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.

So much to do

Thank you to all of my new readers.  The email I sent out recently to friends brought such warm wishes and encouragement.  I feel the gallery can only prosper with so much enthusiasm among our friends!


But there's so much to do!  Even opening a new banking account is taking forever.  (We decided to switch banks as part of the reorganization).  We filed the paperwork for form the new LLC on February 23.  Usually it takes the state two weeks to process and confirm the filing.  It's been over four weeks due to lay-offs and furloughs at the State Department.  Yet, we can't open a bank account until the state certifies the LLC.  Arg!  (Update:  First Republic was nice enough to open our account before the state certification, which ended up taking over 8 weeks.)


Construction on the gallery space itself is progressing well.  The walls are up and plastered.  Painting starts today.  The epoxy paint for the floor is being mixed and will be laid down as soon as we receive it.  


Invitations (both paper and electronic) are being processed and mailed, and so far we have great response.  Hope we ordered enough food and drinks!


In my email announcement I asked for suggestions on topics to write about.  Nicolas, my friend with whom I worked on and off for a few years in Rennes, but who now lives in Paris, suggested these topics:

• how to do find artists for your gallery, do they come, do you hunt
• is there any trend (on the techniques, on the content, on the messages, ..)?
• tips for buyers (dos and dont), everyone can buy ?
• how did you decide so go to this career, was it something you wanted to do since this year or is it new ?

I'll answer these questions and more over the next couple weeks.  Thanks again for such a positive response and hope to see you at the gallery after we open on the 9th.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

Welcome to my new readers!

Welcome to my new readers!  Well, at least I hope I have some new readers.  I just blasted an email out to 700 contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Xing, telling them about my new adventure as a co-owner and co-director at Cain Schulte Contemporary Art and plugging my new blog.  As you'll see, I started with a "Hello World" post about 6 weeks ago, learning my way around Blogger and finding my sea legs, as it were.  


The past few weeks have been exciting, busy, and anxious.  After 6 months of negotiating for a space, just in the past 3 weeks, we executed the lease, designed the remodel, started the remodel, chose the artists for the inaugural show (14 artists in all!).  Next, mailing the invitations, manning the phones to make sure people (especially the press and collectors) show up, and planning the party itself.  


Plus finalizing the new (and bigger) space itself -- refrigerator, closets, storage racks, installing new lights, and hanging the art.  Desk, chairs, shelves, and everything else we haven't thought of yet.  (Will we need an umbrella stand?  Coat rack?)  VoIP or POTS? 


We open our doors on April 9.  As for the opening party on the 16th, still making many decisions about catering, entertainment, etc.


On top of that, we have to move out of our temporary space this week, although our new space won't be ready to receive our stuff until April 2 (possibly earlier).  So it looks like we'll be moving the art, furniture, etc., into my garage for a week or two. 


As for now, back to the busy-work of collating and normalizing 4 separate mailing lists, address books, and contact lists. Good thing Andre is a self-taught programmer and I have a background (way-back) in databases.  We decided on vtiger CRM to manager our clients (leads and collectors) and inventory (art).  Any experience or tips on using that for an art gallery (or any business for that matter?)


Before I jumped into this venture, a new book was published that I found very useful.  In fact, my co-owner, Marina, who has been running a gallery for years, found it useful.  If you're ever interested in doing something like this, I highly recommend "How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery."  Sounds kinda corny (certainly better than "Galleries for Dummies"), but educational, nonetheless.


Again, welcome to my new readers and I hope you find my writing interesting and entertaining enough to keep coming back.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

Another Favorite Artist: Lars Theuerkauff

My new gallery, Cain Schulte, has a sister gallery in Berlin with the same name.  When there's a chance for confusion, we refer to ourselves as Cain Schulte SF or Cain Schulte Berlin.  Marina Cain is my partner here in San Francisco, and Kit Schulte is the director in Berlin.  For all practical purposes, we operate as two separate galleries, but one thing we cooperate on is finding and sharing new artists.

