One of the conundrums of being a working artist is finding a space where you can work, sell your art and meet with customers. Home studios are isolated, but opening a gallery is daunting and time consuming work.

Enter Venue in Ballard, a storefront that sells the work of local artists, houses artist studios and now has open crafting hours and classes for the public. This business arrangement is ideal for many artists. It allows a workspace where they can connect with customers, but they are not required to stay there all the time.

“Venue is the in-between,” said Kerry Smith, a painter who works out of one of Venue’s ground-level studios. “I still paint at home, but it is nice to have a place people can go to see the work.”

Smith’s artwork is what he calls ‘peaked painting’ — he takes thick dollops of oil paint and puts them on the canvas in a sort of pointillism manner. Each peak is one point on the painting and the colors make an abstract, textural piece.

Painting is hardly the only medium present in Venue; there are fine art photographs, felted scarves and flowers, journals, bags and jewelry. Everything is slightly quirky — there is a necklace made from a silver goldfish cracker — and even with the diverse range of work, the shop manages to have a consistent image and feel.

“The idea [for Venue] came out of a need I had,” Venue owner Diane Macrae said.

She wanted to have a studio “that wouldn’t be so isolating,” as well as a storefront. “If I had this need, how many other people have this need?”

Macrae stresses the importance of the interaction between artists, and began the open craft hour to give those who do not rent a studio the opportunity to work on their projects and gain feedback from other artists.

“We want this place to be a multifunctional space for anything creative,” Macrae said. “We invite artists and designers to hold classes here and they’ve been really popular.”

Polaroid transfers and felting have been a huge hit Macrae said. They also hold classes in bookbinding and chocolate making.

More classes will be added in the future, and these will focus more on the business side of working as an artist, including how to do taxes, patents and pricing.

All the art sold in Venue is sold on consignment. There is an application process, which includes submitting photos of the work, price range and other considerations. Once a month there is a team meeting and the shop members vote on the applicants.

Studios are rented out for a year at a time and there is another application process to go through.

“We need our stuff exposed,” Macrae said. “People love to meet the artist and watch them work. It creates a whole other experience.”

Many artists start out selling in markets or online. At Venue, artists have the opportunity to watch how customers interact with their products.

“There are lots of levels you can be involved in the store,” Macrae said.