'Beyond just painting': Family opens Seven Seas Creative Space in Union Grove

UNION GROVE — Above the wall of different pottery projects far inside Seven Seas Creative Space, a sentence reads: “There’s so much more beyond the shore” in hopes to inspire anyone who sees it.

And you, too, can take in the message — only if you get past the gargantuan, friendly-looking whale painted on the wall near the very entrance of the workshop at 1029 Main St. in Downtown Union Grove.

There’s a lot to look at inside Seven Seas, which is described by the family who owns it as a “creative space.” The workshop offers pottery painting and firing, floral arranging and needle felting; come new year, there’ll be more classes on topics like cooking and wine pairing.

Angie Childers, the mother of the Childers family, said they specifically didn’t want to call their new business an art studio because “we want to teach all kinds of everything.”

Jeremy Childers, the father of the Childers family, took two years of classes when he was in college.

“I took a break from doing pottery for a long time, just because I didn’t have any place to really do it,” he said. “It’s always been a fun thing to go throw on a wheel when I got an opportunity to.”

Seven Seas is outfitted with its own kiln to fire pottery and hundreds of options of glaze to paint. Kilns can run up to thousands of dollars, according to a search on Blick Art Materials’ website.

In comparison, Seven Seas offers a paint-your-own-pottery option. Customers come in and choose a piece of pottery, starting at $2 and on average, range from $10 to $25.

The current studio fee is $5 for kids ages 12 and under, and $7 for adults. The studio is also open for party and event bookings.

“The most fun thing for me is opening the kiln and seeing the work that people do,” Jeremy said. “It never gets old.”

The Seven ‘C’s

There are seven members in total of the Childers crew, and they each play a part in keeping the new business afloat. Jeremy is the pottery expert.

Miah, the oldest child, is the marketing/communications specialist. Julia and Allie help out with the shop’s operations. Finally, the twins, Noah and Nathan, “are quality control,” Angie joked.

“We’re really all partners. So I look at it as more of that,” she said.

In fact, the shop is called “Seven Seas” because it’s wordplay on the fact that there are seven members of the Childers family, and their last name begins with the letter “C.” It is also in reference to the Childers’ love of traveling; for example, they have visited almost all 50 states.

“I just help my parents as much as they need, make executive decisions, make small decisions, things like that. But we all have fun doing it. And we’ve all brought something we love doing,” Miah said.

Though Miah is studying to be a dentist in college, she loves painting and doing pottery. “With dentistry, a lot of that takes motor skills and fine hand skills, so they recommend doing pottery.”

Art as a therapy

The Childers family didn’t initially set out to open a creative space; Angie said she comes from a family who typically owned restaurants in the past.

“We love to redo old things … we always renovate our home,” she said. “Until the time we opened, we didn’t really totally know exactly what it would be. It was more like a vision that organically evolved.”

They did know for certain they wanted the creative space to be a place for anyone to exercise their creativity and relax.

“It’s been a rough two years with COVID,” Angie said. “Our goal as a family is to bring joy into this community, because we feel so connected to the community. We want people to see that — especially during the holiday season, but then in the years to come — to know that they can come here there’s a breath of fresh air, a smiling face, someone that they can talk to and beyond just painting.”

Since opening, the family said the response from the community has been positive overall.

“Everyone seems to be really excited, we’ve definitely been really busy,” Angie said.