For a city its size, Louisville seems to have a pretty vibrant visual arts scene. Anyone who’s attended the various Gallery Hops knows plenty of folks like to come out and look at art, but the people who started the downtown hop three years ago would now like to focus on helping artists sell more art. That’s the subject of our cover story by Jo Anne Triplett and Elizabeth Kramer. Remember — you never miss the best things in life till they’re gone.
—Cary Stemle, editor
The rain and cold kept the attendance down at last week’s Gallery Hop downtown. (photo by geoff oliver bugbee) |
Inside the galleries, many visitors looking at art and mingling also carried evidence of the rain on their folded umbrellas and coats. Among those lookers were some buyers. At Chapman Friedman Gallery, 624 W. Main St., Carol and Jack Bean of Louisville were on their first Hop. They had received a brochure from the gallery displaying the paintings of Dionisio Ceballos, and that lured them there. So they came, they saw, and they bought one of Ceballos paintings. Carol Bean, 61, is a painter herself, and she likes Ceballos’ farm scenes.
Ceballos, 32, thinks the Downtown Gallery Hops provide great exposure for artists. “I’m grateful and honored to be with people who have a genuine approach to art,” he said. Ceballos has had a studio on East Market Street since 2003, a year after he moved to Louisville. He also sells his work in his hometown, Mexico City, and in a few large U.S. cities, particularly Miami.
Down at Swanson Reed Contemporary gallery at 638 E. Market St., Jennifer McCormick, 53, was neatly dressed in a brown tweed jacket with a colorful knitted scarf that offset her shoulder-length, reddish-blonde hair. Although the retired social worker and Locust Grove volunteer wasn’t purchasing art this evening, she described herself as a frequent visitor to the First Friday Hops and a collector who buys work by young artists such as Jake Heustis and Sarah Lyon.
“Young people, you can keep them going,” she said. “Not just with money but with affirmation. A relationship develops that’s exciting, instead of supporting dead people.”
Among the work in the gallery was “Lolo,” a bust of Filipino judge Francisco Carreon by Matt Gatton. It was his first time that Gatton, who returned to Louisville several years ago after living in the Philippines for four years, had showed in town, although his work has been around. His art has been in exhibitions at New York’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Hayward Museum in London. He hasn’t sold in Louisville, although Swanson later reported that visitors had inquired about Gatton’s work over last weekend.
But Swanson also noted that visitors haven’t been buying as much art at the monthly Gallery Hops as they once did. He said he sold more art in 2003 at his East Market Street gallery (he also co-owns Swanson Reed gallery at 1377 Bardstown Road), but that “certain people who were serious collectors are not buying now.”
Billy Hertz has seen his share of change in the local art scene. He was Zephyr Gallery’s first director in 1987 and opened galerie hertz, now at 327 E. Market St. in 1991. Lately he’s seen a drop in sales as well. “The market is down, and art is a luxury item to some,” he said. “It’s all cyclical.”
But while Hertz, 57, attributes the drop purely to market conditions, Swanson sees another factor at work — the Gallery Hop has become more of a social event for the public and less of an avenue for buyers. “We mostly have people come back or call on Saturday because the Gallery Hop is too social,” Swanson said.
Those who did make it out, including some youngsters, had a nice time. (photo by geoff oliver bugbee) |
Erin Devine, 31, is president of LOOK, a consortium of more than 30 art galleries in Louisville, Southern Indiana and Bardstown that joined with TARC to start the First Friday Gallery Hop in December 2001. She formerly owned and operated Erin Devine Gallery, which is now Pyro Gallery on Hancock Street. From June through December 2002, Devine said she sold art during every First Friday. By 2003, she noted, crowds weren’t buying regularly.
Many of her colleagues in LOOK are pleased with how the Gallery Hops have gotten the public acquainted with art, putting them more at ease with galleries and museums and bringing them to areas of the city where they otherwise might not have visited. But LOOK is now setting their sights on generating more purchases.
One of the LOOK members is Cheryl Chapman, 49, the consortium’s vice president and co-owner of Chapman Friedman. Chapman described the evolution of the Gallery Hops: “The focus has shifted from art to a social event. The interest of the crowd has shifted; most of the people are not interested in acquiring art but doing the downtown loop. That’s good for the city, but not as good for us.”
So LOOK wants to raise awareness about buying art, and it has started a drive to provide the public with the answers to two questions: “Why Buy Art?” and “Why Buy Art in Louisville?” During Friday’s trolley hop, LOOK placed information in galleries about the organization and purchasing art, and most galleries held sales on back inventory. This Friday, galleries in the Bardstown Road Trolley Hop (usually the first Saturday of each month but rescheduled for the second Friday this month) will do the same. So will galleries on the FAT Friday (Frankfort Avenue Trolley) Hop, which is held every fourth Friday.
