Tucson gallery aims to build up local artists

At Tiny Town, you can find merchandise from T-shirts to stickers, all created by local artists. But what makes the shop so unique is how the owners go about selling the pieces and working with creatives.

Amanda Beekhuizen and Jeik Ficker are the owners of Tiny Town, and besides the shop front, they also own a print shop.

It’s there, behind the scenes, where the connections with local artists are formed. It’s not unusual, for example, when they make artists’ stickers to print 100 and give 50 to the artist and keep 50 for the shop.

“We have this one fundamental thing where we don’t like to take money from artists. We try to do a trade with the artists and then we just take money from the consumer,” Ficker said. “So, we open up our studio to people to print. They come in here and make their own stuff …. Then to get designs we buy them from our friends, I do royalties, and then Amanda and I design a lot of it.”

For Ficker, it started out with printing items for his bands and other bands. In 2008, the business, known as Tanline, was not only printing items but pressing vinyls for bands, as well.

In 2013, Ficker and Beekhuizen started running a music venue/printing studio together until Beekhuizen was accepted into grad school. After two years, she came back, and Tiny Town was introduced on Fourth Avenue.

“Nothing gets wasted. The whole theme of the store is surplus. I remember going into surplus stores as a kid and just being like ‘Holy shoot, there’s a whole box of like gas masks!’ I try to keep that alive a little bit,” Ficker said.

While the store is located on Fourth Avenue, the printing is done at a separate location, 1537 S. Fourth Ave. At that location, artists can print on T-shirts, totes, bags and even zines.

“One thing I find really fun and interesting about Tiny Town is there’s so many styles of artwork in there that, I think, reflects a lot of people, so it both shows that we’re working with a lot of different artists, but then it appeals to a lot of different people. That’s been interesting to think about through the years and now that we’ve worked with more people there’s just a lot of tastes,” Beekhuizen said.

Much of the Tiny Town merchandise is centered around Tucson, from saguaro cacti to monsoon jokes. There are also zines created by Tucsonans. It’s all about the weird and the silly in the store, as well as keeping the prices $25 or below. There’s even a $3 bin of T-shirts that don’t quite meet sales floor standards but are discounted in an effort to keep waste down.

Tiny Town, 408 N. Fourth Ave., is open noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, noon to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

For more information, visit tanlineprinting.com.