This Whole thing started as a Pop-up

Creating this place, for you & your kids, has been one of the great joys of my life. I’m unsure of the future, I’m scared to death, but I’m pushing through and re-imagining Little Pulp for the days to come. Hoping you’ll come along for the ride, we could certainly use your help...

When we opened up Little Pulp in March, 2017, I never imagined we’d still be here in 2021. This was supposed to be a pop-up - 3 months - 4 max. An art experiment, bringing groups of kids and their parents/grandparents/guardians together to create some prints, introduce myself to the local community and launch a series of stationery products designed for kids. That was the idea, that was the plan...

An Autistic child changed the course of our pop-up

When, a child with autism visited with his mother, on a quiet weekday afternoon, and the boy opened up and we spent about 45 minutes together painting with a broomstick, using printmaking brayers and running our kid-friendly printing press (powered by 2500 marbles). Mom was snapping pics and taking video with her phone to show his therapist. She told me that he rarely connected like this. It was then, I realized that I needed to take this workshop for as long a ride as I could.

After much discussion with my wife and family - we decided to keep it going. Month-by-month we renewed our contract for this 5,500 sq/ft storefront. Then, we renewed for a year, then another year. Every month, the stress to cover overhead and keep it going was increasing. Many times, I almost shut the lights - but kept going - I could not stop - there was too much paint on walls and floors to clean - it seemed easier (and more fun) to keep it going.

Drip by drip - more of you told your friends about us - more emails were coming in - more requests for birthday parties and school trips - and it seemed that if we could just hold on a bit longer, the momentum would hit it’s stride and we’d get to that point were you could breath as the first of the month rolled around.

Then we got hit with a global pandemic.

No birthday parties - no school trips - refunds, reschedules - and trying to figure out how to cover the costs- there were days when i wanted to crawl under the covers and stay there.

There were other days were I felt inspired to create some new pieces, new prints and put myself in front of a camera - upload videos to YouTube and even do some Facebook lives. I wish I had the were-withal to stick with ‘content creation’ - still trying to get to a place where it becomes part of my daily routine.

How you can help us?

Tell others about us - tell them we’re back to doing workshops, tell them we’re back to doing birthday parties - tell them we’re selling products (like our custom sketchbooks & stickers) -AND- tell them we’re starting to sell our paintings and prints.

Word-of-mouth marketing is how we were able to hang on to this space and word-of-mouth marketing is how we’re be able to stick it out.

Thanks so much for your support - I hope to see you at the shop, I hope to make a custom sketchbook for your kids, I hope you’ll hang some of our artwork in your home, but most of all, I hope the very best for you and your family.

With ❤️
-Frank