LOOK will also offer a special deal to anyone purchasing a piece for $800 or more during January — a card that entitles the buyer to a 15-percent discount on another purchase at a LOOK gallery during 2005.
And then there’s the party. Next Friday, Jan. 21, LOOK has scheduled an event called “LOOK Listens” at the Louisville Visual Art Association’s headquarters at the Water Tower, 3005 River Road, from 5-9 p.m. All LOOK galleries will have membership and promotional material there, as well as work on display so the public can become more familiar with the galleries and what they show. It will cost $5 to get in, and there will be music by Alpha Betty, Slackshop and The Pine Club — all bands that include at least one visual artist. (The music starts at 7 p.m.)
“We’re trying to raise awareness why it’s important to support visual art in the community and to get people to think about buying art for their daily lives,” Devine said, adding that Louisvillians have an advantage in that they can buy art here for about 40 percent less than comparable original art, sometimes by the same artists, in larger metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York and Seattle.
The effort complements LOOK’s past projects, such as its 2004 publication of a gallery guide that was available in local hotels. LOOK will update the brochure this year before the Kentucky Derby crowds hit town, and will work to find corporate sponsors for its efforts and also to place stories about Louisville’s visual arts scene in national magazines.
Dionisio Ceballos, a Mexican artist who lives in Louisville, thinks the Gallery Hops provide great exposure for Louisville artists. “I’m grateful and honored to be with people who have a genuine approach to art,” he said. (photo by geoff oliver bugbee) |
There aren’t many guides to show visual arts groups how to find buyers with disposable income and persuade them to sp/files/storyimages/money on art, said Arthur Greenberg, director of AMS Planning & Research, a company that is currently working locally with the Cultural Attractions Network, the Fund for the Arts and Metro Louisville government on a plan to strengthen the metro area’s visual and performing arts and cultural institutions. (That effort is better known as “The Cultural Blueprint.” For more information, go to www.culturalblueprint.net.)
While Greenberg has seen and worked on studies that identify people who buy tickets to performing arts events, he’s seen nothing that identifies people who purchase or are likely to purchase original art. “No one I know has really cracked the nut at how to increase (original art) purchases,” he said.
Still, he suspects the two groups share certain traits, such as having a college education and a relatively high income. And he has worked with a group that did achieve its goal of finding more buyers of original local art. It’s called ArtSpan, a San Francisco visual arts group that has held an event every October since 1975 called “San Francisco Open Studios.” Last year, it included 800 Bay Area artists who opened their studios to the public to showcase and sell work. Five years ago, ArtSpan began working with Greenberg to find more buyers there.
“We were wanting to help artists be successful,” said Petra Schumann, executive director of ArtSpan.
After receiving two foundation grants, AMS Planning & Research and ArtSpan conducted a study, including focus groups, to find out why people don’t buy art. Responses ranged from problems when purchasing, such as artists not accepting credit cards, to prospective patrons lacking the confidence in their own tastes to buy the big-ticket items.
The results were used to develop a Collector Development Program and set up a database on the ArtSpan Web site (www.artspan.org) that made artwork searchable by artist, subject matter, media and style.
The study also led ArtSpan to revamp a catalog it had sold at bookstores each year in advance of the event, and in 2000, it printed a large magazine-style book and gave away 28,000 copies instead of selling them.
Since then, along with the customary photographs of work by participating artists, the revamped publication has included articles such as “How to Start Your Art Collection” and “Supporting Art in a Tough Economy?” Last year’s article title was, “Who Buys Art? It’s Easier Than You Think.” Also, since 2000, each year’s Open Studios event has had a theme, such as “Take Art Home,” “Find the Art You Love” and “Art Made Here.”
The organization also partners with other area visual arts groups to hold public events that help teach people about buying art. (Conversely, ArtSpan also conducts workshops for artists about the business side of being an artist.)
Louisville’s Gallery Hops have a lot of lookers. An effort is under way to create more buyers. (photo by geoff oliver bugbee) |
While San Francisco and Louisville are two very different cities, Greenberg believes an effort akin to that launched by ArtSpan could fly in Louisville, and he was excited to hear of LOOK’s foray into finding more buyers of original artwork here.
Louisville gallery owners and LOOK members believe LOOK has achieved the goals it had in mind when it began the Gallery Hops three years ago. “We accomplished what we set out to do,” Hertz said. “We had two objectives: to get East End people to this part of town and for tourists to know Louisville is about more than horses.”
Now the next phase has begun, and LOOK is looking beyond the East End and the walls of its own galleries to get more of the public to buy.
For more information on LOOK’s latest efforts, go to www.looklouisvilleart.com. You can also contact Erin Devine at 500-8514 or Cheryl Chapman at 584-7954.
