Two topics today: Henry Jackson and Jason Mecier

I've been wanting to write about my friend Jason Mecier's art for some time, and finally have a reason and the materials to do it justice.  But before I get into that, some news about my own gallery.  


Our current show is a solo show by Henry Jackson.  It's a great collection and shows off the gallery space well (the photos on the web site don't do his pieces justice -- you'll have to come in to see them in person!).  Today we had scheduled Henry to speak about his art and got a nice crowd of about 40 people.  But in bigger news and with perfect timing, we also had a great review by Kenneth Baker published in the San Francisco Chronicle, (the biggest paper in the bay area, for those of you not from around here).  So we're very excited about the publicity and the interest in Henry's work.  The show has been extended to Friday, July 2, so come visit when you have a chance!


But back to Jason Mecier.  Full disclosure.  My husband and I are friends of his and own a couple pieces by him.   But also in the interest of full disclosure, there is some debate as to whether he's an artist or not.  Is he a one trick pony?  A supremely skilled craftsman?  Or high artist?  You be the judge after watching this YouTube video produced by Ovation TV:  Art or Not Art?  Me, I come down on the side of art.  Interestingly the video was shot at 111 Minna Gallery  a couple years ago, which some would argue is a bar and not a gallery.  (Although I can't seem to find a video for "Gallery or Not Gallery?".  :-)


Jason started out doing bean-and-noodle portraits 10 or 12 years ago, like we all did as art projects in elementary school.  But Jason took it to a whole new level.  My favorite was a small piece depicting Sister Wendy from the PBS Series on art.  Two small white beans for her big buck teeth.  Alas, that one isn't included on his website.  But he did kitsch celebrities and other people from the entertainment world. His portrait of the stars of Beverly Hills 90210 is particularly brilliant.  He used alphabet pasta for the skin tones and wrote nasty commentary about each one on their foreheads.  (That piece can now be seen at Glama-Rama a cutting-edge hair salon at 14th and Valencia in San Francisco.)


But after a few years of doing bean and noodle portraits, it got boring, so Jordan and I commissioned him to do a piece with some old costume jewelry.  We chose a scene from Barbarella, and provided him with old jewelry, mardi gras beads, etc.  And this is what he came up with, using faux fur as a background:

It's 39" x 56" (99 cm x 142 cm).  From there he moved on to portraits that you might say were made out of junk -- just random crap that he found around the house or the neighborhood.  That series culminated in a 9' x 12' (2.7m x 3.6m) portrait of Farrah Fawcett commissioned by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  It was made entirely of Farrah and Charlie's Angels memorabilia, and could only been seen properly from a balcony above the piece.  On the ground it looked like a rummage sale.  From above it was the famous portrait of Farrah sitting in a red bathing suit.  There's a picture in this story. 


But I digress.  His latest thing is "Celebrity Junk Drawer", which you will know already if you watched the YouTube video above.  Jason just had an opening at  brand new gallery 5 Claude Lane, where he showed work from this series.  Some had been shown before at 111 Minna, but some were new.


And here's the interesting part.  Often the celebrity in question doesn't provide enough "junk" from their "junk drawer", so Jason asks his friends for donations.  Jordan and I have a system for tossing our trash.  Three bins:  Trash, Recycle, and Stuff for Jason.  So, here are a few pieces he did that contain junk that I donated!


First, a portrait of Conan O'Brien with my old foldable Lufthansa toothbrush at the upper left corner.  


Next was a portrait of Chelsea Handler who hosts a comic news hour report.  She had three pieces of my junk, including an old Nokia cradle for either my old Nokia 9500 Communicator or my 9300, which I still use as an alarm clock, but had no need for the cradle.  Look for the curved cradle at her left clavicle.  (Click the images to see larger versions.)  Also included is my grandfather's case from a 70's gadget called "Drive Awake" -- you hook it to your ear and it beeps if you nod off while driving.  I'd show you the close-up but it's boring.  Oh heck, here it is, along with my yellow Carmex lid below to the brown square "Drive Awake" case.


There were a few others, like a cigarette lighter in a portrait of Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's, and part of a Prada ribbon in a portrait of Stephanie Kramer (I had to Google her, definitely a D-list actor).


