What it’s actually like
Most painters guard their studios. Jim Klein puts his on Main Street. The Art Factory is a small storefront at the west end of the gallery blocks where the Colorado painter works in public, with passersby watching through the windows or coming in to talk while the paint goes on. It is open on Thursday nights for the ArtWalk, and when Klein is in town it is one of the few places in the district where you can see a painting being made rather than sold.
The work is big, bright and physical: acrylics in saturated color, laid down in broad brushstrokes, that turn farms, fields, flowers, animals and music into abstract studies. Klein is a fan of Matisse and Van Gogh, and you can see both in the color. He has spent more than forty years in the agriculture business and usually paints at a farmhouse studio outside Greeley, Colorado, which explains the barns, crops and livestock that keep turning up. He says he likes the energy of painting in public, and especially painting around children, who get a kick out of it.
The Art Factory is the studio half of a family operation. The finished work hangs at the J Klein Gallery, further east at 7136 East Main Street, a family-owned modern art gallery that shows Klein alongside Jeffrey Berryman, the painter behind a style he calls “Surruralism,” and the wildlife sculptor Dan Ostermiller. Seeing both on the same evening is the way to do it, with the rest of the Main Street Arts District in between.
What to buy
A Jim Klein acrylic. The thing itself, bought through the gallery, ideally after watching one take shape.
A large canvas. Klein’s studio projects run big; the first Art Factory existed partly to show his largest works.
A ticket to the music. Klein composes as well as paints, and the gallery’s Beethoven in the Desert events pair his art with live performance; check the gallery’s site for dates.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The Art Factory is at 7012 East Main Street, toward the Goldwater Boulevard end of the gallery blocks; the J Klein Gallery is about a five-minute walk east. Street parking on Main is limited in season; the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is the dependable choice, and the public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal is the other. The Old Town on foot note and the Old Town guide cover the walk.
Come on a Thursday night during the ArtWalk, when the studio is open. Klein splits his time with his Colorado studio, so if seeing him paint is the point, call or email the J Klein Gallery first to make sure he is in. The themed Gold Palette ArtWalk nights between November and April are the busiest and liveliest.
Eat while you’re there
Craft 64 is a short walk west on Main for pizza and Arizona beer, and Sip Coffee & Beer House is a short walk south on Goldwater. Sel, a few doors east, is the dinner reservation, and Malee’s Thai Bistro is on the way to the J Klein Gallery.
How it got here
The Art Factory began as an experiment. In 2016, with the J Klein Gallery newly established on Main Street, Klein leased the unfinished space next door, a large vacant storefront between tenants, and turned it into a working studio, his own artist-in-residence program. Until then he had painted almost entirely at his farmhouse studio near Greeley, where his agriculture business made it hard to find painting time. In Scottsdale he could paint away from his other obligations, show larger works than the gallery could hold, and talk to the people looking at them.
The experiment worked. Klein said later that it lasted only a few months, until the next tenant arrived, but it brought the gallery a lot of attention, and clients kept asking about it after it closed. When the chance came to reopen, he took it, this time in the smaller storefront at 7012 East Main. He doesn’t mind the size; he has compared it to a laboratory test tube. The Scottsdale Arts District’s gallery guides list it as a stop of its own, separate from the gallery.
The idea fits Main Street’s history. Downtown Scottsdale has been a place where art is both made and sold since the 1950s, the 1970s turned it into a gallery district, and the Thursday ArtWalk, running since 1975, has always been partly about meeting the artists. Most galleries manage that with an occasional reception. Klein simply moved his easel to the street.
In the 2020s, the Art Factory and the J Klein Gallery give one family two addresses along the gallery blocks, and Thursday visitors a chance to see work in progress and finished work on the same walk. The Main Street Arts District guide covers the rest of the row.