December is upon us and for folks in Miami— or in the art world— that means: Art Basel Miami Beach. From December 6 to 10 (by-invitation private viewings are on December 6 and 7), the Miami Beach Convention Center will be home to 277 galleries; 25 of which will be participating for the first time, with two-thirds hailing from North and Latin America. In mediums ranging from paintings and sculptures to photography and digital art, some of the resounding themes this year include works that speak to nature, as well as cultural and spiritual geographies.

We break down the fair’s main sectors with what to expect this year:

Galleries is the main section of the fair where the world’s leading galleries present the highest quality of paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photography, videos and digital works.

This year’s show will include never-before-seen works by Argentinian Italian surrealist Leonor Fini from the artist’s personal collection, jointly presented by Galerie Minsky (Paris) and Weinstein Gallery (San Francisco), as well as an homage to Brockman Gallery, the first major contemporary gallery run by and for Black artists, coorganized by Parrasch Heijnen Gallery (Los Angeles) and Franklin Parrasch Gallery (New York) in collaboration with Alonzo Davis, one of Brockman Gallery’s founders.

Meridians showcases large-scale sculptures, paintings and installations which go beyond the traditional art fair booth layout. It will feature 19 projects this year, including site-specific works for Art Basel Miami Beach, curated for the fourth consecutive year by Mexico City-based curator and Director of Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Magalí Arriola,

Kabinett, which provides provides galleries the opportunity to present curated exhibitions within their main booths, will have 28 installations.

Nova is a space for galleries to present new works by up to three artists. The Ranch (New York) will showcase never-before-exhibited sculptures by Puerto Rican artist Daniel Lind-Ramos inspired by his hometown of Loíza, the largest Afro-Caribbean enclave in Puerto Rico. Gypsum Gallery (Cairo) will present new paintings by Egyptian artist Basim Magdy, the first staging of the artist’s paintings in the US.

In Positions, the sector for young galleries to showcase solo presentations by emerging voices, Galatea (Rio de Janeiro) will exhibit a new photo series by Brazilian artist Allan Weber, known for his work on everyday life in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. Dürst Britt & Mayhew (The Hague), the first Dutch gallery to participate in Art Basel Miami Beach, will present new works by Mexican artist Alejandra Venegas, hand-carved on native wood.

Survey, dedicated to galleries to showcase artistic practices of historical relevance, will include solo presentations of American artist and activist Karen Finley centered on her 1977 interactive installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, during a protracted legal battle with the National Endowment for the Arts, presented by Freight+Volume (New York); as well as American artist Vivian Browne, whose “Africa Series” paintings from the 1970s will be presented by Ryan Lee (New York).

Conversations, a series of live debates among artists, gallerists, collectors, curators, museum directors and critics will run from December 7 to 9. Curated by Emily Butler, this year will features 35 thought leaders across nine panels celebrating Latin America. The program will draw inspiration from Miami’s position as a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean, honoring Afro-Latino, Latino, and feminist histories, the artistic ecologies of Florida, and other topical issues in 2023. These conversations will be live-streamed on Facebook and recorded.

Also taking place during this period, the UBS Art Lounge (open to UBS-invited guests) at the Miami Beach Convention Center, will showcase the UBS Art Collection which includes a site-specific triptych painting by Jeffrey Gibson entitled, “Just When You Least Expect It,” commissioned for the UBS Arena in Elmont, New York. The Lounge will also feature the Collection’s recent acquisitions by Nick Cave, Awol Erizku, Deana Lawson, and Hank Willis Thomas.

UBS has also partnered with Art Noir, a global creative collective and non-profit organization that catalyzes cultural equity across the arts and culture industries, to create the UBS Art Studio, which will be stationed near the Meridians sector. The group presentation organized by Art Noir co-founder and curator Larry Ossei-Mensah will features works by Anthony Akinbola, Sonia Gomes, Melissa Joseph, and Nari Ward, artists who engage in practices that utilize accessible materials like durags, shoelaces, and other textiles to create art that invite inquiry and discourse. This is open to all Art Basel Miami Beach ticket holders. (They will also be presenting at the Soundscape Park.)

For more tickets and more information, please visit the Art Basel Miami Beach website.

