Carlee Seele
Two blocks from the Susquehanna River, on a street whose Dutch translation is “dweller by the waters,” the potter whose name means “lively waters” realized that the letters of her gallery name—Vivi on Verbeke—fit perfectly in her storefront window’s 13 leaded-glass panes.
“And here we are, and we’re like everybody’s grandparents,” said Vivi Sterste. “And it’s great, because I meet people.”
In an age of mass-produced décor and e-commerce, artists can’t just dream up art. They must also get it into the world.
Three Harrisburg-area artists—Sterste, visual artist and poet Julia Mallory, and jewelry artisan Carlee Seele—pour their creative sparks into their work and into the galleries they fashioned for reflection, gathering, learning, shopping, and passing on knowledge to new generations of makers.
Galleries Born
Sterste founded Vivi on Verbeke in 2013 because it all came together—motoring with her partner, a Verbeke Street storefront for sale, a book on her favorite potter falling off the shelf around the corner at Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
In her boho, brick-walled gallery, the daughter of Latvian refugees from Soviet brutality picked up a mug. It depicts a scowling, orange-faced man on the front and a single word, “Ick,” on the back.
“Who does that remind you of?” she said. “We can’t get too political.” She then added, “I make what I feel like making at the time.”
In other pieces, the great beauty she finds around her—river currents and sunsets—shimmers through a lustrous glaze. Photos by her partner, Jeb Boyd, revel in the loveliness of the unexpected.
Boyd used to tell Sterste, “People don’t understand. There’s so much beauty in Harrisburg.”
A few Midtown blocks away from Vivi, Julia Mallory opened Ten Oh! Six in 2024. Born and raised in Harrisburg, Mallory is a poet who, around 2020, dove into collage and painting.
“I needed another way to say the things that I needed to say,” she said. “I feel like visual art has allowed me that range to do so.”
She’s happy to explain her poetry, but art patrons are welcome to “make whatever you want of it as a viewer.” Ten Oh! Six displays collages inspired by a second reading of Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,” and an exhibit titled “Generational Possibilities” of her acrylics, black swirls on bright backgrounds sliced by ribbons of color.
“I honestly think it is capturing something that defies our traditional use of language,” she said. “You can’t reduce it to a single understanding.”
Across the river, in revitalizing New Cumberland, Carlee Seele owns Moss Creek Art. Around 2008, she was a practicing dental hygienist who took a jewelry class when she couldn’t find a medallion she had in mind. Her dental instruments? Handy for carving details.
“I still use all my dental instruments,” she said, pointing to her small worktable behind the Moss Creek Art counter. “Of course, they are nonhygienic now, but I still use all of those things to do the precision work.”
As jewelry making and glass art consumed her home, her husband kindly suggested that she accept a friend’s offer of a building for rent. Moss Creek Art opened its doors in 2019.
Custom work kept the gallery open through COVID.
“We will scrap,” Seele said. “We will redesign. We will repair.”
Seele’s primary business line emerged from a customer’s request that her late husband’s ashes be incorporated into custom jewelry. A gallery corner displays wine glasses, walking sticks, beads and jewelry—all the ways that glass can be fused or kiln-fired to cradle the cremated ashes of pets or family members.
Working with the ashes of children “eats me up the most,” but Seele is “providing a service, a connection for people with their passed-on loved ones so they can carry them around, and it creates an emotional bond.”
Business of Artistry
Seele complements her work with curated pieces from skilled local artisans, for appeal to a wide variety of tastes. One woodworker infuses wood with flowing streams of color, while a woodturner creates meticulous segmented vases and pens.
A former patient of Seele’s started by making intricate boxes before adding hats adorned with hand-burned designs.
“I sell her hats all day long,” Seele said. “She’s one of our local artists. She’ll be here forever, hopefully.”
In the online retail age, local galleries win on their own turf, Seele said—at the spot where customers want pieces from the artists they meet.
“My tagline is, ‘A piece of me becomes you,’” she said. “You can go to any artist to get whatever, but you gravitate toward that person because of what they represent.”
Mallory established Ten Oh! Six for the display and teaching of art but maximized it as an open-concept space devoted to the needs of the community, “using creativity as a means of transformation.”
Workshops have immersed participants in collage, poetry and dealing with grief. Soul Salons exhibit the works and letters of two Black icons who share birthdays, such as poet Sonia Sanchez and Otis Redding (Sept. 9).
Art displays warm the former storefront into more than a multi-purpose room.
“People comment on the energy of the space,” she said. “They love the way that it looks in here. They love the so-called good vibes. It is very inviting.”
Creating visual art, writing poetry, managing a business, and earning a livelihood “is a lot,” Mallory admits. “Even balance requires movement. You just keep at it.”
A consumer who spends $50 on a box-store print could put the same money toward a local artist’s print, but artists also bear a responsibility for making their work accessible.
“We have to be engaging so people recognize the availability of the work,” Mallory said.
Sterste often gets the question, “How’s business?”
The answer: “I’m an artist. I do what I do. We create this space to share with people, to engage with people, to inspire people.”
Teach the Future
In 2022, Mallory held a program exposing teens to art-making and careers, “just to introduce them to the possibilities that exist in the creative trades,” she said. “I remember shipping my first originals to people and thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is a whole thing. There’s a whole process.’”
Seele’s gallery blends high-caliber artists with “a little hub for helping out new artists,” from high school students to retirees getting out of their comfort zones. Knowledge of the business of art, such as buying supplies wholesale, must be passed on.
“AI is not going to make this stuff,” Seele said. “We have to push the craft and teach it to someone else. We have to teach the future.”
Sterste, a former teacher, tells young artists who visit her gallery, “You can do this. You can start saving your money.”
“Most of the stuff we create or they say now ‘repurposing’ or ‘recycling,’ we’ve been doing forever,” she said. “You can do collaboratives. You can get together. Share the rent.”
Creating Community
Asked how she juggles art, family and business, Seele laughed.
Her daughter helps around the house. Her husband, Phil Seele, is Mr. Fix-it for things like the kiln. Her mother, floral designer Sandy Osterlund, creates the gallery’s elegantly natural décor.
“We’re creating a little creative hub for people to come and experience small-town shopping and bringing the community together through events,” she said.
Mallory plans Kwanzaa celebrations and writing workshops as the year ends. She draws her energy from people who “have a different curiosity” and pop into Ten Oh! Six for book clubs, films, art, healing and “building the things you want to see in the world.”
“People are looking for outlets for things of a little different flavor than they might not get otherwise,” she said.
Sterste is accustomed to switching her brain from business to art. She quotes author Joseph Campbell: “Where you stumble, there lies your beauty.”
And she finds joy in her chosen location, there amid Midtown Harrisburg’s “dynamic, suffering, misfit group of really interesting people.”
“Wherever we go, whoever we meet,” she said, “there’s something if you keep open to it.”
Moss Creek Art, 315 Bridge St., New Cumberland. www.mosscreekart.com.
Ten Oh! Six, 1006 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg, www.tenohsixstudio.com. See Facebook for events.
Vivi on Verbeke, 258 Verbeke St., Harrisburg, Facebook.
If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!
