THE MAIN STREET STUDIOS STORY

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It was Black Friday last year when we first opened Main Street Studios at 365 S Main Street downtown Camp Verde Az. Before we came across this unique building for sale, nearly at the entrance to the Fort Verde State Park, a retail shop/gallery was one of the last things on any of our minds. What made us (Charlie and I) stop and peek in the windows we are still not sure. But suddenly we realized that something was badly missing in our lives…that something was community! Our 2 sons, who partner and collaborate with us as artisans, agreed.

Charlie is originally from Prescott and almost 10 years ago now we moved here to Camp Verde. Our 2 sons, who were by now integral to our businesses, were soon to follow us.

But, here again we engaged in a cloistered life enjoying the riparian property we now owned on the Verde River. The longer we were here the more we could see that Camp Verde was inhabited by a rich community of people with many diverse talents and that the town was small enough to have real community interaction.

Terry Lorenz Justin Charlie

You see, long before our kids were born, Charlie and I (separately) made our living selling our Art Wares to retail stores. This dates back to the late 60's and early 70's. By the 80's we had moved to Santa Fe and we were fully engaged in 2 different, separate, wholesale businesses.

We both sold to retailers around the Southwest and anywhere Southwestern shops are located, some even back East. But working 24/7 in a studio situation is not conducive to developing much community engagement and for the most part we had little such interaction.

So here the 4 of us are, still wholesaling from our beautiful studio along the river and taking turns in our equally beautiful studio/shop/gallery downtown...

meeting, engaging and becoming friends with all of you.