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SPRINGVILLE — It became apparent most of the fifth graders in Alice Owen’s Meadow Brook Elementary class had never tasted fry bread before as not-so-quiet whispers of appreciation buzzed through the class as the kids took their first bites.

When Diné (Navajo) educator Brenda Beyal asked what the students thought of the fry bread, those whispers turned to excited shouts of, “It’s so good” and, “They should serve this for lunch.”

“It tasted like heaven,” 10-year-old Jamison King said. “I learned that Navajos can make fry bread in different ways, like they make hamburgers with them, they make normal fry bread.”

The treat was part of a visiting lesson organized by BYU Arts Partnership’s Native American Curriculum Initiative, which brings Native American arts and culture to Utah classrooms.

“We’re gonna lose access to these beautiful art forms if we don’t find a way to improve the conversations and increase understanding about the sensitivities around this content,” BYU Arts Partnership Program Director Cally Flox said. “It’s an essential issue in the arts that we find respectful, culturally appropriate ways to share works from Indigenous people.”

Beyal, the initiative’s program coordinator, said it was born out of teachers asking questions about things like cultural appropriation and a need for authentic resources to teach Utah students about the state’s eight sovereign nations: the Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray reservation, Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah and San Juan Southern Paiute.

“Native Americans are not a homogeneous people. The eight sovereign nations of Utah have their own distinct ways of doing things, their own history,” Beyal said. “Our mission is to amplify Native voices.”

The funding for the program is targeted at elementary schools, but the program managers have seen a great deal of interest from K-12 classrooms across the state. There is some grade-specific content, but they said the curriculum is adaptable for a variety of grades and subjects.

“Teachers are starting to gain confidence and they are more willing to share important information about cultures and people that live within their communities rather than not saying anything or sharing anything because of their lack of understanding,” Beyal said.

Teaching with authenticity

Involving tribal nations and ensuring their peoples are portrayed respectfully in the curriculum has been a priority for the initiative.

That includes reaching out to each individual tribe to see what topics they want students to learn about, getting lesson plans approved by tribal councils and accepting “no” gracefully when tribal leaders opt not to share cultural practices.

It’s also meant not shying away from difficult topics, which Emily Soderborg, the initiative’s project manager, said are taught “gently.”

“Truth is being told in a way that doesn’t traumatize anyone, doesn’t make others feel bad for actions that they were not involved in, but also helps us recognize and empathize how hard things have happened,” Soderborg said.

Beyal added that they initially wondered if children would be able to understand some of the lived experiences of tribes. But they’ve since seen how capable the students are of learning about these topics, especially when they learn through the arts, which Beyal said “have a way of unfolding a story that helps with empathy.”

The fry bread lesson taught to Owen’s fifth-grade class, for example, was far more than a chance to sample fry bread. The kids learned about the process of making the food through film and music, and each tried their hand at flattening the dough before Belay’s husband fried it outside the classroom.

Beyal also explained the history and cultural significance of fry bread, which was created by the Navajo people in 1864 when the U.S. government forcibly removed them from their homes and marched them hundreds of miles away to an internment camp. Hundreds died during the Long Walk, and those who lived arrived in an unfamiliar territory without anything to subsist on. Fry bread was born out of “hard times” as the Navajo mixed the rations they received with their own creativity and imagination, Beyal explained.

“Now, there’s a lot to learn from that. You could be in a place of suffering and you can use your imagination, creativity and create something good and that’s what the Navajo people did,” she told students. “Your brain, your creativity, your imagination, your resilience, your courage and your bravery — you can be in dire circumstances and not have that taken away from you.”

It’s a lesson that felt personal for 11-year-old Mateas Mendes, who said it reminded him of his own family’s difficulties in Venezuela.

“We were in really hard times, too. Venezuela is not very good right now. They are in hard times, my dad and I are home (in Utah), we are OK. I just hope my grandparents are OK,” he said. “(I learned) that in hard times, you can make good things.”

Lessons to be learned

Although the initiative specifically focuses on Native Americans, its tactics could be applied more broadly as Utah grapples with how to teach ethnic studies.

How to incorporate ethnic studies into the state’s K-12 curriculum has been a dividing issue. The Utah Ethnic Studies Commission, which was created in 2022 as part of a bill that requires the state to include ethnic studies in core educational standards, will eventually provide recommendations to the Utah State Board of Education regarding the topic.

