FROM FIRST PENCIL TO FIRST FRIDAY: Inside River's Edge Art Supplies, where Sara Edge sells the tools, hangs the work, and launches new art walk for Castle Street
Every morning, Sara Edge opens River's Edge Art Supplies the same way. She and her husband, Dave, stop at Blue Cup for coffee—an iced coffee for her, a treat for the dogs—then the four of them walk over together. There's not much to open. The dogs just need to see where she'll be all day, and by the time the door's unlocked, someone's usually already waiting outside it.
Step inside and the first thing you'll notice is the smell. Sawdust and fresh paper, a little turpentine, something like a pencil shaving. Almost every customer mentions it. Edge can't smell it anymore. She's been standing in it too long, but she knows exactly what they mean because she remembers not being able to find it anywhere in Wilmington at all.
The gap she couldn't believe was there
A year ago, if you'd told Edge she'd be opening a retail store, she'd have thought you were crazy. She and Dave had run a gallery together in California for a decade, and when they moved east and settled in Wilmington, reopening that gallery was the plan. Finding the right space, though, was proving harder than she expected, and when she gets frustrated, she has one way of coping.
"Whenever I get like that, I want to soothe myself," she says, "and my soothing days are to go art supply shopping."
So she and Dave went looking for a place to do that. There wasn't one.
"I could not believe it," she says. "I don’t think I would have moved here if I'd known there wasn't an art supply store." Around the same time, she lost her day job in marine environmental biology and molecular ecology, teaching, running research labs. What could have been a setback turned into an opening.
"It just kind of fell into place, with me seeing the need, seeing the gap that was here, and wanting to fulfill that," she says. By then, she and Dave had both landed on the same conclusion: they were either moving somewhere else, or there was going to be an art supply store, because neither of them could live somewhere without one.
Now she gets to curate those shelves herself. People drive from Calabash, more than an hour away, just to shop there, rewarding, she says, and also, quietly, a little daunting. "I'm supporting so much of the community."
Even the name carries that same layering. River's Edge nods to her last name and to the store's spot by the river, but it's also a play on her own art name, Sedge Art. It took her and Dave a while to land on it. Once they did, it stuck.
What happens at the counter?
Ask Edge who walks through her door, and the range is wider than you'd expect. Established local artists stop in alongside total beginners. Art educators shop there. Visitors passing through Wilmington wander in, and so do people who aren't looking for anything in particular, just curious about what's inside.
Two groups in particular stick with her. There are the young ones, kids and teenagers who want to sketch and don't know where to begin. She'll pull out a few sketchbooks, talk them through the difference between a hard pencil and a soft one, walk them past the erasers until something clicks. And there are the retirees, people starting painting classes for the first time, looking for something creative to fill the years ahead of them. For them, it's usually watercolor. Edge will stand at the counter and talk color theory with someone who's never picked up a brush, the same way she'd talk to anyone else.
"It's really interesting, the range of beginners we get," she says. "It's all about where they are in their time of life, or what they just want to do with their free time."
What she doesn't do is make anyone feel like they have to earn their way in first. Many people walk in already convinced they're not artists, and Edge has heard some version of that sentence more times than she can count. You're not born knowing how to mix colors or hold a pencil. You just have to start.
"So what do you mean you're not an artist?" she says.
It's a small thing, telling someone which pencil to buy. But for a teenager who's never sketched before, or a retiree who's spent a career doing something else entirely, it might be the first time anyone's told them they're allowed to try.
Why Castle Street?
Edge had her heart set on Castle Street before she had a storefront to put there. She wasn't willing to bend on a few things, free parking chief among them, since she knew people would drive in from a distance, and she wanted foot traffic to go with it.
"That's Castle Street in a nutshell," she says. She calls it the creative corridor between downtown and the university side of town, the thoroughfare that connects the Wilmington she actually lives in. ("I don't really ever go past 17," she admits.)
The street has changed since she and Dave arrived, but the feel of it hasn't. Good Lie, a few doors down, has become their version of Cheers, a weekly stop run by people they know well. Home Plate Provisions, The Roasted Bookery, Elemental Grove Emporium, and more fill out the block. What struck her wasn't just the range of businesses, but the sense that Castle Street was already full of people making things, quietly, with little place to show it.
"It's just so eclectic and so many things to do, and very diverse, not only with the stores but with the community," she says.
She'd feel that same thing again and again once she opened her doors: Wilmington didn't lack artists. It lacked rooms for them.
From "I can't draw" to a gallery wall
Edge didn't always call herself an artist. Her first college major was art history, until her parents, who wanted her financially independent, pushed her toward science. For years, her creative life ran quietly alongside her research career: poetry, sewing, dolls made for nieces and nephews. She told people she couldn't draw or paint.
