Some galleries, the most successful and long lived, find their sweet spot and flourish. Stellers Gallery in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, quietly and consistently shows and sells the work of emerging and established artists in their space just steps away from the Atlantic Ocean.
But this isn’t your typical “beachside” gallery. Since 1999, owner Hillary Tuttle, has cultivated a selection of sophisticated work that compliments, not caricatures, the local landscape and culture from local, regional, and national artists, including this month’s Featured Artist here on Artsy Forager, Jennifer JL Jones. The wide range of styles and consistence of excellence among the work in the gallery lends it appeal across the generations, creating a diverse range of collectors.
[ the work of Jennifer JL Jones at Stellers Gallery at Ponte Vedra Beach ]
Tonight, Stellers celebrates its original four artists with an artists’ reception to open Synergy, an exhibition dedicated to the work of these very different artists, abstract painter Jennifer JL Jones, realist landscape painter Henry Von Genk, figurative and still life artist Laura Lacambra Shubert, and whimsical figurative painter Enrique Mora. Beginning with these four seemingly incongruous artists might have seemed like a gamble, but it shows just how well Tuttle knew who her collectors would be, appealing to a wide and varied assortment of artistic tastes.
[ work by Laura Lacambra Shubert & Jennifer JL Jones ]
[ work by Henry Von Genk, Laura Lacambra Shubert & Enrique Mora ]
Each artist’s work, though very different in style and approach, represents the magic of beach life– the wonder of the light, the calming peace of the landscape, the quiet lifestyle, and of course, the wind in your hair fun of it!
If you are in the North Florida area, can you think of a better evening out than taking a drive out to the beach to see some beautiful work and meet these amazing artists? And while you’re there, congratulate Hillary & the Stellers team for an incredible journey. You can see more from these artists and all the artists Stellers represents on their website.
I’ve never been to Greenville, South Carolina, but after getting to know this gallery and its owner, I am itching to go! Art & Light Gallery in Greenville is just the sort of spot I would love to spend hours perusing. So much lovely art and creative objects perfect for an artsy life! Owner and artist Teresa Roche has curated a charming collection of story pieces, style statements, and conversation starters. Want to hear more? Here’s a little email interview Teresa & I did recently..
AF | Has it always been your dream to own an art gallery?
TR | Honestly, owning the gallery was a bit of a fluke for me. I was a dance major in college and I have always had a passion for the arts in general, but it was until after I stopped dancing due to knee injuries that my focus turned to visual arts. My professional background was in marketing and event management and after a 9 year ride as an events manager for a bar code and point of sale company, I retired to follow my passions. I did not have a clue that I would be opening a gallery at that time. A friend of mine bought and renovated a beautiful building in what is now Greenville’s up and coming arts district – The Village of West Greenville. I was a part of a 5 person arts group – we held a yearly art show and it was our third year. My friend offered her new space for our show. When this show was over, my friend asked me to stay in the space and suggested that I do a gallery for emerging local artists…it only took me 5 mins. to make a decision and the rest is history.
AF | You opened Art & Light in 2007 and then the recession hit a few years later. To what do you contribute its survival when so many other galleries didn’t make it?
TR | Since my gallery was in a very rough area of western Greenville, an old textile mill village, I was in a position to trail blaze, I guess you would say. Greenville had a “First Friday” organization, so my business model was built on the First Friday gallery crawl. In 5 years I hosted 55 shows – a different show every month and I was only open on First Friday weekends for the first year, then after that I opened every Friday and Saturday. I sought out some of the best artists in Greenville and worked very hard to connect myself with Clemson University, Furman University and Bob Jones University art students and faculty. By doing so many shows, and changing it up monthly I was able to draw great crowds to openings – each crowd being very different, depending on who the artist was and the popularity of the artist. I also finely curated every show and included unusual furniture and lighting pieces to set up vignettes – which was a different concept in our area at that time. I not only marketed to art collectors and art lovers, but to vintage furniture and lighting collectors. At this time in Greenville, I was the only gallery doing anything like this concept. I developed a loyal following of people who were exceptionally curious about seeing what was coming next – I think that was total luck! Being in the arts district (which was in a very out of the way area) and the only retail gallery in the area was a struggle to say the least. The First Friday opening crowds were great, but it was difficult to drive traffic the rest of the time. I made a very hard decision to move the gallery to a high traffic, high income area a year ago. I am now open Tuesday – Saturday and the day to day traffic has more than doubled (of course that meant my expenses doubled as well. ) It broke my heart to leave the arts district, but was a very good move in the end.
AF |What do you look for in the artists you represent?