But best of all is the inclusion of my first-generation iPod (the one where the wheel actual spun around) in the Stevie Nicks portrait.  


I actually had a bit of remorse when I gave away the dead iPod -- it could have been part of my collection of dead, but original computer equipment, next to my Newton and other fun but failed objects. But now, the iPod is part of Stevie's cockatiel.  Check them out.


And last, but not least, Jason's newest work is a series of portraits done in pills.  Jordan was lucky enough to purchase Heath Ledger done in pills.  (A bit knock-you-over-the-head with the idea, if you ask me, but it looks cool.)  This is 17" x 21" (43 cm x 53 cm),  Still trying to find the best place to put this one, but we'll find a good home for him somewhere in the house.  And one of these days, I'm going to look up all the little numbers on the pills to see what we really have here.  :-)

Anyway -- you decide.  Art or Not Art?  I say Art.  And go see Jason's show at 5 Claude Lane.  It's up until Saturday, July 10.


Cheers!

First show down, second show up: Henry Jackson

After 5 weeks, we took down the Inaugural Show on Saturday.  While not a sell-out, we sold a number of works and met our primary goals of 1) selling art; 2) creating a buzz about the space and our artists; and 3) putting ourselves back on the map as an important emerging gallery in San Francisco.  Mission accomplished on all three counts.


Those of you who have seen photos of the gallery on this blog or seen the photo album of our 400-person opening party, know about the "pink wall".  We decided early-on to make the wall behind our reception desk an accent wall that changes color with each season, or each show, depending on the content of those shows.  It's good placement, since it's not the first thing a visitor sees when they walk in the door.  (The first thing they see is a wall of art on a traditional white wall.)  But when they turn around, there it is -- the ever-changing accent wall.  


Bright pink was great for the Inaugural Show, but just doesn't match the palette of the solo show for our next artist, Henry Jackson (you'll see his website is a bit out of date, but you get the idea...).  After brief consultations, we settled on a pale green with a hint of gray for the accent wall.  So my Sunday was spent painting the bright pink wall with layers of white primer so that the pale green would go on in one coat, without the pink blasting through.  It looks great, if I do say so myself.


In the mean time, my partner Andre has been busy building the storage racks for our art.  Up until now, we've been able to get by without it, but now we need real storage.  Our inventory is growing and we need a safe place to store it.  And flat files.  Don't get me started on flat files.  That topic could fill an entire blog entry.  Seriously.


But back to Henry.  Henry has been painting in San Francisco since the 80s.  Marina calls his work "new" Bay Area Figurative.  If you look at the wikipedia entry, you'll see this period was in the 50s and 60s with artists classified into First Generation (like Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, and Wayne Thiebaud), a Bridge Generation (like Nathan Oliveira and Frank Lobdell), and a Second Generation of artists.  I guess this makes Henry a "Third Generation".  


The last sentence in Henry's artist statement explains it all to me:  "By taking the figure and removing all that is familiar to me, seeking the soul -- the true essence -- I'm left with something that has a much deeper grasp of reality -- the human spirit."


I find his work haunting and compelling, forcing me to look deeper into the piece to see what I can find, to see what is missing, to see what should be there.  I understand the book Bay Area Figurative Art: 1950-1965 is a great overview of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, although I haven't had a chance to read it myself.


But back to gallery business.  As I learned in Silicon Valley, "Just in time" (JIT) is all the rage for manufacturing operations -- deliver the required materials just as they are needed -- no sooner and no later.  It appears to be the same in the art world.  Our show of "Henry Jackson: New Works" opens Wednesday evening, but we won't be getting the paintings or even images of the paintings until Tuesday.  So we'll have a bit of a mad dash to get everything put together and ready for the show.  


In the mean time, here's one image Henry was able to share with us a few weeks ago for the flyer that went out.  This piece is "Untitled (#1890)", 2010, oil & cold wax on canvas over panel, 72" x 60”.  Quite impressive in person.  (For my non-US readers, that size is 183 x 152 cm.)

Hope to see you at the opening on Wednesday 5/26 from 5:30-7:30.  Henry will also do an artist talk on Saturday, June 5 at 2:00 PM.  