“We feel like the questions that we asked can be applied to so many different cultural resources,” Soderborg said of the initiative’s professional development course for teachers, which explains how to evaluate resources for accuracy and authenticity.

Those questions include, Is the material specific or glossing over a group? Does it bring people to the present and show how people live today? Does the creator’s background lend credibility? Are any references to traditional ceremonies or deities respectful and appropriate? Does the resource encourage copying or replicating traditions or symbols in appropriate ways?

As a Diné woman, Beyal said her hope is that Utah children see themselves reflected in the curriculum and that there is equity in schools.

“I know those are trigger words, but I feel strongly that there is much to be learned from other peoples and their ways and that there are more similarities than there are differences. When we don’t allow other people’s voices, informed voices, into schools, then we are really cutting the education of our children short,” she said. “One perspective isn’t the only perspective and it’s not the true perspective. You need many perspectives to find truth.”

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Local tribes are celebrating Native American Heritage Month this November. They say they hope the nationally recognized month encourages education and awareness of their cultures.

“We worked hard to get this month and have it recognized,” said Glenna Wallace, chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. “It’s important that we celebrate this.”

Many area tribes have held events, educational seminars and exhibits to commemorate Native American Heritage Month.

Kim Garcia, cultural preservation officer for the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, said among their activities are daily educational social media posts, crafts and song preservation.

The tribe recently sent a group to Wyandotte Days in Monroe, Michigan, where Wyandottes lived in the 1700s. The group hosted field trips for about 2,000 kids at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park.

Garcia said there are 576 tribes in the United States. In Oklahoma, there are 39 tribes that have come from all over the U.S.

People can have stereotypical images of Native Americans, lumping them all in together, she said.

“I think that people don’t realize that each one of us is different,” Garcia said of the different tribes. “We all have different cultures, we all have different languages, we all have different histories. This is a great time to share our culture so that it’s respected, not looked down upon.”

Wallace said she views the month as a time of inclusivity. The Eastern Shawnee tribal land is located adjacent to Jasper and Newton counties, but the invisible line of the border seems to block their presence from people, she said.

She used to teach at Crowder College and talked with students who thought there were few minorities in the area. It’s quite the opposite, she said, as within a few miles there are nine tribes. Seven of those tribes were forcibly removed from the Ohio Valley.

“I am always amazed at how little the people of the Missouri side know about the Native Americans on the Oklahoma side,” Wallace said. “There’s much to learn.”

Sonny Glass, vice chairman of the Quapaw Business Committee, said the month is a good time to remind people that Native Americans have always been here. They’ve consistently tried to take care of their culture, their lands and their people.

Art exhibit

One of the ways the Quapaw Nation is celebrating Native American Heritage Month is a collaborative exhibit with the Post Art Library in Joplin. Currently on display through the end of the month, the exhibit showcases Quapaw art and history.

Quapaw potter Betty Gaedtke’s work showcases the techniques that have fallen to the wayside. Gaedtke digs her clay from ground and often uses traditional Quapaw techniques to make her pottery.

In addition to pottery such as bowls, the exhibit includes her ceremonial pieces to be placed in graves. Gaedtke said her goal is to bring these pottery pieces back to burial ceremonies.

Through her efforts and research, the Quapaw now have a dedicated pottery studio to carry on these techniques and teach them to younger generations.

“I really hope this exhibit encourages people to ask about the Quapaw Nation,” Gaedtke said. “Who are we, where did we come from? Some people think the Quapaw completely perished. But we want to tell you we are here and here to stay.”

In addition to education, another way to celebrate the month is through supporting Native American-owned businesses, Garcia said. There’s many local gift shops run by area tribes. Online shops owned by tribes are also a good option, like Eighth Generation or Teton Trade Cloth.

Garcia said some people might be worried that it is appropriation to buy Native American beadwork or clothing.

“It’s actually appreciation as long as you’re purchasing it from an actual Native American,” Garcia said. “You just have to be careful that it is a Native American tribe or person. There’s a lot of misleading people who say they are Native, which is in fact illegal.”

Leading to awareness

Native American Heritage Month should lead to awareness, Wallace said. She proudly notes the tribe was recently active in having eight of the Eastern Shawnee’s mounds in the Ohio Valley entered into world heritage status through UNESCO.

