Who's Who: Sarah Chester, Co-Owner of 4Cats Arts Studio

Name: Sarah Chester

Age: 38

Occupation: Co-owner of , “and curator – meaning that I teach the children and I’m also an artist myself.”

What is your background? I’m a mom of two amazing little girls, almost five and a one and a half. I have a business accounting background. I’m passionate about interior design, painting and working with clay. I just wanted to blend both of my skill sets – a business background with the art – and create a really cool space for kids to come down here and do some awesome art work.

Does your husband work with you? He’s the co-owner. He does have another full-time job. He doesn’t teach the children, but he’s here helping as much as he can.

Are you from Kensington? I’m from the El Cerrito hills. I live off of Eureka, and my daughter starts at in the fall. Like most people in this area, I've been driving through the Colusa Circle for everything I need, and I kept driving by this particular space. One day I noticed they took the curtains down and thought that (it) would be perfect.

When did you have your grand opening? We had our opening on Saturday the 25th of June. It was really amazing, so much fun. We had a taco bike come out. We had our friends from Mist and Mast play acoustic music. A local photographer named Andrea Baliz took the photos for the event. We had lots of action in here.

What inspired this and what do you do in a nutshell? The inspiration was, having coming from an entire career working in human rights, in women’s human rights in particular, it’s something I’m extremely passionate about. But I always wanted to be in a more artistic environment, being a creative person myself. I wanted to transition my career into a place where I could bring my own children. This was presented to me – it’s a Candian company. I never really visualized being an entrepreneur, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity of opening something that I think is really amazing.

What we do at 4Cats is we inspire children to bring out their own creativity, but it’s an educational environment. We want to teach the children about all the famous artists you can think of, from Vincent Van Gogh to Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, and the art movements they come from. Then they learn to replicate the work of the artist through their own artistic lens. We give them the pieces to take that creativity in their own direction. 

Are you technically a school, or a non-profit? We’re not a non-profit, but I do hope once we get established within the community to definitely bring local non-profits into the environment. I want children to also learn to give back to the community and a wide variety of issues that we should be tackling. We do foster teaching, a love of learning and a love of art, but we aren’t a school. We are definitely an art studio that has professional tools at everyone’s fingertips.

The focus is on kids and the kids art work on the walls? We try to keep as many pieces as we can from kids work, because we love them. But oftentimes the parents come and say, “We have to take this home,” so we have to let them go.

It’s definitely giving the children a space on the wall to be able to highlight their work. It is a professional studio that’s geared towards children, but I do have time slotted in the fall for adult sessions.