Cheers!

Focus on Art and Artists

Recently I received feedback that some people would like to read more about my opinions on art, and less about the business of moving and running a gallery.  (For those of my friends interested in the nitty gritty of the business, you'll just have to be satisfied with my occasional Facebook posts on the topic.  :-) 


So, in the next few weeks I'll talk more about some of the art I like and the artists we represent, how we find and discover new artists, and how we work to build a consistent program and stable of artists that demonstrate our vision for the gallery.  


I've also been meaning to review a few books on the art world.  And now I have more motivation to actually sit down and read those books.  The first will be I Bought Andy Warhol, followed by I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon), and then finally The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art.  Let me know if you have other suggestions of books to read.


But for now, I'm going to put down my regular science fiction and get busy reading up on the arts!


Cheers!

Attending Art Fairs and Manning the Gallery Simultaneously

This weekend is the NEXT Chicago Art Fair, along with a handful of other art fairs.  NEXT is dedicated to emerging artists, meaning artists that haven't attracted a strong following yet.  We rented space at the fair for a fairly large amount of money and packed up a crate of art from Michael Tole, Justin Quinn, Lars Theuerkauff, Jason Dunda, Will Marino, Owen Schuh, Daniel Ochoa, and others a couple weeks ago.


These are often "juried shows", where we submit the artists we'd like to bring, their bios, and information about our gallery.  We've been thrilled to be accepted to these respected art fairs, and look forward to participating in more fairs in the coming year.  


Marina and Andre flew out there on Tuesday, leaving me here to man the gallery myself.  The foot-traffic has  been steady, although there is still lots of busy work with the data bases, advertising, planning for new shows and openings, etc.


It's a lot of work to set up a booth.  I helped Marina with it in December at SCOPE Miami last year, despite having sworn off booth duty after years of silicon valley trade shows!  Our show in Miami was works on paper -- easy to transport, easy to install, and easy to take down.  And very successful!


This time it's real paintings, and three-dimensional art.  Here are some photos that Andre sent from his mobile phone.  The top one shows two portraits by Daniel Ochoa in the foreground and sculptures by Owen Schuh in the background above the table.  (Click the pictures for bigger views.)



The photo below shows some new paintings by Michael Tole in the foreground, three drawings by Patrick Gabler above the table, and three of my favorite Justin Quinn "Moby Dick" drawings on the far wall. I can see hints of other pictures in the corners, but not enough to tell what they are.


Anyway, last night was the preview for press and serious collectors.  Today was the first day of the show.  So Marina and Andre will be hawking our wares in Chicago while I woo the visitors here in San Francisco.


Wish us all luck!


Cheers!


[Updated May 2, 2010]

The First Week: A Promising Start

We've now been open officially for one week.  There's been real variation in visitors each day.  But it's still definitely better than the temporary gallery spce we were using before.


Every day we've had serious collectors or art consultants come in and express interest in this artist or that.  Another thing I'm learning as a novice gallerist -- art consultants are people paid to help their clients choose which art to buy.  Cool, no?  Some of their clients just want "something pretty that will coordinate with the colors in the sofa and carpet".  Others want advice on "what will be the best investment" -- who's the most promising up-and-comer.


The daily grind is much more interesting and exciting than I expected.  In Silicon Valley, or even a mid-stage start-up, you're doing the daily grind in exchange for a paycheck.  Here, the daily grind results in payment due to art sales after expenses.  So there's an entirely different pressure coming to work in the morning than I've experienced in my previous career.


Much of it is new and exciting, but I still can't get away from spreadsheets and databases.  At least I think I'll never have  to write another PowerPoint deck in this life.  (Knock on wood...)  And of course it's  interesting talking to the people who come in about the art, the background of the artists, their motivations and techniques, etc.  


I'm still waiting to get some pictures of the opening party, but here are some pictures of the finished gallery.  My new home for the next 5 years!


Here are some images from our reception desk and one corner of the gallery.  Notice Cartier's red blind's across the street. Click on the photos for a better look.

