Jay Nailor and MiShell Modern at The Shag Store in uptown Palm Springs.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRUCE FEAGLE
For the precious few still not in-the-know, The Shag Store in Palm Springs’ Uptown Design District is the phenomenally successful gallery and retail space devoted to the fine art prints and associated luxury merchandise of artist Josh Agle (aka Shag).
“Shag’s colorful, upbeat, clever, and inclusive art resonates well with the Midcentury Modern and Tiki lifestyles,” says Jay Nailor, who with wife MiShell Modern opened the boutique’s doors in 2010. “Think James Bond meets The Jetsons. Greater Palm Springs provides an endless gold mine of material, stories, colorful people, and inspiration for part-time desert resident Shag to create artworks from.”
Collaboration with such esteemed local brands as Modernism Week, Palm Springs Pride, Acme House Company, and Destination PSP have guaranteed that business has kept booming both in-store and internationally online at shagstore.com.
A relatively new partnership with one-time M Modern Gallery curator, author David Wills, has yielded a line of large format art books bursting with kaleidoscopic words and images revolving around Shag and other artists. To wit, a tome on Nancy Sinatra is forthcoming in-shop and at nailorwills.com. Also on the horizon: a private recording studio in alliance with Guns N’ Roses tour manager Ron Mesh in Cathedral City, which will host globally revered bands.
“We find the desert unlike any other creative climate we’ve worked in,” concludes Nailor, who’s lived here full-time with Modern since 1998. “We would love everyone to attend at least one of our special print release events, meet Shag in person, and experience what our customers tell us they look forward to and love about The Shag Store.”