Contoocook’s Hashtag Art Studio is not your average paint bar.
Since its inception in 2015, Hashtag has served as a space for locals looking to flex their creative muscles and have fun while doing it.
In addition to traditional, guided paint nights, the studio offers classes in mixed media and sign making, where participants design, paint and finish their own wooden signs.
“I want you to leave with something you love, not something you like,” said co-owner Lars Hogblom, who does painting and sign making classes. Hogblom’s fellow artist and studio co-owner MaryAnn McNicholas specializes in mixed media.
“Variety keeps people coming back,” McNicholas said. “We’re there to help but we’re also there to let your creativity flow.”
The different take on the already popular paint night phenomenon has proved a draw for Contoocook and beyond.
“It sort of took off on us,” Hogblom said.
Hogblom is originally from Hopkinton and moved back to the area after attending school in New York and living in Boston. An architect by trade, he brought his training in design to a new venture with Hashtag Studio.
When you walk into the studio space on Main Street in Contoocook, the atmosphere immediately feels different. Rather than the long rows of tables, chairs and easels, the small, tidy space is furnished with smaller tables and chairs clustered around each other, a few cushy armchairs and colorful lampshades designed by McNicholas.
Flecks and splatters of paint dot the tables, floor and smocks. This is clearly not a place where people are expected to paint in the lines.
The two say they were going for “a more intimate, cottage-y feel” than most paint bars.
One wall is covered with McNicholas’s bright, colorful pieces, including multicolored hearts and chalk paintings of flowers. On the opposite wall hang several paintings by Hogblom, as well as displays of his signs, emblazoned with different fonts and designs, including “Live Free or Die,” Contoocook and Hopkinton.
Anyone can make the signs at Hashtag Studio, but they look professionally done. People who attend sign-making classes send Hogblom the fonts and designs they want beforehand.
“Being a lettering artist takes years of perfecting,” Hogblom said. This way is a lot easier, and faster.
He prints them out on a machine that cuts out the designs and letters individually and puts them on a sticky backing.
Class participants then carefully press the letters onto their wooden signs and apply a thin layer of paint over them.
Once the paint dries, they use tools to peel away the letters, leaving the print behind.
Some people may think this is the end of the process, but Hogblom said the real fun comes by getting out some sanding paper and distressing the paint job, making the sign look older.
In the coming weeks, Hogblom will hold a Game of Thrones sign-making class, based on the popular HBO show. Class participants will be able to make signs of the crests for the many different houses in the show.
“We’re always trying to think of new things,” he said.
Hogblom also sells the finished signs he makes on websites like Etsy and Amazon Handmade. He said the internet and social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are a huge boon to craftsmen and small businesses like Hashtag Studio.
“In the last few years, the desire for handmade stuff is greater,” Hogblom said.
People who are looking to get really creative can sign up for one of McNicholas’s classes, where participants use their hands instead of paintbrushes.
“You can’t make a mistake” with mixed media because anything goes,” McNicholas said, adding that many people in her classes start out being worried their design needs to look a certain way.
Eventually, the stress levels go down as the creativity levels go up, she added.
“It’s like a coloring book but with chalk, and it’s your own design,” she laughed. “How cool is it to say, ‘I made this.’ ”