And a photo of our office.  The big star sculpture on the wall is by David Buckingham.  He's an interesting artist.  He lives in LA and goes out to the desert to find colored scrap metal -- old signs, farm equipment, trucks, even buildings.  He has spotters and tipsters who let him know about new finds.  He pays the owner (if he can find the owner, that is) and uses a portable plasma torch to cut away the metal, brings the metal back to his studio to cut up and weld back together.  Nothing is painted -- he uses only the original painted metal in his work, bullet holes, rust, and all.


A lot of his art is text-oriented, but some is just fun.  Check it out with the link above!


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

Opening Night Success!

OK, I lied again.  You'll have to wait again a bit for more on Michael Tole.  The Cain Schulte website has been getting a bit behind, while we've been getting the physical gallery ready...  But we'll get that worked out this week. 


My business partners are going to Next Chicago soon (April 30-May 2).  If you're reading from the Windy City, let me know and I'll get you hooked up with free passes.


But the big news is that our opening party was a great success!  (Pictures soon...)  It was touch and go up to the last minute.  We were hanging the last picture (a Justin Quinn), just as the first guests were arriving and I was changing into my classic white polyester Prada suit.  (Pictures soon -- hey, how often can you wear such a thing?  Seemed like the perfect occasion!).   


And we made our first sales in the new gallery space at the opening party.  Poor Mickey.  My friends bought the print called Addio!  We're hoping to get the sculpture version.  It's quite funny/disturbing with the hanging mickey in a noose, over a knocked-down mickey-size upholstered arm chair and tiny carpet.  I guess being happy for 50+ years was just too much for him.  Even better, the artists hired an anonymous Disney cartoonist to help with the illustration!


But better than that, we had about 350-400 guests over 4 hours.  14 artists on the walls, and about 8 of them in attendance.  The DJ was great (Ian Luo, aka lokae).  The catering was great.  We had just the right amount of cava, white wine, Pelegrino, and food.  No red wine -- would have stained the unsealed cement floor.  Even still, I've been scraping up ground-in salami and parmesan cheese from the floor in preparation for said sealing.


Following up from the previously mentioned Floor Saga, the foot traffic of 350 people destroyed and ground up many sections of the new concrete floor.  Looks great, after a good vacuuming, but the sealant needs to be applied soon now that Andre patched it back up.  72 hours for drying of the sealant, so we'll have to wait for the weekend to do that work.


But back to the positive side!  Our opening has been the talk of the town. Srsly.  We're hearing about the party from people who weren't even there!  And we've had a steady flow of people coming in after the party, including serious collectors.  Things are off to a great start.


And next week, hopefully, I'll have a story for you about Michael Tole.  :-)


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

Gallery opening tonight!

I lied.  My last post said my next post would be about Michael Tole.  But instead, just a quick post to tell you that tonight is the opening party of Cain Schulte!  We announced a "soft launch" starting last week, but after the "Saga of the Floor" that never happened.  


But tonight we have 300 RSVPs. Hope we bought enough Champagne!  And as a teaser, here's a photo of our front desk with two (count 'em TWO!) Michael Tole paintings, along with the sign for our inaugural show.  (Note the pink is temporary.  The rest of the gallery is white, and we'll change the wall behind the reception desk with each season.  Pink for Spring!)


More soon.  Cheers!

The Saga of the Floor

I've mentioned the floor of the gallery a few times in my posts.  I hear every project has it's one problem area, and ours has been the floor.  Fixing it has thrown our budget out of whack by a few thousand dollars, but at least we should be able to open on Tuesday with (finally) the perfect floor.


I wish I had taken more pictures (click the photos below for bigger images), but let me try to describe what we started with.  The space used to be a bridal salon, complete with white carpet (stained, of course, after years of wear), and clearly not what we wanted for Cain Schulte Gallery.  

Pulling up the carpet was easy.  But what we found was a mix of:

• 100 year old softwood painted dark green in places, and brown in others
• cement mortar in stripes and patches across the wood (apparently to smooth the floor for the carpet)
• plywood
• swirls of carpet glue with flecks of old carpet pad still attached
• green spray paint
• hundreds of nails and staples sticking out of the floor

Marina's first choice when she first started negotiations 7 months ago (before I was involved) was for carpet tiles, at a very expensive cost.  After negotiations with the landlord broke down (another long story) and Andre and I got involved, we decided on a polished cement, but that too was over our budget.  We settled on two-part epoxy floor paint, hoping two coats would cover the mess, but it only highlighted the different textures of the floor, and not in a flattering way.