Then she met Dave, an artist since he could hold a pencil, and started entering his work into shows because she couldn't understand why he wasn't showing it himself. When he left town for a week and she was without a car, she taught herself to draw, using Dave’s pencils and paper. By the time he got back, she'd caught the bug for good.
Watercolor became her medium, often layered with graphite. Her work leans toward nature and female empowerment — young girls painted alongside wild animals. Lately she's been pushing further, mixing her own glow-in-the-dark watercolors and acrylics for an upcoming Black Light Art Show, chemistry failures included. "There's a lot of chemistry involved in that," she says. "My first batch was a complete failure."
One moment from that path still comes back to her. Years ago, in a Hawaii art supply store, an older man mistook her for an employee and asked for help picking out pencils. She helped him anyway, walking him through what little she knew then about graphite and hardness grades. When she was done, he asked her something she wasn't ready for.
"He looked at me, he thanked me, and then he goes, 'Are you an artist?'" She recalls. "And I was like, 'I don't know if I would call myself an artist.' And he goes, 'Do you create?' And I said, 'Yes.' And he goes, 'Then my dear, you are an artist.'"
"Every time I think of that," she says, "it gives me chills."
That moment reads like the blueprint for everything she's built since. At River's Edge, a teenager picking out her first sketchbook gets the same patient walk-through as a retiree trying watercolor for the first time. Nobody has to have already decided they're an artist before they're welcome. It's printed right on the wall: Art is for everyone.
A gallery that came before the store
Tucked inside River's Edge is a gallery, and in a real sense, it came first. The one Edge and Dave ran in California for ten years was her happy place, somewhere she'd sit on the floor and let go of whatever she'd walked in carrying. When they decided to move to Wilmington, she told Dave she wasn't moving unless they reopened it.
She wanted this one to feel the same way: accessible, unintimidating, not stuffy. "A place people want to go in and explore and look and feel at ease," she says. Because the shop and the gallery share a room that shapes the entire space. "I just love to be surrounded by art, and I love to see other people's ideas and creativity," she says. "It's natural to have a gallery with the store, to me, at least."
The shows so far have come together the way most things at River's Edge do, through people Edge meets across the counter. One of her first exhibiting artists, oil and gouache painter Evan Bryson, came in to buy supplies; Edge saw her work and asked her on the spot. She paired Bryson's show with charcoal artist Paul Shank, whom she knew through Wilmington's figure-drawing community, because their shared focus on the human form felt like a natural contrast. A show for local artist Angie, the first artist Edge met after moving to Wilmington, came next, at Angie's own suggestion, paired with another artist whose work complemented hers.
"I just like to show people local artists and give them a chance to have their artwork up somewhere that maybe another place wouldn't take it," Edge says.
What she notices every time is the same thing. "I see them glow," she says, "especially when they see other people looking at their art." She thinks of hiding a finished piece away in a closet as something close to saying goodbye to it. Every time a new show goes up, that's one more piece of Wilmington that doesn't have to stay in a closet.
Building Creative Castle
Wilmington already has Fourth Friday Gallery Nights. But Edge kept thinking about the art walks she'd known in the Bay Area: Alameda's Second Fridays, Oakland's First Fridays, Berkeley's Third Thursdays, where nearly every weekend had somewhere to go. If Wilmington had that much creative energy sitting quietly behind counters and in closets, on Castle Street alone, she didn't see why it couldn't support a night of its own.
"We can't draw people from Fourth Friday," she says. By the time gallery-goers made it through the Brooklyn Arts District, The Artworks, and downtown, Castle Street would be an afterthought. Competing for the same night and the same crowd didn't make sense. Neither did Fourth Friday's format, built around galleries. Creative Castle was a chance to bring in businesses, a bar, a bookstore, a record store, that rarely get a night like this.
The idea found real traction when Kathy Lindenmayer of Home Plate Provisions and Erin Jones of The Roasted Bookery got involved. Both already had deep ties to the local art scene—Lindenmayer sits on the board at the Cameron Art Museum and regularly hosts receptions at Home Plate; Jones's bookery hosts poetry readings and visiting artists of its own. What started as scattered emails between the three of them turned into in-person meetings, and from there, real momentum.
Landing on a name took some back-and-forth. Edge was firm that "First Friday" needed to be in it, easy to remember, easy to repeat. Lindenmayer came up with the rest. "She said, 'What do you think of Creative Castle?'" Edge says. "And we all just loved it."
Creative Castle launches Oct. 2, from 5-9 p.m., stretching the length of Castle Street from Third Street to the 11th block. About 15 businesses are participating so far, Edge says, with more expected to join. It's free to attend, free for artists to show, and free for businesses to take part.
"Accessible means that people don't have to pay to go see anything," Edge says. Visitors can spend the whole night browsing without buying a thing, catching a DJ set at Gravity Records, taking in artwork on the walls at Good Lie, wandering the block. Vending spaces will also be available, giving artists a way to show and sell work without needing gallery space at all.
