When Dan Kassel and Kaitlin Deering Kassel were students at Hopewell Valley Central High School, they both had dreams of moving to big cities, traveling the world and creating art with interesting people. Neither one ever imagined they’d one day open up an arts studio in town.
However, after living in Philadelphia and traveling across the globe together, the husband and wife duo realized Hopewell’s budding artistic atmosphere was just what they were looking for.
Dan, 32, and Kaitlin, 31, opened the Hopewell Creative Arts Studio in the spring. Located on Seminary Avenue, the studio hosts art galleries, art and music workshops, yoga classes and an array of speakers. The studio is a reflection of their own ventures, which encompass just about every aspect of the arts.
Kaitlin is a self-taught painter who goes where her intuition takes her. Rather than plan out her paintings in advance, she often starts painting and discovers what works best as she goes. Inspired by nature, she creates large-scale paintings that are filled with bright colors and bold textures.
As Kaitlin is painting, her husband can be found playing the cello—an instrument he first picked up in elementary school. Aside from performing with bands in high school, Dan didn’t begin to hone his craft professionally until about 2012, when he brought a loop station to add experimental effects to songs. He funded his first album through Kickstarter, got a chance to perform at World Cafe Live, and is currently working on his third studio album.
While Kaitlin and Dan focus on visual art and music, respectively, they both fell in love with art through one another’s mediums.
“Dan was focused more on art in high school and college and I was focused more on music,” Kaitlin said. “And at some point it switched.”
Dan grew up in an artistic family. His mother, Doreen Gay-Kassel, is an illustrator and textile designer and his father, Lewis, is a wedding photographer. He grew up primarily associating as a visual artist—a drawer and painter—and went to college for illustration.
Kaitlin, meanwhile, failed out of art class in seventh grade and instead gravitated toward music, singing in the chamber choir throughout high school.
“I think I just had so much energy to get out, having the structure to complete certain projects at that point wasn’t interesting to me and I just felt confined,” she said.
Kaitlin still spent much of her time outside the classroom painting and drawing. Aside from taking a few classes at Mercer County Community College, she’s been painting on her own for 12 years.
Though Dan and Kaitlin attended the same high school, being in two different grades and focusing on different things in high school meant their paths didn’t cross until later in life. They didn’t meet until 2009 in New York City. By the time they finally met, they were two city artists who wanted to travel the world in search of new people and experiences. They got married in May 2014.
“I think being married to another artist, we understand each other in ways that maybe other people wouldn’t,” Kaitlin said. “We’re very respectful of each other’s space and creative process.”
While Dan and Kaitlin independently work on most projects, the couple has collaborated on different artistic ventures in the past. In 2011, they started a small screen printing business together, selling T-shirts, scarves and tote bags at craft fairs and Philadelphia’s First Friday.
In hindsight, Dan admitted they were overcomplicating things. However, they listened to feedback from friends and customers, learned how to utilize social media for a small business, and, most importantly, realized just how much effort it takes to run a business.
“We learned a lot about business and what we would need to do as business to survive,” Dan said. “It was a great learning process of what to do and what not to do, what designs to focus on that people really seemed to like.”
Dan and Kaitlin weren’t quite ready to settle down and open up a shop. Instead, they sublet their Philadelphia apartment and spent months traveling to New Zealand, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Nepal, India and all throughout the United States. Upon returning home, they used their trips and experiences to fuel their artwork. Kaitlin compared traveling to filling up a well. Once the well was full, they could return home and draw upon it.
After they got married, they set out on a year and half trip. During part of their vacation, they hiked 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, which inspired some of their current projects.
“I wrote a lot of music that’s on this new album a couple years ago while hiking the PCT,” Dan said. After hiking all day, every day, the music on his iPod grew stale and he began creating music in his head.
It was the perfect place for an artist to conjure up new ideas, but being in a new place every week wasn’t ideal for recording the songs. It was time once again to go back and draw upon the well, but this time they wanted something a little more permanent.