One of the Eastern Shawnee’s concerns is that the history books are largely missing in this history about Native Americans, she said.

“It would be interesting if people would check and see textbooks their school is using,” Wallace said. “Check to see what they say about Native Americans and how much are they included.”

All of the leaders encourage the education and awareness to extend far past November.

Glass said for the past 151 years, they’ve had a Quapaw powwow over the Fourth of July holiday. This is a good place to start becoming familiar with Native American history and culture.

Everybody is willing to talk with them, and asking questions opens up a lot of doors, he said.

Even the experience itself can be a moment of revelation.

“There’s the music itself from the drums,” Glass said. “It feels like it’s your heart singing to you. These are the things we are proud of and are glad the community is seeing that.”

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MATHISTON, Miss. (WCBI) – A local singer-songwriter is getting some major recognition for his work. Mathiston native, Matt Lomax has always loved music, and recently the music business was returning some of that love.

Lomax was nominated for Country Vocalist of the Year at this year’s Josie Awards in Nashville.

The Josie Awards recognizes outstanding independent artists.

Becoming a singer-songwriter just seemed a good fit for Lomax.

“Music has always been a part of my life. I have been listening to music for as long as I can remember. I used to sneak into karaoke places and play when I was about 14. Music has gotten me through a lot of things and a lot of tough situations in life. So, it has always just been a big part of my life,” said Lomax.

Country music is a tough business to break into, and Lomax said there’s a lot of competition.

“The toughest part is standing out. Throughout other artists and other musicians, there are so many talented artists out there. So, to stand out and to get booked for the show is definitely the toughest part of the job,” said Lomax.

But he has some advice for future artists.

“One thing I would say to them is to keep going. People will want to knock you down, but keep going and do your own thing,” said Lomax.

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Joan Marcus/The Public Theater via AP
This image released by The Public Theater shows Rainbow Dickerson, from left, Sheila Tousey, Jeffrey King, David Kelly and Joe Tapper appear during a performance of “Manahatta” in New York. The play was written by Mary Kathryn Nagle.

NEW YORK (AP) — The financial crisis of 2008 hit Mary Kathryn Nagle differently. As a playwright and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she saw parallels to events that negatively impacted Indigenous people centuries ago.

Her play “Manahatta” juxtaposes the recent mortgage meltdown when thousands lost their homes to predatory lenders with the shady 17th-century Dutch who swindled and violently pushed Native Americans off their ancestral lands.

“A lot of times history does repeat itself,” Nagle says. “I’m really interested in the ways in which we can connect to our past, carry it with us, learn from it, and maybe change outcomes so that we’re not just doomed to repeat the past in the present.”

Nagle’s 2018 play has landed in New York City at the prestigious Public Theater this winter and it’s just the latest in a flowering of Native storytelling. From “Reservation Dogs,” “Dark Winds” and “Rutherford Falls” on TV to “Prey” on the big screen and Larissa FastHorse becoming the first Indigenous female playwright on Broadway, barriers are being broken.

“I hope it’s not a moment. I hope it’s the beginning of an era,” says FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. “We stand on the shoulders of so many folks that came before us.”

In 2020, the University of California, Los Angeles published a diversity report that examined media content from 2018-2019 and found Native representation to be between 0.3%-0.5% in film. In television or on stage, Native representation was virtually nonexistent. ( According to the Census, 9.7 million Americans claimed some Indigenous heritage in 2020, or 2.9% of the total U.S. population.)

“The truth was most theaters had never produced a single play by a Native playwright. Most Hollywood film studios had never produced any content actually written or produced by Natives. It may have been about some Native people, but it was not written by Native people. And we’ve just seen that flipped on its head,” Nagle said.

Non-Native storytellers are also exploring the history of white atrocities on Native Americans with Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” telling the story of the Reign of Terror in Oklahoma, and documentary-maker Ken Burns examining an animal central to the Great Plains with “The American Buffalo.”

Nagle recalls moving to New York in 2010 and asking artistic directors of theaters why they weren’t producing Native work. They would answer that they didn’t know any Native playwrights or that there weren’t enough Native audiences to power ticket sales.