Here's what it looked like with the paint (click image for detail):

So we made a last minute decision to redo the floor.  Found a credible handyman type who had done it before and had time to do it this weekend for a decent price.  We'll re-open on Tuesday morning at 11:00 with (hopefully) a brand new floor.

We'll need to seal the floor with a few coats of sealant before our opening party on Friday, to avoid staining of the porous concrete.  Fun job for our Tuesday and Wednesday evenings!  

More pictures soon with the new floor.  Come visit and see for yourself!  And come to the party on Friday April 16, from 5-9 if you're in town.


Next posting will be on another favorite artist at Cain Schulte -- Michael Tole.

Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

Day Before Opening

Weeks ago we announced that our first day open would be Friday, April 9, as a "soft launch".  Well, as it turns out,  it's going to be very soft.  We're still figuring out where which art should go and getting ready to hang it.  We're also packing art for shipment to NEXT Chicago, which happens at the end of April and early May.  Just one more complication while we try to open the gallery.

This morning we had the window decals installed.  Great guy did the installation.  If you need signs, call Alex at Alex's Sign Company.  Here's a night image of his sign from inside (hence the reverse text) with the Cartier shop in the background.


Everything in the gallery is pretty much ready to go.  We have the reception desk put together. The back office and the closet.  We still need a storage rack for art, but that won't get in the way of launching.  The biggest obstacle now is the floor.  Under the previous carpet from the bridal salon, we found a mix of old softwood floor, plywood, and mortar.  Plus carpet glue to hold down carpet padding.  All around ugly.  Ug.


And uglier if you paint it brown like we did.  We were hoping for an industrial look, but it just looks ugly.  Now we're pricing thinset leveling concrete.  Not even sure what it's called, but hopefully we can get it installed during our off days on Sunday and Monday.  More on that later.


Today, I spent more time moving supplies from the temporary gallery space, and planning with our web master/designer for improvements.  Went to the paint store to buy touch-up paint (Kelly Moore Swiss Coffee, which sounds brown but is very white).  Also bought P.J.'s Pink KM367-3 for an accent wall and spent the evening painting said wall.  You'll see a David Buckingham dollar sign metal sculpture on the back wall. 


Here are some pictures of the gallery.  You'll see another David Buckingham on the floor in the center, and a Daniel Ochoa on the right.  


Supposedly we open tomorrow, but hopefully our first visitors will be forgiving.  As you can see above, the art is still sitting on the floor, but hopefully by Friday noon, most of it will be on the walls.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

Becoming a Gallerist (Fini)

After the Miami At Fairs, I decided this is what I wanted to do.  Yet, I still didn't know exactly what it meant to run a gallery.  Marina, Andre,  and I spent a lot of time figuring out how a partnership would work in the new expanded gallery.  (Actually, it was mostly me and Marina -- Andre kept saying "anything is fine with me, I just need to sell art.")


So the three of us signed a "Letter of Intent" in December to join together in an LLC, with a certain amount of investment, certain amount of voting rights, and general rules on how we will interact and work together.  (Including 6 weeks vacation for each of us!)


When I asked Marina, how do you run a gallery, she said "It's not like there's a book or manual on how to run a gallery.  We've learned what works best with our clients and our artists over time."  But, aha!  Just a couple months before, a book was published called "How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery."  It's a great book, and even Marina said she learned a few things from reading it.


The LOI turned into an outline for an LLC Operating Agreement.  I hired my attorney to put together the papers we need.  It took a couple months of reviewing and finalizing, but we signed the papers on March 25.  


On top of that, we have to register the LLC with the California Secretary of State.  Normally, this process takes 2-3 weeks, but  it's now 6-8 weeks after furloughs and layoffs due to the California budget.  So we're still waiting to be "official".  We signed a lease in late February.  After searching and negotiating for a space for 6 months, we felt we couldn't wait.  Bank account just opened last week.  They were nice enough to open the account prior to the Secretary of State's formal certification.


