New SLO County art gallery has ties to a familiar North Coast retailer

A new Cambria art gallery has ties to a retailer familiar to many North Coast residents.

Monarch Gallery owner Natalie Marks is the daughter of Leslie Marks, who sold popular Cambria children’s store Froggies in 2009.

“She’s always doing tons and tons of things,” Natalie Marks said of her mom, including painting, crocheting and playing the ukulele.

Now, the two Marks women are collaborating on Monarch Gallery, with Natalie dealing with the artists and running the business and Leslie mentoring, helping and contributing her own art.

Monarch Gallery opened in May at 755 Main St., Unit B, wedged between Caren’s Corner and Cambria Coffee Roasting Co. It’s at the other end of the block from Froggies, which is now owned by Norma Casas.

Monarch Gallery’s current stock includes hats, scarves, quilts, jewelry, ceramics, wall art, handmade cards and local stones.

The gallery occupies the same tiny location that was once home to the late Gayle Sewell’s Chambers Gallery. Leslie Marks told Sewell for years that it was “the best spot in Cambria,” her daughter said.

The idea for Monarch Gallery came from a chat between the two Marks women and the location’s landlord, Tom Beal, “who used to sell me ice cream at Caren’s Corner when I was a kid,” Natalie Marks said with a laugh.

The gallery location had just become vacant.

Beal and Leslie Marks “kept looking at me and sounding like I should open a gallery there,” the younger woman said. “I was just sitting there, listening, thinking ‘That’s a little absurd,’ but actually, it did sound a little bit like something I’d do.”

Looking back at “all the craft shows we did when I was a kid, all the business classes I took in college, all the people I know here who’ve owned businesses or own them now,” Natalie Marks mused, “I thought I could pool all those people for ideas, get local input.”

Originally, she thought Sewell had simply retired, but found out to her sorrow that the longtime gallery owner had died after a long illness.

At first, Marks decided to open a co-operative gallery in the location to help the artists Sewell represented for so many years. But Sewell was such a considerate, caring person that “she had made sure all her artists got into other local galleries before she closed her shop,” Marks said.

So, the 23-year-old entrepreneur and her mom brainstormed again. They decided to feature the works of “local Central Coast artists and a few others by invitation only,” Natalie Marks recalled.

Their artistic stable includes “20 or so people from Cambria, and most everybody else is from the rest of the county,” she said.

One of the artists whose works are displayed at Monarch Gallery is Kass Flaig of Atascadero.

Sales of Flaig’s Hearts of the Earth rock sculptures raise funds for locals who need financial help during medical situations, Marks said, including the late Earl Moon, Michael Miller and Seneca Jacobson.

Monarch Gallery’s invitees include “two displaying artists from Ventura who are up here every other weekend or so,” Marks said, explaining that “they have family members who live here.”

The gallery is “really filling out beautifully,” Marks said with pride. “It really is all about that space, and the vibe that Gayle left here.”

Monarch Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. For more information, call 805-395-0560.