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.