Last year, Kit discovered a painter in Berlin named Lars Theuerkauff.  He is in his early 40s and was trained first as a painter, then as a filmmaker, directing and producing a number of well-regarded short and feature-length films in Germany, before returning to painting recently.  We were lucky enough to get a number of his portraits for our recent San Francisco group show of portraiture ID Redux.  


Instead, here are a few of his works.  They are all acrylic on linen, all 30cm x 40cm (roughly 12" by 16").  


What draws me to them is both the subject matter and the technique.  The subjects look like they are painted from photos, or even webcam shots, something you might find on the craigslist m4m listings.  The glow from the brightly lit laptop display lighting the subject from below with bright spots and soft shadows.  The two below seem like a matched pair -- front and back, maybe of the same guy.  This is all conjecture, of course, but it's what I think of when I see them.

The other thing that fascinates me about his paintings is his technique.  From across the room they look like normal photo-realist paintings.  Up close, however, the images are composed of splattered spots of paint, a kind of unstructured pointillism.  Maybe like a messy Georges Seurat, not bothered with the new "science" of painting to reflect photons and the optical properties of light which was the source of pointillist theory.

As I understand it, Lars uses no paint brushes in his work.  His technique involves implements and tools that splatter, as well as colanders, screens, and things he can spray or splash paint through.  His control of placing the color is amazing.  The following picture and a close-up detail show the technique better.  (Come to the gallery to see it in person, though, for the real effect!)

Lars' background in film has given him a sense of light and realism.  From across the room, you think these are photos.  Only upon closer examination do you see the amazing technique.  One day I will have a Lars Theuerkauff (or two) in my collection.  And you should too.  Lars' work will be back in San Francisco for our Inaugural Show coming up in April at our new location.  More news coming soon!


Cheers!

Studio Visits: The Hidden Benefit

One of the benefits of being a gallerist is having an excuse to visit artist studios.  It's a great chance to see their current work, their new work, the work they've rejected, their old work, and the work they're maybe embarrassed about but is well worth showing.  It's a chance to learn about their techniques and learn more about their motives and motivations.  Makes it so much easier to talk about the art to potential collectors and buyers.


Today I was lucky enough to visit the studio and apartments of Rex Ray.  Marina and I are hoping to have a few pieces of his in our Inaugural Show at Post Street in April.  But as I am learning, we need permission from Rex's current gallery to include a couple of his pieces, and we'll need to share the commission.  If the other gallery says OK, that is.  


Either way, it was great to see Rex's current and older work.  He showed us some encaustic pieces from his college days in the 80s that seemed set in the 50s yet current even today.  He showed us pieces in progress, and pieces that were complete but he wasn't sure they were ready for the public.  


Then he showed us his private collection, both in his studio and his apartments in the same building.  Maybe you've seen his building:  it's the big green Atlas Box Building on Folsom between 17th and 18th.  


His private collection is amazing.  He has Warhols (including one he got for $.50 at a thrift store). Cindy Shermans, Yoko Onos (he did the poster for her recent show in Oakland), and a Rauschenberg.  There were more, but I don't remember them all.  Oh, Douglas Coupland.  The author of Generation X (one of my favorite books) is apparently an artist.  


Then we got to Jerome Caja's works.  I saw a photo of Jerome and mentioned that I had some of his work. That opened the flood gates.  I got to see his collection of Jerome paintings including one of the pieces Rex made from Jerome's ashes as a tribute to be distributed among their fiends after Jerome died in the 90s.  It was nice to share my appreciation of Jerome's work with a new friend.  See some of Jerome's best works in the book Jerome: After the Pageant.  It's out of print, but available from some booksellers.


Cheers!

