Ian Hess has made it his mission to bring Richmond together through art. He ran Endeavor Studios for five years, a place for artist collaboration that became a rejuvenating fixture during First Friday art walks.
“It mostly featured group shows and, very occasionally, solo shows,” he says. “Everything about the creative DIY grassroots nature of Richmond, what I love about Richmond, was baked into that.”
Endeavor closed in 2021 but last year, Hess launched the nonprofit Little Giant Society to continue that collaborative vision. “We’re talking about creating a sustainable, livable and thriving artist community here,” he explains. “Our first big task is creating Richmond’s first public art park, a sanctioned space to allow artists of all skill levels to come and paint freely.” The proposed park is slated for underneath Manchester Bridge at 9th street near the Manchester Climbing Wall.
When art material retailers began closing, Hess opened SUPPLY on the 300 block of Broad Street three years ago. “It’s very much an arts supply store made by an artist for artists,” he says. Hess is also an in-demand artist himself with no less than six exhibitions running throughout the country before the end of the year — from Portland, Oregon to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to right here in Richmond (a fine art painter, one of his newest preferred mediums is woodworking, specifically using lasers to etch into wood). He notes that one longtime dream of his — to create a temporary sculpture for Luray Caverns in the Shenandoah Valley — is within his grasp. “I so badly want that to happen,” he says.
Lately, Hess has been known as the man behind the stickers. In September, he organized the popular “Hello My Name Is…” initiative at Gallery5, inviting hundreds of artists and non-artists to introduce themselves through adhesives. “There’s a huge aspect of sticker culture and sticker making that has become a global phenomenon,” he says. “It was amazing to use the space of Gallery5, which is such a community-oriented space, to do a show that included hundreds of artists.”
The project includes a unique, sticker-covered bus, a moving art piece that showcases the community mashup in traveling form. “We’ve got 6,000 stickers that still need to be put on,” he says. “There’s a lot of space left to cover.”