“Good storytelling is good storytelling, whether the protagonist is white, Black, Asian, LGBTQ — it doesn’t matter,” said Nagle, who is on the board of IllumiNative, a nonprofit working to deal with the erasure of Native people.

“There’s a lot of projects out there that are changing the narrative and that are proving that our stories are powerful and that non-Natives are really moved by them because they’re good stories.”

Madeline Sayet, a playwright and professor at Arizona State University who also runs the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, sees the contemporary Native theater movement flowing from the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s and ’70s and an increase in awareness of Indigenous issues ever since Native people won the right to legally practice their culture, art and religion.

She connects the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973 to the Standing Rock standoff over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 to Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S History” winning the National Book Award this year.

Sayet, a member of the Mohegan Tribe who became the first Native playwright produced at the Public when her “Where We Belong” made it in 2020, said keeping Indigenous stories being produced depends on changing funding structures and getting long-term commitments from theaters and programs like Young Native Playwrights Contest.

“Part of what’s really helping right now is us all creating more opportunities for each other instead of in competition with each other,” she said.

FastHorse, who made history on Broadway in 2023 with her satirical comedy “The Thanksgiving Play,” which follows white liberals trying to devise a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving play, has since turned her attention to helping rewrite some classic stage musicals to be more culturally sensitive.

“Native people have been exotified in a way that keeps us othered and separate, sometimes in a negative way, as in, ‘We just kill all the Indians’ and sometimes in a ‘positive’ way where they’re this special, magical thing.”

She has recently reworked the book for an upcoming touring musical revival of the 1954 classic “Peter Pan,” which was adapted by Jerome Robbins and has a score by Moose Charlap-Carolyn Leigh and additional songs by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

FastHorse found the character of Peter Pan complex, the pirates funny, the music enchanting but the depictions of Indigenous people and women appalling. There were references to “redskins” throughout, a nonsense song called “Ugh-A-Wug” and Tiger Lily fends off randy braves “with a hatchet.”

“I was like, ‘What? We’re having little kids read this? This is just rape culture written out, exoticized with a Native person to boot,” she said. “This is what makes you a good woman? If you fight hard enough to keep the men away?”

FastHorse widened the concept of Native in the musical to encompass members of several under-pressure Indigenous cultures from all over the globe — Africa, Japan and Eastern Europe, among them — who have retreated to Neverland to preserve their culture until they can find a way back.

The playwright said one of her guiding principles in the reworking was to make sure a little Native girl in South Dakota could see herself and celebrate. “Then we’ve done our job and she can join the magic instead of having to armor herself against the magic.”

Nagle is enjoying making her debut at the Public Theater — her play runs through Dec. 23 — but is realistic that no one play is going to teach everyone every single lesson they need to know about Native people after hundreds of years of misinformation.

“I think one thing I’m just hoping that people take away from this play is like, ‘Wow, Native stories are really compelling. Native people are incredible. They’re incredibly resilient. They’re incredibly brilliant. Yes, there’s tragedy, but they have such incredible senses of humor,’” she said.

“I want them to love my characters the way I love them. I want them to feel the heartache. I want them to feel the laughter. I want them to feel the love,” she said. “And I want them to leave the theater just wanting to know more about our tribal nations and our Native people.”

Carl Hentsch and Matt Roberts, owners of Betty J’s Mercantile, offer fair-trade gfits at their Newton shop, as well as items by local artists and crafters. The new business is operating out of the former Lemon Tree Tea House and bears a similar look to the house in Tama where Roberts and Hentsch started their business.

NEWTON — Matt Roberts and Carl Hentsch launched their first business inside a big yellow house in Tama about four years ago, and although their company has changed names as often as its changed locations during that time, it was fitting they would again find themselves in another big yellow house when they moved to Newton.

It was a sign, said Roberts, who also felt the town’s location between Tama and his hometown of Marshalltown was ideal for repeat customers who have come to know his reputation to stock shelves with merchandise that cannot be found anywhere else in the area. He hadn’t moved in yet, but it already felt like home.

“We just fell in love with this property because it reminded us a lot of our other house,” Roberts said in an interview with Newton News.

Betty J’s Mercantile officially opened in town on Nov. 1. For the past three months or so, Roberts and Hentsch have been renovating their home and shop. There is still work to be done, but the shop portion is ready, and it’s split between a room with fair-trade items and an “Iowa room” with gifts by local crafters and artists.

