Mixed Media

Sunlight streams through the propped open door. Customers browse, rifling through notebooks of vivid colours. A woman lingers as she writes her name on a pad of paper. With its carefully curated items of art supplies and ephemera, greeting cards and gifts, Dave Kuruc and Terésa Devries’ shop Mixed Media is more than mere art store.

Dave, with a background in graphic design, and Terésa, who worked in arts retail, opened the shop in 2005. They made it distinctly their own by offering high-quality items made in small batches from companies who shared their values. “When you see something in our store, you know we’ve hand picked it and thought about it,” Dave says. “We want everyone to walk in and feel like they’ve entered somewhere special, somewhere that isn’t replicated anywhere else.”

“There are so many different layers to James Street North,” Dave enthuses, including the street’s 19th century buildings and its mixed-used nature. And so, Mixed Media serves as a metaphor for the diverse layers of interactions that the shop hopes to initiate with its clientele.