Now we're negotiating a cooperation agreement with our sister gallery in Berlin.  How do we share artists?  How do we jointly participate in art fairs?  How do we share commissions when we cross sell items from each others' inventory.  Or are we even allowed to do that?  

And Saturday this week, we took possession of the new gallery space.  Sunday was spent moving art and furniture from storage and the temporary space.  Today and tomorrow, we're receiving new art from artists for the inaugural show.  Big crates today from Michael Tole.  More big crates from David Buckingham tomorrow.  Big tube from Patrick Gabler came to my house a few days ago.  And more.  We're still updating our website, but my current favorite from this new batch of artists is Mason Eubanks.  His art in person is amazing -- the pictures don't do it justice (see photo on the right -- close ups on his web site).


As for the gallery, signage goes up on Wednesday and Thursday.  First day of business is Friday, April 9.  And the grand opening party is Friday, April 16.  And lots to do!


In the mean time, I've been learning the gallery business from Marina and Andre.  Learning consignment agreements, packing and shipping art, being the "registrar" for managing the inventory, and trying to sort out the 4 distinct and (unfortunately) out-of-sync contact databases.  (Wish me luck on that one.  As a former database guy, there's some serious normalization to be done on this data!)  And learning how to deal with artists from a business point of view.  Fortunately, with Marina's history and experience in running a successful gallery and Andre's success at selling art, my contribution will help them be more efficient in their areas of expertise.


I hope all of you in San Francisco can join us for our opening party on 4/16 from 5-9 at 251 Post Street, Suite 210.  For those of you not in SF, I hope you can stop by on your next visit to the city.  Our regular hours are Tuesday-Saturday 11-5, but call ahead and I can give you a private tour any time.


Cheers!


Update May 4, 2010.

The Decision to Become a Gallerist (Part 3)

In my last post I told you about becoming the "40 year old intern" at my friend's gallery and discovering that I had more than a passing interest in contemporary art.  In my "intern" duties, I helped Marina look at serious gallery spaces to rent.  But it became apparent that she would need help to pull off such a move.  


Enter Andre.  Andre Rozanoff had been introduced to Marina through a number of mutual friends around this same time.  He's a recent transplant to San Francisco from New York, after moving to California for family reasons.


Andre had also owned an run art gallery in Manhattan on the Upper East Side and was interested in getting back into the gallery business.  The three of us met a number of times, and got along very well.  You do get a feeling for people though, and I definitely had a good feeling about Andre, especially after sharing a few drinks.


So the plan became this:  We would form an LLC with all three of us investing.  My attorney worked magic with the LLC paperwork, even if it cost me $375/hour!


But I was still unsure if this was really what I wanted to do.  It meant saying good-bye to my 6-figure silicon valley salary -- at least for a few years, maybe forever.  It meant cutting back on my household spending.  (No more big gay cruises to the Baltics, although now I can probably expense part of it due to visiting the museums and galleries!  ;-)  


Before I made the final decision, I had a test for myself.  I would go with Marina and Andre to the big Miami art fairs in early December and see how I felt after that.  


Cain Schulte had been accepted to SCOPE Miami, one of the better secondary shows.  (The big one is ART Basel Miami Beach, with satellite shows springing up around that.  There are some good satellite shows, like SCOPE, and some lesser ones.)  The art fair is like a trade show for galleries.  You rent booth space, set up your display, and woo passers-by into the booth to explain the art and get them interested, and hopefully get them to buy a piece or two.


My original plan was to treat it as a vacation with Jordan, spend a few days at SCOPE while visiting the other art fairs and the beach.  Marina's former partner Kit was planning to come from Germany, plus Andre.


But Kit and Jordan each had to cancel due to illness, so I ended up helping to set up the booth, hang the art, and man the booth every day.  I had vowed years ago in high tech to never do booth duty again, but here I was.  And I had a blast!  It was so much fun talking about the art.  We were showing Justin Quinn, who I have written about before.  Justin's art is beautiful by itself, but even more interesting if you know the backstory, so I was busy pulling people in and telling them about the Moby Dick connection.  Some got it, some didn't.  But it was fun.  And people bought it.


