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.

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.