The business has gone by a number different names, starting as Big Yellow Antiques & More inside their home in Tama. Then they moved to a small storefront in downtown Tama. To account for the heavy traffic, Roberts and Hentsch opened a second space called Big Yellow Fabulous Finds & Fabric.

Eventually, the two would move away from their antique-centric offerings and move more towards giftware. They also physically moved to Ottumwa where they renamed the store to Big River Fabric & Gift Company since the shop was about a block away from the Des Moines River.

When they decided to move to Newton, the name changed again. While it was tempting to go back to Big Yellow, Roberts was given a chance to dedicate a business to his family. “Betty J” is actually Betty Jean, his grandmother who taught him everything he knows about antiques and business.

“She and my grandfather had an antique business for 55 years, I think, based out of Clear Lake and Le Grand. I would travel with them during the summers doing the antique shows all over the country,” Roberts said. “That’s where I picked up my antique knowledge and why we started out in antiques.”

Throughout the years the two business owners have sold everything from candy to furniture, and while some of those items can still be found at Betty J’s, the shop is putting more emphasis on greeting cards, fabrics, quilt pattern designs by Hentsch (who is a master quilter) and its dozen or so fair-trade giftware lines.

Many of the fair-trade gifts are from countries like India, Pakistan, Tunisia, Africa and Cambodia. Other shops around Newton either do not have such items or focus on it as heavily as the guys over at Betty J’s do. For Roberts, that’s great. He hopes customers at least find these different items interesting.

“That’s my whole goal in business,” Roberts said. “I don’t want to compete. I want to be different. Ever since we’ve opened — even when we were just in the antique business — we were always known to be a little different and carry unique things. We weren’t your typical antique store.”

Roberts likes unique things. If another shop is offering similar giftware, he is not afraid to drop it and find something different.

“I don’t want to be the same as anybody else,” he said. “I want to keep this a unique destination. That’s the whole goal. With that comes risk because sometimes you bring in different items that are not to everybody’s taste. But I also like that, too. Plus, I’m learning what people do like.”

Oftentimes what customers do like is when each item has a story. Which is why Roberts and Hentsch have attached tags onto every piece of merchandise that tells people where it is from. Roberts said it serves him well, too, when it comes to remembering the stories and origins of the gifts customers ask about.

Of course the keeper of the best story is Hentsch, a quiet and reserved artist whose talents are on full display inside the shop. His quilts hang on the walls. His books are stacked on shelves. Hentsch has taught classes and talked about quilting all over the world; he humbly mentioned local places like Grinnell and Knoxville.

But Roberts is quick to brag about Hentsch, saying he has been all over the country and even on cruise ships to talk and teach quilting.

Roberts said, “He’s written books and teamed up with a big name artist named Tula Pink.”

Hentsch adds, “And I design quilts for the fabric companies.”

“So he gets commissioned out by the fabric companies who make fabric. When they have a line they get ready to release, they ask him if he’ll design a pattern for them. Of course it has to go through the process of being approved, but once they approve it then it gets released into his patterns.”

Hentsch’s patterns and books aren’t going to be found anywhere else in Newton besides Betty J’s Mercantile. Again, it’s different.

In Newton, different can stand out in a big way. So far, Betty J’s has done just that. Opening weekend for the shop brought in numerous customers.

“We like this community quite a bit,” Roberts said. “We’ve always liked Newton and we’ve come here for the Fourth of July Parades and other events around town, and we’ve always enjoyed it. Right now, I can’t get over the overwhelming response from the community. I’ve never been so busy on Facebook.”

Even some of their former customers from the Big Yellow days found their way into the 309 First Ave. W. shop.

“Our very first customer on Wednesday, Nov. 1 was a former Tama customer,” he said. “So we’re getting some of our Tama customers back. We’ve got Marshalltown people coming to see us, too. It’s just so nice to be back in this little hub of communities. As a business owner, I like to see familiar faces.”

With a constantly changing line of products, there is even more reason to get familiar with Roberts and Hentsch.

“I always say, ‘If you see it, get it.’ Because if it’s fair-trade or even the Iowa crafters, chances are we’re not going to be able to get it in again,” Roberts said.