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.  :-)

Post Street: We're In!

The news:  we finally gained access to the new gallery space!  We won't take possession until the build-out is closer to completion, but basically it is ours now.  And it's been quite a long road getting here.

Negotiations for the lease on the new Post Street space started in August of last year.  The space is on the second floor above the Ilori eye glass store, and used to be a bridal salon -- everything white, lots of mirrors, and huge changing rooms to accommodate the giant wedding dresses.

We spent two months negotiating initially at a very low rate per square foot per year, then the landlord got a better offer from another client for a very high rate per square foot per year.  (For my non-US readers, one square meter is about 10 square feet).  New to the world of commercial real estate, I still think it's odd that they talk in square feet per year, rather than per month. 

Whatever, we were screwed by this new potential tenant with deep pockets.  So we found another newer and cooler space South of Market -- an old catholic girls school gymnasium converted to gallery spaces.  The coolest thing about that space, in my opinion, was a custom Keith Haring mural commissioned for the gym in 1985, but sold in 2006 to raise money for the school. 

I had dreams about bringing that mural back to SF in the original space on Clementina Street.  Actually, there were a lot of great things about that space, but in the end, it was more than we wanted to spend, and the original space on Post Street opened up again.  Two more months of negotiating at Post Street and we got a very reasonable rate and it's now ours as of this week.


Tomorrow we meet with the contractor to finalize the "tenant improvements" that the landlord will pay for after we agreed to a five year lease.  Knock down a couple walls, build a new one.  Cover a door, add another.  Paint.  Floors.  Here are a couple of "before" picture.  Check back here for status on the build-out!

Cheers!

Updated May 4, 2010.