“After traveling so much, seeing different places around the world, and being untethered for a year and a half, I think we both really wanted to have a place where we could do something in our own community and affect people and form relationships in one spot,” Kaitlin said.
“It’s nice to be able to see work that really touches us and inspires us, and bring it here to this space and share it.”
They always knew traditional 9-to-5 jobs weren’t for them. However, after traveling and meeting so many unique artists, they also knew they didn’t want to be tied down to just one specific area of the arts. Opening up a traditional “white-walled, stuffy gallery space” as Kaitlin described was too limited for what they wanted to accomplish. They wanted to open a space that would foster creativity among all artists, not just painters, drawers or musicians.
They wanted to create a space that could be transformational, and the look and feel of Hopewell Creative Arts Studio is just that. Artwork lines the walls of the shop, screen printed T-shirts sit in the front window, but the middle of the studio is wide-open floor. The open space isn’t found in most art galleries, which usually has seating or other pieces of artwork throughout the space. The openness, however, lends itself to be utilized in any way imaginable.
Whether it’s weekly yoga classes, painting workshops, music lessons or private parties, the space was made to foster creativity, Dan said. They wanted give a community a place to come together and showcase their work, and they thought Hopewell would be the ideal location.
While Dan was born and raised in Hopewell, Kaitlin is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She moved around a lot as a child—spending time in Indiana before coming to New Jersey—and found Hopewell to be a refreshing change of pace.
“I feel like there was a lot more room for creativity,” she said. “I had such a hard time when I was in school in Indiana, but when I came to Hopewell I graduated and I made friends. It seemed like it was more receptive to creative types.”
Kaitin added that there was a lot of “good energy” being put into the town. “It seemed like every time we came back, there was something else happening, some cool thing opening up,” she said.
Dan said between the opening of Brick Farm and Brick Farm Tavern and the renovation of the Off-Broadstreet Theatre, the timing was perfect to open up an arts studio and nurture the growing cultural aspect of Hopewell.
Even with Hopewell’s mini artistic renaissance, Kaitlin and Dan still had their concerns about opening up the arts studio in a suburb. The demographic is a bit older than they were accustomed to in Philadelphia, and leaving the city also meant leaving behind their tight network of musicians, artists and friends for an unknown community. While people in Philadelphia are open to the idea of a multipurpose art space, they weren’t sure if suburban New Jersey residents would take to the idea.
Their worries were immediately put to rest opening night. The studio was packed with people lining up to meet Dan and Kaitlin and learn more about the new space. “My heart was really full all night long,” Dan said.
Meeting Hopewell artists and art lovers alike has been their favorite part of owning a studio. Dan said getting to join Hopewell’s network of artists has been an exciting experience.
“There’s everyone from musicians to carpenters to visual artists to meditation guides to yoga people, and just a really wide array of interesting people who sort of crawled out of the Hopewell woodwork to come support and do cool things with us,” he said.
The positive reaction to the arts studio has allowed Kaitlin and Dan to push forward and plan even more unique events for the space.
Lining the walls of the studio this month will be the work of Guy Ciarcia, a New Jersey native and classically trained artist. His photographs and mixed media will provide the ambiance for yoga events, acoustic concerts, and even the telling of ghost stories.
On Oct. 20, author and presenter Gordon Ward will share his experiences and explain his views on ghosts during the “Ghosts: What They Are and How to Investigate Them” lecture.
Dan and Kaitlin have been able to transcend even their own ideas of what a studio could be, and they’re happy to provide their town with a space dedicated to fostering creativity.
“It’s nice to be able to see work that really touches us and inspires us, and bring it here to this space and share it,” Kaitlin said.
More information about the studio, as well as a full list of upcoming events, can be found at hopewellcreativearts.com.
Kaitlin Deering Kassel and Dan Kassel in the Hopewell Creative Arts Studio. (Staff photo by Joe Emanski.),
