Village Ice Cream Parlor & The Matters Magazine Cover
“Where community comes together and memories are made.” That’s what ice cream shops are all about! 🍦Check your mailboxes today folks! You may find the summer issue of Matters magazine with this on the cover!
Kudos to Ellen from Matters for giving me an extension on this deadline. It was easy for me to draw the facade of the shop. That’s there all the time. But what I really wanted was the people. The community! Just like Amy Lynn Cramer says in the first paragraph of her article, it’s where memories are made.
Sure, I could’ve used stock photos. I could’ve imagined people to draw in there. But that wouldn’t be genuine! I wanted to see the real interactions people have while inside & outside of the ice cream shop. Tiny moments - none of which happened at the same time, but are now frozen in time together. Teens gathering & gossiping. A couple bikes of the kids inside. My own kid ordering ice cream on her own for the first time (I may try to incorporate her into every drawing from now on. So far she’s coincidentally only been featured in ice cream shops). Some people waiting in line. More kids in the windows. Ladies showing eachother stuff on their phones.
All of those things are real moments that I caught a glimpse of and put down on paper. It’s important to me that people in town know that these images are based on them. I know I talked to the father of the kids with the bikes and a parent of the kids in the window. I hope they get a fun surprise when they find this in their mailboxes soon.
Village Ice Cream Parlor has a special place in the makeup of Maplewood. I’ve written before about how darn charming everything is. And without the ice cream shop, it still would be overwhelmingly charming…but significantly less so. How many memories are made just by grabbing a cone, standing outside watching it drip, and waving down friends passing by? A lot of them. A lot of them. A visiting friend of mine got to show her 3-year-old daughter her first rainbow there. Pure magic. Fun fact - Maplewood has rainbows every day. Even on days it doesn’t rain. It’s because the town was founded by unicorns.
Thank you, Ellen Donker & Matters Magazine for featuring my work on the cover of this issue. It’s an honor!
