Our Story

Art Street Apparel is the brainchild of Portland-based artist and entrepreneur Cynthia DuVal. The project is managed by Cynthia DuVal Creative LLC, the company she founded in Oregon in 2020 to manage her portfolio of creative work.

Cynthia has been an art enthusiast and practitioner since she was a child watching her mother teach herself to paint and make her pretty dresses for holidays. She started sewing at an early age and sold her first dress when she was fifteen. But she was a girl with many interests and majored in experimental psychology at University of Oregon.

After earning her degree she moved to Berkeley, California on an invitation from a dear friend who encouraged her to try it; she got her a job working at a popular cafe near the California College of Arts and Crafts in North Oakland. It was there she met and learned from many talented artists studying and beginning their careers as jazz musicians, print makers and film makers. Finding inspiration all around her she started working in the arts on a little table in the corner of the living room painting, and went on to explore printmaking, photographing, designing theatrical sets and costumes, painting and printing fabrics and making clothing out of the fabrics she designed. Later she lived and worked from her art studio at the Emeryville Artist Co-Op in Emeryville, California.

Art Street Apparel is the latest of many art-based start-ups Cynthia has produced to open new revenue streams for independent artists and new opportunities for art audiences to find them. Previous art/technology entrepreneurial projects she produced include New Intelligentsia Online Cinemas and New Intelligentsia Online Art Shows as well as The Intimate Lens International Ethnographic Film Festival, in collaboration with Patt Leger and festival producers, B.R.I.O.

Art Street Apparel is an e-commerce boutique that sells art and apparel that features Cynthia DuVal’s photography, paintings and digital art. She hopes to entice other artists to join her mission to produce wearable art for everyday life.

About the Brand

Art Street Apparel is a niche brand. It isn’t for everybody because quite frankly, it is arty, funny, sometimes weird, sometimes beautiful sometimes both. Artist have unique talents that set them apart from others and the same is true of arts-based entrepreneurs and audiences. Art Street Apparel is a place for expressing uniqueness and celebrating creative artists and their work.

Cynthia says, “I will continue to design and produce wearable art collections throughout 2022 and beyond, and look forward to showcasing other artists’ work through Art Street Apparel shows and sales going forward. There is no end to what we can do for artists and art audiences, using the Art Street Apparel platform to produce wearable art that is as uniquely expressive as the artists who make it.”

Bio

Cynthia DuVal was born in Salem, Oregon in 1954. She is an artist who is obsessed with nature, creative people, work and business possibilities. She earned an interdisciplinary Master’s Degree from UC Santa Cruz in cultural psychology and creative thinking and has worked in many high-tech innovation labs helping creative teams understand how people think and think together to create something new, in creative collaborative work settings. She is a serial entrepreneur dedicating much of her time in the past 10 years to designing, developing prototypes and testing art-oriented online start-ups for artists and art audiences.

Cynthia takes inspiration from the natural world around her to make art and apparel. Sunrises, wind blowing through the trees, the Willamette River, flowers, barren trees in the winter — these natural settings inspire the photographs and paintings Cynthia creates. =

Cynthia lives and works in Portland, Oregon. You can schedule an appointment with her to visit her studio; reach her at artstreetapparel1@gmail.com

“There is no end to the pleasures of creative energy.” Cynthia DuVal