Sue Spanke knows as well as anyone how Missoula's appetite for art has changed over the years.

Back when she and 11 other local artists and craftspeople co-founded the Missoula Artists Christmas Shop in 1993, the First Friday Artwalk was still a relatively new tradition shared by a small number of downtown galleries, and the biggest day-to-day challenge at the makeshift Christmas-season cooperative was simply staying warm.

"The first thing we did when we got into that place was show up with a big wad of pink (fiberglass) insulation," recalls Spanke with a laugh, "and stuff it anyplace where we could see the sky."

That first year, the Christmas Shop was located in a rundown building on South Third Street West, near Bernice's Bakery. Only operating for the six weeks prior to Christmas, the shop offered a mix of gift-oriented crafts and fine art by a diverse group of locals that included Spanke, John Bakula, Dirk Lee and others.

Earlier this week, as Spanke talked about the shop's outlook for the coming Christmas season, staying warm didn't factor into the discussion. Nor was the annual Dec. 26 tear-down of the shop any longer a hassle on the horizon. In fact, the biggest challenge that faced Spanke on that day was talking to a newspaper reporter while juggling a procession of customers.

"Can you hang on a minute?" she asks. "I need to sell this very lovely purse to this very lovely woman."

From its humble beginnings, the shop - now known simply as the Missoula Artists' Shop - has now established itself as one of Missoula's anchor outlets for locally made art. Over the years, it has evolved from a seasonal holiday gift store, to an eight-month-a-year storefront on North Higgins Avenue, to a year-round presence that features gallery shows by guest artists, consignment work by some 50 regional artists, and the diverse creations of 15 active co-op member artists.

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The success of the Missoula Artists' Shop offers a testament not only to the evolution of a more solid downtown commercial art market, but also to the power of cooperation and the importance of starting slow, said Spanke.

"The main thing that I think has helped us last is the fact that it's a group instead of one person running the place," said Spanke, who - like the other co-op members - covers front-desk shifts and rotates through other business management responsibilities for the store, located at 304 N. Higgins Ave.

"And because we're relying on so many people's energy," Spanke added, "starting slow gave us a period to get used to working together, which does not always come naturally for people who are self-employed."

Stained-glass artist Kiki Renander echoed that sentiment as she recalled the discussions among co-op members that led, two years ago, to the decision to take up year-round residence at the shop's current location.

"I think we had about half of us who thought it was a great idea; the other half thought it meant the carefree winters of skiing would go by the wayside," said Renander with a laugh. "A lot of us - myself included - liked having a break. It's part of why we choose to do what we do. But ultimately I think it's been a good thing."

That decision to stay open year-round came at what might, in retrospect, seem an unfortunate time – just a few months before the beginning of the most significant national economic downturn in more than a generation. Since then, several local galleries have shuttered their doors, including Studio 12, the William Gamradt Studio and Gallery (which closed for reasons unrelated to the economy, according to Gamradt), and – most recently – the Gibson & Schweyen Gallery, which vacated its space at the corner of Broadway and Higgins in late summer of this year.

Yet throughout the economic downturn - indeed, perhaps because of it - the Missoula Artists Store has remained busy, said Renander.

"Last year, the whole doom and gloom started in October, and I definitely saw a dropoff in the other side of my business," said Renander, who also creates custom stained-glass windows for residences and commercial clients. "But at the store, we had the opposite: The community came out and really supported us last winter. I did great, the store did great. Some people were buying all their presents here. I was shocked by it; it was really cool that they really were making a conscious decision to support local artists."

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Moreover, even as some galleries have disappeared, a new crop of commercial art shops has sprouted in the Garden City.

Earlier this year, painter M. Scott Miller opened the Gallery at Studio D at 420 N. Higgins. More recently, local photographer Kelly Hart and woodworker Brian Thorp opened the Studio Gallery at the corner of South Fourth Street West and Oak Street. That space, which is currently open during the First Friday Artwalk as well as Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. and by appointment, features the work of Hart and Thorp, as well as metalworker Justin Anthony, paper artist Amanda Kalinoski, ceramicist Jerry Baldwin, and painter Christine Sutton.

"We knew there's a lot of great contemporary art that doesn't have a good showing space in Missoula, so that was the idea," said Hart. "We just want to support these artists and hopefully expand the market for art in Missoula."

Later this winter, another gallery will join the scene, when painter Jennifer Leutzinger opens the Brink Gallery in the space on West Front Street formerly occupied by the William Gamradt Studio and Gallery.

Leutzinger says her aim with that space is to feature artwork that otherwise rarely or never gets seen in Missoula.

"It's going to be a contemporary art gallery, with one-person shows, maybe a few group shows here and there, to provide something a little different for Missoula than we've had in the past," said Leutzinger, who cites the former Farm Art Space on Higgins as a model for her vision.

"I want to focus on some really cool, funky, weird, fun stuff, with more variety of emotion and content than we see often at the other spaces in town," said Leutzinger. "I'm not going into this first and foremost as a money-making thing; it's more a selfish thing for me to have something to be excited about, provide something for my friends and the community who love to see good art."

As Sue Spanke observes the success of the Missoula Artists' Shop and the appearance of new galleries downtown, she ultimately sees reflections of her own beliefs about Missoula.

"I think that Missoulians are very aware of how lucky they are to live in a place that has these individual businesses - the coffee shops and the galleries and the local boutiques and all that - and they go out of their way to support them," said Spanke. "That's ultimately what has kept us here as a store, and I think it's what has kept all of us here as individuals, too."

Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or jnickell@missoulian.com.