“I would love for people to just be able to come in and experience my art in hopes that it lifts their spirits,” says Sareka Unique Smith. “My artwork is very happy and joyful.”
That impression is readily apparent from the bold, fluorescent abstracts bedecking her first gallery, near JCPenney in Briarwood Mall.
Sareka Unique is an outgrowth of several years displaying her vivid paintings in the mall’s once-vacant storefronts “so that it doesn’t look so drab and empty and closed down,” she says. They drew some attention and a few sales, leading mall management to invite her into a 3,000-square-foot space for what she hopes will be longer than a temporary basis to exhibit her works (and perhaps others’), lead art classes, and serve as her studio.
The Detroit native and Ypsilanti resident started at Bowling Green State University as a computer science major but soon honored her creative drive and switched to visual communication technology, which “opened up the world of graphic design and illustration,” she says.
She still gets licensing checks for her work on Geometry towels, and she got a “really big chunk of money” from YouTube for designing an outfit it gifted to its top creators. That helped launch her as an artist foremost, while she continues as a social media marketing freelancer.
“I kept feeling the calling to paint, but I kept saying, ‘I’m a designer, I’m not a painter,’” she relates. “But then I just gave in and started painting in around 2017. I haven’t stopped since.”
The works in the gallery, accompanied by artist statements, approach $3,500—“definitely an investment,” she knows—but smaller paintings, prints, calendars, and notebooks are more accessible and equally colorful offerings.
“My process is very intuitive,” she says. “Most of them, I don’t have any idea what I’m going to create. Once I go to the canvas, I kind of just start painting, and it just evolves over time. I get in a flow state and just go for it.”
Sareka Unique, Briarwood Mall (JCPenney wing). Mon.–Sat. 10 a.m.–8 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.–6 p.m. sarekaunique.com
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