07.27.06

Another One Bites the Dust

Posted in Bad News at 10:28 am by April

Yesterday afternoon I got an email from one of the managing partners of a gallery I have work in. She sadly informed me that the gallery would be closing next week. That was fast, I thought. It just opened a few months ago. I was a little surprised because it folded so quickly, but not shocked, to be completely honest. Don’t get me wrong. It has nothing to do with the quality of the gallery. It was a great space, but that doesn’t always matter. Galleries have a tendency to open and then close almost as quickly, for whatever reason.

Last year I was in a group showing at a gallery in Little Rock called Oval Gallery. It was what I thought a gallery should be. Beautiful inside. Nice downtown location with great frontage and lots of walk-by traffic. Friendly staff. Fantastic Art. Not long afterward it folded because of arguments within the management (so I hear). It gets worse, too. I’ve heard multiple horror stories (thankfully none experienced first-hand) about galleries closing and never returning the leftover works to the artists. Fortuately for me, that wasn’t the case this time.

This time the culprit was gas prices. I know it. The gallery located in a normally popular tourist town, but people aren’t traveling as much this summer. Not to mention, when they do travel, they don’t spend as much to offset the price of just getting there in the first place.

This solidifies in my mind that it is of the utmost importance that I get my ass out of the studio and into as many other states as possible, portfolio in hand, and show everyone I can my work. Spread my work out across the US so if I have a gallery closing here and there it won’t be a big blow. It wasn’t this time, but if I lose many more, it will be. If I want to be successful (and I do) I have no other option. I hope my car is prepared to deal with the mileage.

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