Monika Agic will sell art, not magic, at a gallery and studio that opens May 6 at West Glen Town Center, but she will accept any appreciation that a mix of fine art and handmade crafts can conjure among Greater Des Moines shoppers.

Art by Magic, so named by combining her name and her passion for painting, occupies Suite 135 on the center’s Avenue of the Arts.

With white walls and ceilings nearly three stories high, the store offers a bright exhibition space where Agic will sell her own contemporary paintings and mixed-media pieces and those of other area artists, whose works will be displayed on a six-to-eight-week rotation.

Agic also was able to move a clutter of canvases and paints and materials from her condominium to her own studio. She also has an office where she can map out an always evolving business plan.

In addition to paintings, Art by Magic features the handiwork of American craftsmen, including string-knit dolls, piggy banks shaped like travel trailers and socks woven from recycled cotton – those for babies come five to a set and those for children come in sets of three.

Among other items are Kit-Cat clocks, a wall clock with the face of a smiling cat, with eyes that roll to the rhythm of a pendulum tail.

Agic, who was the co-founder and gallery director of the recently closed Central Iowa Artists Coop, said of anyone opening an art gallery, “You have to be mad,” and willing to accept the whims of the marketplace.

“I hope we can be self-sustaining, but I don’t know if the market will support it. We’re hoping that the market will discover us. … We are maybe more urban, more industrial, maybe more New York than what Iowa is accustomed to,” she said.

With that in mind, she isn’t giving up her job at a West Des Moines estate planning brokerage.

Agic also wants to increase awareness of the arts by offering birthday parties at which children would create artwork under the supervision of local artists.