An established artist blogging at Linked wrote about her surprise that her gallery thought it necessary to ask her to stay for the entire 3 hours of her artist’s reception. She came away with the feeling that this simple courteous obligation was not the practice of some of her colleagues.
She gave an interesting admission from an established artist for emerging artists, like me about some fortunate individuals who seem to not quite appreciate their available marketing venues. I have been able to jury into only 3 galleries as a regular exhibitor. Two have closed in the past 2 years along with several of our cities largest, influential galleries in PDX. My galleries didn’t have the financial means to represent their artists in any way that excluded the artists themselves from doing a significant amount of the marketing for their solo and group exhibitions. These were not co-op or vanity galleries. These were local business, doing their best to stay in business in very hard economic times. Regular exhibitors did everything from providing food, paying for entertainment, sending out personal invitations to their personal purchaser’s lists. I’ve always made it a personal goal to send a thank you card to each purchaser of my art. Many of us also helped in the painting and maintenance of these galleries. Some artists also kept hours for the gallery owners. The only apparent differences between a co-op vanity gallery was there wasn’t a fee or dues involved in exhibiting, a challenging submissions process that one would expect from a gallery trying to turn a profit and these particular galleries didn’t require exclusivity because of their inability to truly represent their artists until they and the artists began turning a considerable profit.
These galleries were very reputable in my estimation. I never had to wait for payment of a sold work and when they closed they made sure every artist with work on their premises was informed of the decision. Definite closing dates were communicated. I heard of no disgruntled artists not being compensated or doors closing before artists could collect their work. I heard such stories associated with some of the large galleries in PDX that many Oregon artists aspired to being involved with.
Being early and staying for your entire reception was never communicated by my galleries but always expected in the minds of each individual artist as well as the other things I’ve mentioned to try to ensure a successful exhibition.
Much of my art income has come from exhibiting at local art fairs. For the 1st time in several years I made the alternates list of high traffic, well established show I’ve come to depend on. I’ve always treated my art fairs in the same respectful manner as I treated my galleries. I emailed back after I was emailed my notification of being on the alternates list to communicate my appreciation of the show and my commitment to being ready and willing to jump into action if a chosen exhibitor should find they unable to participate. The committee person’s answer was back was discouraging but made perfect sense. In 2010 there was considerable change over in organizers of the event as several committee people retired. The organizing committee was literally over whelmed with the numbers of outstanding, professional artists who entered this year. They chose the very best artists out of all who entered to exhibit at this year’s fair. I realized by what she communicated to me that I was extremely fortunate to even make the alternates list. I’ve made sure to communicate with her again this past week, as this is the scheduled time for artists to pay their booth fee. She emailed back thanking me communicating back; she complimented me for doing so and made me feel that my efforts may be rewarded.
It has been very easy for me to extrapolate that due to the closing of so many established galleries in our state, many of which have been in business for decades, that suddenly the venues of art fairs are being flooded by established artists who are scrambling for venues to market their art.
Living in the state of Oregon where there is such a tremendous number of highly talented professional fine arts and crafts people and few venues by which to we can market out art locally has caused a majority of Oregon artists to fully understand the privilege of participating in fine art venues. I believe we collectively have a high respect of those who risk time and financial means to make those venues available to us.
My message to my artist colleagues; your returning purchasers are struggling to put food on the table and gas in the car. Your galleries may be risking their financial future to keep their doors open. As professional artist and marketer Jack White often writes in his column for “Professional Artist’s Magazine”, “Treat your galleries and collectors like family.” Hopefully we artists treat our families the way we would like to be treated so that treating our collectors and galleries like family is a good thing.