Marina, Andre (camera shy), and I worked the booth and we had a very successful show, including follow up sales.  And we made good leads with collectors, so it was very much worth it in the end.


I also took an afternoon to go to the main Art Basel Miami Beach show.  Wow!  Amazing and expensive works were selling!  I asked only a few prices, but was flabbergasted to hear that the ones selling were the expensive ones, not the cheap ones.  (Note to self:  get more expensive art for our gallery.)  I asked about a Calder Mobile.  The answer:  that one was $700,000, but it sold.  The smaller one is $450,000.  The larger one was only about 3' across (1 meter for my non-US friends).  The biggest Calder in another booth (6' or 2 meters), was $4.5 million and was on hold for a collector.

I had my picture taken with a sculpture by Duane Hanson, who makes life-like sculptures of people.  This one was called "High School Student" and cost around $600,000 I think.


Even the smaller SCOPE show had some fun art. There were so many favorites, but the one I kept coming back to was a video piece.  Two gilt-framed video screens, called "Pathetic Clown and Bum Clown" by Marion Peck.  At first glance, they looked like still images, but the were moving -- grimacing and changing their faces in very, very slow motion.  Spooky.  Very John Wayne Gacy.


Anyway, the test was a success.  I loved the art fair.  I felt at home.  I enjoyed talking to the artists, the other gallery owners, the clients and collectors. I had a blast. I was in, and my internship was over.


Next step was figuring out how to actually do it.  More on that in my next post.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

The Decision to Become a Gallerist (Part 2)

As I mentioned in my last post, I volunteered to help my friend Marina with her gallery, Cain Schulte Contemporary Art.  Her business partner was in the process of moving to Berlin to open a Berlin branch of the gallery, leaving Marina to run a gallery by herself.  So I ran errands, poured wine at openings, shipped packages, helped with data entry, hung art, etc.  They started referring to me as their "40 year old intern".  


At the time, the gallery was operating out of a temporary space, and Marina was looking to upgrade to a larger, permanent gallery space.  I went to visit a couple places for rent with her, but as a second set of eyes, not a potential partner yet.


My internship was still casual, and I was still wondering what my "passion" was.  My therapist and friends told me it was probably right in front of my nose.  But I was still flummoxed about a next career and, to be honest, was enjoying my "cafe life" sabbatical too much to go back to work just yet.  


Around that time, a friend invited me to go on a big gay Baltic Cruise with him and his friends:  Copenhagen, Northern Germany, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm.  I love cruises, but this big 2000-person gay cruise was a bit much, I must admit.  But, as one does, I tromped around and visited the sites in the cities, including every modern and contemporary art museum I could find.

Denmark has the Louisiana Museum and Sculpture Garden, about a 45 minute train ride outside Copenhagen.  An amazing outdoor sculpture collection with a setting overlooking the straight between Denmark and Sweden, with underground galleries for more art.  I had my picture taken with three Calder sculptures overlooking the sea.  (Speaking of Calder, I a few years ago I got to see his Mercury Fountain -- a fountain with mercury instead of water at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.  Very cool -- definitely not water flowing in that fountain.  Calder and Miro were friends, hence his fountain at the Miro museum. 

Helsinki has the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art right in town.  Lots of local artists and a different perspective from the other cities I visited.  One of the most memorable pieces was a room-size mechanized construction reminiscent of a segmented old wooden boat crossed with a fire-breathing mechanical dragon.  Loved it!  It was in the "Horror Vacui" section in the photo on the right.


Then in Stockholm, it was the Moderna Museet.  My favorite piece there was a conceptual mind-bender.  Outside the mens room there was a video display of the bathroom and urinals inside. Like a closed circuit security camera.  It made you question whether you wanted to go in or not with people watching you pee from outside.  My decision was made by my bladder and a lack of care about what people think about watching my backside while I stand at a urinal.  But once you get inside past the urinals near the sinks, you notice a tiny diorama of the bathroom bolted to the wall, with a video camera pointing at the miniature replica of the bathroom, urinals and all.  Sudden relief that no one saw me peeing!  


