As a family owned business, The Rock and Art Shop strives to celebrate natural history, art, science and aesthetics while providing unique and memorable shopping experiences for all. As a part of local storefronts in Bangor, Ellsworth and Bar Harbor, the Sohns family strives to support the local communities in which the three Rock and Art Shop storefronts are located.
As illustrated on their website for convenient socially-distanced shopping, The Rock and Art Shop offers a wide variety of products including, “jewelry, curious plants, natural history objects, unique gifts, accents for your home, cards, educational toys, fine bath products, or a specimen for your collection,” and more not included in this list. The owners spend genuine time, thought and effort in selecting the specific products that the store offers up for sale and “strive to source [their] pieces with as much background knowledge as possible.” The family practices ethical sourcing, and to them, “ethical-sourcing means that our taxidermy mounts are vintage or that at no time recently were killed for sport. Most of our mounts are a minimum of 20 years old.”
Additionally, many of the suppliers and artists the store owners work with provide a great variety to sell and use farm raised specimens for their products when applicable. As explained in a short blurb under the “Cabinets of Curiosity” section of their website, a majority of the sea products The Rock and Art Shop sells have been used as much as possible prior to being sold on the shelf. For example, the shells or other creatures tend to be harvested for meat, and are then sold to stores such as The Rock and Art Shop. The same goes for animal bones once used for farming, now given a second life within this shop.
The Rock and Art Shop also host their Sohns art gallery currently featuring artist Kat Johnson as her third solo exhibition, Naturae Poetica. Johnson’s works highlight her linoleum block prints which feature both eye-catching and natural-toned hues which play on both flora and fauna, with multiple prints available both in the shop and on Johnson’s website for sale.
For more information on The Rock and Art Shop as well as a selection of merchandise to browse and shop, please visit therockandartshop.com or follow them on Instagram and Facebook @The Rock and Art Shop. For more information on artist Kat Johnson, her current pieces, and education opportunities, please visit her website at katjohnsonart.com.
