Kris Swanson & Roy Mustelier · 2011 Honorees

Both Kris Swanson and Roy Mustelier grew up in families that encouraged creativity and enthusiasm. Kris was raised on a California horse ranch in a house always full of activity and visitors. Her father, a prominent western artist, had collectors ranging from Indian chiefs to movie stars. Many became friends and frequent visitors to the ranch in Monterey, California. Art, horses, and a community of colorful characters shaped her life.

Roy, a self-described “army brat,” is the child of parents who came to this country from Cuba well before the Castro takeover; his father immigrated for medical training. As a U.S. Army doctor, Roy’s father served in Vietnam and at posts from New Orleans (where Roy was born), to California and Germany. Roy’s parents were enthusiastic appreciators of good food and wine and loved to travel. Family vacations included trips to Yosemite and Yellowstone, visiting relatives in Spain, and fishing the Carmel River, not far from where Kris was growing up. 

By the time Kris and Roy met in 1994, Kris had lived in Alaska, worked as a professional horse trainer, and was a full time bronze sculptor, dividing her time between New York City and California. Roy had attended Tulane University on an ROTC scholarship, had served twenty years as an active duty officer on submarines and was studying at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. They married after knowing each other just five months, greatly surprising family and friends. Within a year, Roy was transferred to a position with the National Defense University in Washington D.C., where he works today. Kris completed a sculpture commission, closed down her studio and joined Roy in D.C. 

Here on Capitol Hill, their first rented house was near Potomac Gardens where Kris met and befriended a group of children. Gradually, she began to include them in her studio work, creating masks, plaster castings and paintings with them. In 1996, the group produced the first of 14 holiday art shows, selling their artwork to neighbors who were invited to shop, eat and chat. The show and the shopping trips with the dozen or more children to buy gifts, clothing, school supplies and bicycles, became a holiday tradition. 

In 2001, Kris and Roy purchased a dilapidated building near Eastern Market. It had served the neighborhood as a grocery store continuously from 1870 until the death of the owner’s son during an attempted robbery in 1968 and had been shuttered ever since then. Initially the store served as a studio for Kris’ public art projects, including the 28 foot long “Yume Tree” that Kris created with the help of a small grant, some talented friends, and a group of children from area elementary schools. Made from handmade tiles and pieces of mirror, it adorns the wall of the CVS store at Twelfth and E Streets, Southeast. Kris and Roy used their new space also as a gallery and it soon became a hangout for local artists and musicians. In 2002, The Corner Store incorporated as a nonprofit arts space. Now governed by a board of ten community members, it is a lively venue presenting a constantly changing program of plays, fitness classes, dances, game nights, slam poetry, chef events, author readings, film screenings, art shows and a lot of music. 

Kris and Roy are grateful to live in a home they can share with the community they love.  The Corner Store and the friendships they’ve made have been the tipping point connecting them, at last, to a place they can both call home.