saw the way so many artists are beaten down by the industry and its elitism,” she says. “I wanted to make this accessible and free.”

That accessibility extends further once you’ve finished the application process. Studio members pay $50 to $700 a month (or as low as $15 for a drop-in day), have access to a tool library and supplies, and a kiln and woodworking space are available for those with safety certifications. Artists who sell their wares in her shop (which is open until 8 p.m., seven days a week) don’t pay for their shelf space like at other market shops. And once an emerging artist gets a little more confident, frequent gallery shows offer plenty of opportunities for a first exhibiting experience.

It’s become a hub for a community of artists who either exist outside of the traditional gallery system or are just cutting their teeth, but it’s also radically inclusive of non-artists, too. Yes, you’ll find sculptors, garment designers and painters working on their latest projects in the back, and patches, prints, shirts and pins from local illustrators in the store, but Slice is really for everyone. You might pop in to check out a friend’s exhibition opening, and come back the next day for the monthly fashion-and-thrift focused pop-up Mini Mart that features vendors from around the city. You might get some insight as you chat with someone new at a screen-printing workshop later that week, or try your hand at life-modelling. Come back to use the drop-in coworking space to really focus on your big work project, and then shake off the day by losing badly to the pinball obsessives who gather for tournaments on Thursdays and Sundays. (Or, if you’d prefer to fall in love at a “Single Slice” speed dating event, that’s great, too.)

So maybe Slice isn’t that hard to define after all. It’s not  a gallery or a shop or a classroom or a hot dating spot or an arts collective—it’s a community centre. “We want artists to discover the freedom of doing something fun for a living,”  says Botelho, “but we also just want people to meet and hang out.”