By MIKE SIMONS Staff Photographer on Aug 19, 2013, at 12:28 PM Updated on 8/19 at 12:28 PM
It doesn't look like much - the shop crammed with furniture near a strip club and a bar.
To Jennifer Martin, though, her Art by Etta Mae shop is in the perfect location on East Admiral Boulevard, just east of South Lewis Avenue. She sees the potential for the Kendall-Whittier area to transform into the next Brady Arts District.
As I walked into the space and announced that I was from the Tulsa World, she said "Thank God."
The artist has a business degree because that's what dad wanted her to have, but now Martin is turning to her art full time. It doesn't take the business degree for her to know that if the shop is to make it she needs customers.
"I'm surviving, but I'm not thriving," she says.
She distresses furniture and has always sold pieces at shows. As she rubs wax on an antique piece, she talks about giving the antique new life. Martin squats on the sidewalk, continues to rub the wax into the wood. A customer enters the bar next door. Martin speaks of her dream of more artsy people moving into the area and even a Friday night art walk.
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