New thrift store, mending studio opens in Sanford and Sons on Tacoma’s Antique Row
Hidden in the bowels of Tacoma’s Sanford and Sons antique mall downtown is a new thrift store that specializes in making beauty out of discarded trash.
Art Eye Choke owner Sequoia Sol was hard at work Thursday in her studio-retail space on the third floor of the building, laminating her mother-in-law’s stamp collection to transform into earrings, pins and necklaces.
An artist by trade, Sol opened the shop officially on Feb. 1 and has made nearly every item in the store out of repurposed materials, including the bird-cage lamps, hand-shaped displays, clocks, squiggly mirrors, jewelry and clothing. Behind the register is her workspace, with shelves full of fabric scraps waiting to be repurposed and coils of wire destined to become jewelry. Sol said she also offers mending services where people can bring in clothing to be artfully patched.
You might have seen Sol’s work sold at the Tacoma Night Market, but this is her first brick-and-mortar space. Sol went to school at the University of Puget Sound and moved back to Tacoma in May from Hawaii with a goal to build community with artists — one of the reasons she was drawn to Sanford and Sons on Antique Row.
“This space has a built-in community of artists. [Some] people have been here for a while, [there are some] people who are new. It’s always changing around and … It’s just very supportive here, rather than opening a shop somewhere on a strip, either downtown or in South Tacoma,” she said. “You’re not doing it all on your own, which is really nice. There’s different types of traffic. [The shops] bring in different types of people. So it’s not just people looking for you, they might not even know they’re looking for you, and then they find you.”
Sol said the shop’s name has multiple parts. For one, she loves artichokes and the journey of perseverance it takes to pick apart the hairy parts of the vegetable to reach the heart. The “Art” reflects her own journey to accept her career path as an artist. As someone who once considered optometry as a profession and worked in an eye clinic, Sol said the “Eye” part of the name reflects her own fascination with eyes and others’ perceptions.
“And then you get to the ‘Choke’ aspect of it. With my art being so directly related to trash, you can kind of think about, sadly, how the world is choking on trash. And then you start to think about over consumption, and the fashion industry, and just how it’s polluting everything,” she said. “The fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to pollution. They say that we have enough clothing on the planet right now [that] if we stopped making clothing altogether, we could clothe six generations.”
A self-described maximalist, Sol said she loves to thrift shop and treasure hunt to find objects to upcycle. She made her wedding dress out of thrifted doilies.
“With the million and 10 ideas in my head, I really hope to bring more things to the community,” Sol said.
Most items she sells are between $10 and $300. Sol said she tries to offer a large price range, “so that anybody could come in here and buy something depending on what they can afford.”
Although she encourages patrons to explore Sanford and Sons “and you’ll find me eventually,” her shop is located one flight of stairs down from the main level, to the left of a camera store and down the ramp with a boat full of books.
If you go
▪ Shop hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
▪ Address: 743 Broadway, Tacoma
▪ Instagram: @art.eye.choke
This story was originally published February 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