I missed the Kumu Museum in Tallinn, Estonia, due to lack of time and a delicious elk jerky, but I can always go back on my next trip.  And on previous trips, I loved the K20 and K21 museums in Dusseldorf.  K for Kunst (art).  K20 is 20th century art and K21 is 21st century art, which they define as anything since 1980.  K21 far surpasses K20 in my opinion.  It was always a great place to kill a few hours between meetings at Vodafone, being near their Mannesmannufer HQ.


Similar trips to the US East Coast in September and November had similar side-trips to MOMA, the Hirshhorn, and various other museums.  I was upset to miss Dia:Beacon and Storm King Art Center, but something to look forward to on my next trip to New York.


Anyway, maybe you can see where I'm going with this.  My passion was indeed right in front of my face:  contemporary art!  My house is filled with contemporary art, I talk about art, I make a point to go see art when I'm traveling and when I'm home in San Francisco.  Many of my friends are artists.


It wasn't an immediate decision that I become a gallerist, but I was on my way to realizing that joining the art world might be just what I need.


More in part 3 about how I decided to join Marina (and Andre) at Cain Schulte Gallery.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

The Decision to Become a Gallerist (Part 1)

My friend in Paris, Nicolas, asked:  "how did you decide to go to this career, was it something you wanted to do since this year or is it new?"  Well, I can tell you it was not a long time dream, but rather it snuck up on me.  


For the whole story, I must go back to the time I was laid off a year ago.  The timing was great -- my job at YouTube had changed so much in the 18 months I was there, that I had been looking for something new.  The day in March that I learned I was receiving a huge tax refund this year, I planned to quit to join an early-stage startup with some friends.  Instead, when I tried to quit Google, I was told "wait a day, I can't tell you why.  Just wait.  Two days at the most!"  


It didn't take me long to figure out that lay-offs were coming and I was on the list, which was fine -- I was trying to quit!  Instead, I got a 5-month severance package.  Combined with the tax refund, I was well set.  I spent a month helping out at the start-up before we mutually realized my heart wasn't in it and we parted ways amicably. 


At that point, I decided to take a year off.  A sabbatical, so to speak.  But people started asking me what I would do at the end of the sabbatical?  I didn't really want to go back to high tech, but I had no other answer.  My friends would ask "What do you want to do? What's your passion?"  My answer to both questions was "I don't know."


I bought a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? but it didn't really grab me.  Google's outplacement service offered two 30-minute career counseling sessions and a half-day workshop.  Nothing helpful.  So, I hired a psychotherapist to help me "discover my passion," my lack of which disturbed me a bit.  Shouldn't everyone know their passion?!?


I started questioning everyone I met about their jobs -- how they got there, what they do, and  how they like it -- wondering if I could do their job.  On vacation in Kaui a month later, I thought about all the mainlanders who had moved there to teach surfing, run a fish taco stand, and the pilots who fly tourists around the islands.  Spent time talking to medical marijuana growers in Napa, apparently a very lucrative profession.  But they're just glorified farmers, and I'm not the farming type.  Nothing seemed to suit me, although the idea of retiring to the beach seemed awfully nice at the time.


A couple months later, I had a chance to buy a famous, but troubled, bar/nightclub in San Francisco.  The price was way too high and the seller wasn't willing to come down in price, but I did analyze the books, read-up on how to run a bar, and think seriously about becoming a bar owner.  In the end, however, my husband, Jordan, and I decided that wasn't the lifestyle we wanted.  You have to be there every night and managing the staff can be a real headache.  


Next Jordan found an 1896 Victorian fire house for sale in San Francisco.  We had been thinking about downsizing from our current Victorian pile, so this would have fit the bill.  But the catch was that the owners insisted on selling their business with the building; that business being driving tourists around San Francisco in an antique fire truck.  Again, I examined the books, and thought about actually doing this every day.  But I decided it was too much like retiring, even though they were bringing in over $200k per year after expenses, and could bring in more if they did four tours a day instead of 3, and expanded into the shoulder season.


About 6 months into my sabbatical, a friend with an art gallery told me she needed some help.  I told her I had some free time and would be happy to help her out as a friend.  This meant pouring wine at an opening, dropping off post cards at a restaurant with her art on the wall, and minor things like that.  But it was the beginning of the path to becoming a gallerist.  


More on that in Part 2.