The lineup carries that same welcome further than any gallery night usually does. Businesses taking part range from a bar and a bookstore to a hair salon, a nail salon, a record store, and a tattoo shop.
"Everyone" is who art belongs to, Edge says, when asked what that mix says about the event. "To be a small business owner, you have to be creative, whether you're a barbershop, a nail salon, that's art. They do tiny art on little tiny surfaces, and hair styling, you know?" She sees creativity as close to a survival skill. "If we didn't have artists, I don't think we could live. Everyone has to have some level of artistic creativity and thinking in them in order to move through the world."
A night on Castle Street
Ask Edge how to spend an hour at Creative Castle, and she'll tell you it depends entirely on who you are. Her own route: start at River's Edge for the vendors, walk down to La Mar Salada for food samples, then head toward Good Lie, stopping at Gravity Records for music and at Just Cut It to see HP Fang’s work on the wall, before ending at the bar with a drink under his art. Or go the other direction: a bite at La Mar Salada, browse the artwork and pick up snacks at Home Plate, then down to The Roasted Bookery for its own vendors, passing a stretch of vintage sellers along the way.
Wherever you start, Edge wants it to be more than paintings on a wall. She's hoping to bring in musicians and live painting alongside the vendors, and she'd love to host a performance in the shop's parking lot. "The art scene could be at a store, could be live painting, could be vendors, could be music," she says. "It opens the realm to all of the arts."
With one week to go, Edge is still building toward it, converting part of her own shop into a black-light room for an upcoming show, on top of everything else Creative Castle needs before Oct. 2.
For artists who want in, she and her partners are keeping a running roster rather than a single application deadline. Sign up, and they'll reach out as spots open with participating businesses in the months ahead, a system she says is "not so structured that it's prohibitive."
What Castle Street keeps giving back
Edge didn't expect to find a stronger creative community in Wilmington than the one she left behind in California's Bay Area, where she'd sat on nonprofit boards and served on an art walk committee of her own. She has.
"I feel like this is even a stronger community and a stronger supportive network than what I had," she says. Much of that starts with something small: people showing her their work unprompted, regulars who bring in sketchbooks and journals to page through at the counter. "That's like seeing someone's soul," she says. "People are just happy to do that here. I think it's because I provide a safe space for that, which makes me happy too."
That same instinct drew her to host the shop's monthly art meetups, run in partnership with local artist Angela Fernot, who'd already built the format and was looking for a home for it. Two meetups in, Edge is already watching them do more than she expected. One attendee, artist Jack Estep, started developing a collage zine workshop after talking it through with her, an idea she's encouraged him to bring back to the group for feedback.
"I'm hoping artists can use it as a resource to bounce off ideas, get feedback, get unstuck if they're stuck," she says. "Maybe it could even expand into people doing different things, like hosting their own kind of workshop."
Keeping that support going doesn't require an event on the calendar. It's her flyer wall, filled with notices for other people's shows and fundraisers. It steers visitors down the street toward Home Plate or La Mar Salada without being asked. "I think just keeping a connection going and making people aware of what is on Castle Street, by word of mouth, by hosting each other's flyers," she says. "It's organic."
Where she wants Castle Street to go
Ask Edge to picture Castle Street five years out, and the list comes quickly: a well-established, well-known art walk with more events built around it; more businesses filling in the empty storefronts, including, she hopes, a small boutique grocery; more restaurants and bars; small mixed-use buildings with apartments over storefronts, adding foot traffic without tipping into overdevelopment. She wants a street people can walk the length of, from Third Street to the Cargo District, and by her own count, more people already are, on foot and on bikes.
Some of that vision predates Creative Castle. Edge points to the now-dormant Castle Street Collective, which organized monthly trash pickups and had plans for street trees and public art installations along the corridor. "I'd like to continue that, move that forward," she says. "I'm really hoping the Castle Street Collective will revive."
She measures success in terms that go beyond a headcount. "People talking about it positively, people coming out of it having a good experience, those are as rewarding as having attendance," she says. "If you get a ton of people to attend, but they don't like it, that's worthless."
Edge doesn't hesitate to sum up what she's building: "A creative community." Ask her what Castle Street should feel like on the night of Creative Castle, and the answer is even shorter. "Fun."
Her ask of anyone reading this is just as simple: show up, bring a friend, and if you know an artist, a musician, a poet, send them her way. Wilmington has never been short on people making things. Come Oct. 2, Castle Street just wants to make sure everyone can see it.
Creative Castle launches Friday, Oct. 2, from 5-9 p.m., along Castle Street between Third Street and the Cargo District. The event is free. Artists interested in future dates can reach out through River's Edge Art Supplies.
River's Edge Art Supplies is located at 812 Castle Street, Suites C & D, Wilmington. Find them at riversedgeartsupplies.com, at info@riversedgeartsupplies.com, or at 910-899-6402.
