Sketch Club Cafe draws Phoenix artists together at creative gatherings

“The art world can get a little bit pretentious, but we want people to feel celebrated and supported, and like they can also be featured," says Bryanna Smith, one of the co-founders of Sketch Club Cafe, a nonprofit gathering of artists and creatives from all over Phoenix who meet regularly to sketch and bond.

“We have career artists, people who are just slowly getting back into it or they or their kids just want to learn more about art,” co-founder Kourtney Hamidi adds. “We also have events for people who don’t want to talk and just draw. It’s a nonjudgmental space with no negative self-talk. You’re an artist no matter what skill level you’re at.”

Now celebrating their third year, Sketch Club Cafe has organically built a welcoming creative community in Phoenix that supports local small businesses through planning regular free meetups open to all forms of artistic expression. From low-key coffee shop Saturdays to curated events with art institutions like Phoenix Art Museum, Chandler Public Library or Mesa Arts Center, the goal of Sketch Club Cafe is to make all people feel like they belong in creative spaces.

The next Sketch Club Cafe event will be Sunday, Sept. 14, during Phoenix Art Museum's free Family Fun Day. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“We want to make it approachable, where anyone is able to do art and participate. With museums, we try to create things anyone can make art with at any age, and leave the table feeling inspired,” Smith says.

When Smith and Hamidi met about five years ago, they were both seeking creative community themselves. Smith moved to Phoenix 11 years ago from Southern California, and Hamidi, originally from a small town in Georgia, moved to Phoenix 15 years ago, after living near Seoul with her Korean husband. Yet, they both were still struggling to find a creative group in the Valley that felt like home.

“I was used to access to everything, I liked late-night coffee shops. So when I got here, I was a little bit stunned there wasn’t a lot of coffee culture at the time,” Smith says. “The first thing I did was go to almost every different coffee shop in the Valley, and eventually I found my community in coffee.”

“I studied art as my undergraduate,” Hamidi recounts, “and then I stopped for some time, because it is just so hard in the art world to keep it going unless you have some kind of community that motivates you. I really wanted to do art, but I have young kids, and I didn’t know many people who did art.”


When Smith and Hamidi met through the original Local Buzz street team and bonded over a dinner of Korean barbecue, they began organically meeting for a coffee at Grind Time, where they would bring their sketchbooks and hang out.

“You know when you’re in a cafe and drawing, a lot of people have their eyes on what you’re doing,” Smith says. “ We wanted to open that up to people, and wanted people to feel comfortable approaching us, talking to us or even sitting down to hang out.”

Yet, positive reactions were not the only responses the two had to contend with.

Smith says, “Coming out of the pandemic and everything that was going on at that time, like Black Lives Matter, we wanted safe spaces not just for us, as Black women, but for everyone to feel welcome. When we sat by ourselves, we definitely felt like we stuck out and we didn’t want anyone to feel like that.”

As larger groups began coming together, Sketch Club Cafe was officially born.

“I had just jumped ship from my career job. I was in accounting, then coming off the pandemic, I was feeling really inspired and also like, 'What am I doing with my life? I’m an artist,'” Smith says. “We inspired each other to reevaluate what we were doing and really wanted to approach art in a more healthy way for ourselves and the community.”

Sketch Club Cafe offers an alternative space to art-related events where people can feel pressured to have alcohol, rather than art, be the focus of the evening.

Hamidi is a parent, and "sometimes I don’t know where I belong in the art space. I don’t feel 100% comfortable. So here, if you want to bring your kids, it’s great, or if you want to leave them at home and that’s your one break, that’s great, too. All these different people from different walks of life belong, and we really have become like an extended family.”

Smith and Hamidi have spent the past three years growing an artistic community, and they both feel inspired in return in surprising ways.

“Sketch Club Cafe made me realise I don’t have to do finished projects. I don’t have to draw to get myself hung on a gallery wall,” Hamidi says. “I’ve embraced sketchbooks. I like to carry around small sketchbooks, and you can do it at any time. It’s OK to try things out; you can try out different mediums or subjects.”

“I’ve tried a lot more in my own personal art, too,” Smith agrees. It was really rewarding to start with Kourtney on this journey of finding community and our place in that community. When we first started Sketch Club, people were like, 'Wow, I have been searching for something like this. Now, we see a lot of creative groups popping up, and that makes us so excited.”