The Artist's Lounge on Fall Street in Seneca Falls is the kind of place that defies easy categorization — and that is exactly why locals keep voting for it across multiple FLX Finest categories. In 2025, it swept Gold in three separate categories: Best Art Gallery, Best Summer Camp, and Best Children's Birthday Party Venue. It pulled the same Gold trifecta in 2024 and added Gold for Best Art Gallery in 2023. That breadth of recognition reflects a family-owned operation that has figured out how to be all things to all ages without diluting any of it.

The space functions simultaneously as a working art gallery, a creative studio, and a community hub. Hundreds of pieces by local artists — paintings, pottery, photography, jewelry, greeting cards, tie-dye clothing — fill the gallery, creating a vibrant marketplace for Finger Lakes makers. But it is the programming that sets The Artist's Lounge apart: summer art camps give kids immersive creative experiences that go far beyond the paint-by-numbers approach, and the birthday party operation has become legendary among Seneca Falls parents for delivering celebrations where children actually make something memorable rather than just consuming sugar and run around.

The Artist's Lounge proves that an art gallery does not have to be a hushed, white-walled space where visitors are afraid to touch anything. This is art as a participatory, community-building experience — a place where a five-year-old can paint alongside a professional potter, where local artists can sell their work directly to the people who live alongside them, and where creativity is treated as a social activity rather than a solitary pursuit. Seneca Falls has a strong tradition of community activism and civic pride, and The Artist's Lounge channels that energy into the arts with remarkable success.