Jessica Stölen
Editor
jstolen-jacobson@cherryroad.com

In 2017, Clarkfield resident Betsy Pardick purchased her home, and while riding bicycle around town with her son, first noticed the old Clarkfield State Bank building (also known locally as the Miller building). “From the get-go I wanted to stop and take pictures in front of that building. If you look in my phone camera roll from 2017 to current there’s a lot of photos in front of this building,” says Pardick.

Throughout those years, Pardick, who has worked in the salon industry for 20 years in her home state of Illinois, in Granite Falls, and in Cottonwood, has dreamed about owning her own salon locally. Late last summer, she happened to have a conversation with her band mate, Tim Pehrson, of Nautical Moth, who happened to be playing a show in Clarkfield with his other band, The Roxbury Band, about the old bank building.

“I just looked at the building real hard and then we got permission to come in. I brought Randy in here – our contractor – because I was afraid it was going to be a moldy mess, but he assured me that what’s here was solid,” said Pehrson.

So the two made the decision to become business partners as well as band mates, and prepared two business proposals to present to the Clarkfield EDA. “We had really good support from them, and they were willing to part ways with the building,” says Pardick.

Part of the business proposal included the building housing Pardicks new salon, Balance Beauty, and to fill the rest of the space in the building, the two brainstormed the idea for the Clarkfield State Bank of Art – a center for musicians and artists to join together and collaborate through jam nights, and art gallery exhibits. “Hopefully it will be a gathering space where people can just drop by and have a cup of coffee and hang out and look at cool art on the walls,” says Pehrson. “We do have a space where people can come and work on their messy art. We’ve dubbed it the pottery room as a resource for anybody that wants to come do some art,” adds Pardick.

They also plan to host open mic nights, poetry nights, shows featuring their band Nautical Moth and more.

The building purchase was official October 21, 2023, and since then Pehrson and Pardick, along with help from contractors, family and friends, have been working to transform the space. “We had a lot of recycled materials, and for things we needed done professionally for building codes, we hired contractors. Everything else we were pretty much able to do ourselves because it had good bones, and foundation,” says Pardick.

For Pardick, there was also a learning curve, having never done work like what was needed in the building. “I’m a hairstylist, but I became a construction worker. I learned how to sheetrock and mud and tape, and tuckpoint brick, and sand floors,” she says.

The two navigated through challenges, utilizing as many materials that they could find in the building, or recycled materials from other places, including wood from Pardick’s parents barn, and doors from her Grandmother’s home in Illinois. “My shampoo bar that we built has a piece on top of the original marble from the wall, and we found the original panic button in the windowsill so we kept that there. There was trim we found poking around in the basement,” Pardick says. “But I also have a deep root of my family in this building with the things I brought back from Illinois, so even though my family is 12 hours away, they’re still here.”

As they worked, they gained confidence in their skill sets. “There were a lot of happy accidents, too,” says Pardick, recalling a day she was working in the building alone and while removing some crumbling plaster from a wall, discovered the original brick underneath.While they originally planned to sheetrock all of the walls, Pardick learned how to tuckpoint the brick and managed to salvage the original brick wall surrounding the fireplace in her salon.

While there were some small bumps in the road to complete the work, Pardick notes that they were able to work through every obstacle with ease. “It was really discouraging for awhile, not meeting the deadlines we set for ourselves, but we just kept going forward and we were really sily about it. We didn’t ever get mad at each other. We just found the humor in our challenges, and we took the time to take little breaks in the work to step out of the space and come back in a couple of weeks with a fresh mind and vision. We did a lot of pivoting too. We had plans and we pivoted so many times,” she said.

They also found a book at the library that contained history of the building, where they discovered an image of the original Clarkfield State Bank font and utilized that to recreate the original marketing into the new Clarkfield State Bank of Art logo.

The two agree that the most rewarding part of the process has been the support they’ve received from not only the EDA but the City Council and community members who have stopped by, peeked in the windows and offered words of encouragement and support. “It just seems like everybody’s on our side. It’s really easy to do when you have that kind of support,” says Pehrson. Pardick adds, “Also thank you to all the un-sung heroes that are our friends. It took an army to get to this.”

Pardick’s salon, Balance Beauty, opened a month ago. Pardick specializes in color services, and also offers an array of other services such as wedding hair, prom hair, special event hair, cuts for men, women, and kids, pedicures, manicures and more.

Balance Beauty is open every Tuesday and Wednesday, and other days by appointment. “I take late appointments Tuesday evenings,” Pardick says. The two also perform in their band Nautical Moth, around the region. Appointments are available by phone at 320-500-0188.

More information can be found on the social media pages for Clarkfield State Bank of Art (Instagram) and Balance Beauty (Facebook).