Let's Talk About Art: Justin Quinn

My first few posts were about the mechanics of moving and relocating a commercial gallery to a bigger space.  But that ignores the reason I decided to go into the gallery business.  I like art.  And I like talking about art.  Today I'll talk about one of my current favorite artists (full disclosure: he also happens to be represented by my gallery.  Next week my other favorite artist Lars Theuerkauff from Berlin).


The first is Justin Quinn.  Primarily he works in graphite on paper, although he teaches print making at a university in the mid-west.  He is a regular Joe Six-pack and the nicest guy to hang out with.  But he has an obsession with his drawing.  He likes the way text looks on paper, but understands that if he draws words, the viewer will try to read the words and will overlook the beauty of the text on the page.  


His solution is to simply draw every letter as the letter E.  He needed a source text to start from.  The Bible was too heavy, so he chose to start translating Melville's Moby Dick to the letter E.  For example, the book starts "Call me Ishmael."  In Justin's version that translates to "EEEE EE EEEEEEE."  And it goes on from there.  


As a viewer, you quickly realize that you don't need to try to "read" the text.  You can just appreciate the form of the text on the page.  And as he removes meaning from the text by translating it to the letter E, he re-infuses meaning by interpretation of the passages in his drawings.  A passage about Captain Ahab, the dark, twisted, captain looking for the beast of a whale, is drawn dark and twisted.  A passage about the whale's tail -- its sinews, muscles, and tendons -- is a layered twisty representation of those textures.  A passage about the atols and islands is delicate, depicting the waves washing onto the shores of the ink-blot islands.

Justin has been working on this "translation" project for six years.  Not beginning to end, but picking passages that speak to him and guide his hand in drawing his translation to the letter E.  He'll be the first to admit that he's a bit obsessive, but he's also the guy next door helping you down that six pack of beer.  Here are a few of his drawings that I like.  I hope you like them, too.


Next week Lars Theuerkauff.  You'll love him!


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.

The Beginning is in Sight

Today we have almost finalized the "tenant improvements" in the new gallery space and got a date for move-in.  If all goes well, they'll be done on Monday, March 22 (wow!).  In case of hiccups, they only committed to Friday March 26.  We were pretty good in negotiating the package of improvements based on the cap imposed by the landlord.  We got the walls patched, cleaned up, and painted, some structures ripped down, a new wall built, a closet built, a storage rack for art, and a floor covered in 2-part epoxy paint (light gray? what color would you pick?).  

Not perfect, but a good enough to launch the gallery.  Plus, the contractors are building in some upgrades that will let us add things later:  a glass door, move some track lights, a sink.  (Closest water now is in the bathroom one flight up the stairs.)

But even still, with this final design, some of us are second guessing and proposing last minute changes.  I've warned my partners that "change orders" would kill our budget.  What we're getting isn't 100% perfect, but as a friend used to tell me, "don't sacrifice the 'good' for the 'perfect'."  What we have is good enough to launch.  (Edit:  As of March 8, we've changed the plans, but prior to work starting, so no hit on the budget but maybe a hit on the move-in date.  More on that in a later post.)

Now that we have a target date for moving in, now we have to figure out what that means.  Soft launch?  For how long?  Grand gala opening?  When?  What do we publicize and how?  My vote is to do a month-long soft launch with a group show, giving us time to get the kinks out and get some advertising and promotion for a grand gala opening a month later.  The gala opening would be a solo show of an artist that we know is popular in the bay area.  

But this is all up for negotiation.  And now we have only a short time to get the plan together, publicize, and prepare.  Wish us luck!

Next time -- more about my partners and our artists!

P.S.  The previous tenant was a bridal salon.  We have huge mirrors for sale on craigslist!  Ranging from 8 feet x 5 feet to 7 feet x 4 feet.  Perfect for a gym, a dance studio, or a retail space!  (But not perfect for an art gallery -- hard to hang paintings on a mirror...)  


Cheers! 


Updated May 4, 2010 and the mirrors did finally swell on Craigslist.  :-)