TR | First I look for great work, but that is not enough. I look for artists with work ethic and passion and the drive to keep producing original and interesting, well-done work. Many of the emerging artists I featured back in the beginning have stopped making art – many had to find full time jobs to pay the bills. Since the beginning days I have developed a gallery of resident artists who work in their craft full time – it’s my view that the only way a gallery can survive is to have new and original work on hand constantly. I have some of the most brilliant and dedicated artists in our area in my gallery and am so proud of that! They are all meticulous in their work and I feel honored to be representing them!
AF | What’s usually playing on the gallery sound system?
TR | Pandora is my music system and I constantly switch it up between a French channel, Sergio Mendes and a singer-songwriter channel – love my music and Pandora – I change it based on the shows that are up, the season and my day to day mood 🙂
AF | What type of work do you have in your own personal collection?
TR | It’s almost all local artists with the exception of several vintage pieces. My decisions to purchase are very emotional and one of the things I love most is making a connection with the artist – a mixture of paintings, drawings and mixed media. I allow myself to purchase a couple of pieces a year, but owning a gallery and be surrounded by the work is a little like Christmas every day! I love it! I consider myself very fortunate to do what I do every day.
AF | What sets Greenville apart as an arts destination?
TR | That is a very hard question – I will try to keep it short. I believe that artistically distinguished cities are cities that have interesting retail spaces, theatres, music venues, parks, and residential areas — the visionaries of have worked tirelessly to bring all of those elements together. We also have a very strong arts organization – The Metropolitan Arts Council with outstanding leadership which in my opinion is one of the engines that drives the arts here. Greenville also has Artisphere ( a wonderful yearly arts festival – one of the best of it’s kind). Open Studios, with over 140 participating artists, culinary events, First Friday Gallery Crawls, the Peace Center for Performing Arts and 3 strong colleges in the area. I believe that Greenville is “authentic” and that the people here have an “art frame of mind” – my dream would be that the percentage of people who support and think about the arts as a whole would GROW – it’s very hard to compete with football and NASCAR – I can dream, can’t I?
I can’t wait to see more of what Teresa has in store at Art & Light! If you’re in the Greenville area, a new show at A&L featuring artist Kim Hassold opens tomorrow evening– I’m sure you’ll be in for a treat! Want to find out more about Art & Light? Please visit their website and be sure to see the gallery when you’re in Greenville! Be sure to follow along with A&L on Facebook & Pinterest, too!
It was a happy accident that I found out about new Palm Springs contemporary gallery, Stark + Kent . I happened to see Samantha French mention an opening at a gallery in Palm Springs on Facebok just a week after Mr. Forager & I were scheduled to arrive in Southern California. Kismet! Even better, when I checked out S+K’s website, I discovered they were representing another pair of artists previously featured on the blog, Signe & Genna Grushovenko. I knew this would be a gallery to get to know better.
Painting by Michael Soltis at Stark + Kent
Begun by two friends with a passion for art and a love for artists, Ross Rhodes and Mike Soltis, Stark + Kent seeks to be a place where both the seasoned collector and the art world novice will feel at home and find work to love. The space is filled with work that captures the eye and the imagination, a well edited and tightly curated space boasts a nicely varied collection of work.
Artwork by Signe & Genne Grushovenko, Samantha French, Christine Flynn, and Alison PaulArtwork by Michael Soltis and John Westmark
Although you won’t find “typical” Palm Springs work here, the connections in the work to Southern California are a bit more subtle. Which is a joy to find in a town with streets named after movie stars and a giant Marilyn Monroe sculpture in the center of town.. *wink*
Gallery exterior
I do hope if you find yourself in Palm Springs, you’ll stop in at Stark + Kent! But even if you aren’t in SoCal, you can peruse their website, full of fabulous work and more to come, I’m sure!
While Mr. Forager and I had originally made plans to trek to Big Bear over the weekend, a thick blanket of snow and us sans the CA law required snow chains, along with a sick-with-a-cold Mr. Forager led to a change in plans. So following our Saturday ritual of breakfast in Joshua Tree ( at Crossroads Cafe— their “piggy pancakes” are my favorite indulgent breakfast ) and stocking up on victuals at the little JT Farmers’ Market, we drove through the wind farms to Palm Springs.
We wandered around the shops and a few galleries in downtown PS ( note: Stark + Kent Gallery— best contemporary selection in PS, including a few artists featured here on Artsy Forager! ). After doing the requisite touristy photo-op under Anish Kapoor’sMarilyn statue, currently installed in downtown Palm Springs, we decided to make our way over to the Palm Springs Art Museum. Now I normally have pretty low expectations for small town art museums, knowing they don’t usually have the financial support of big city institutions, so we were pleasantly surprised by what we found there.
Jim Isermann installation
Palm Springs being a hot bed of modern architecture and design, it was no surprise that one of the current special exhibitions featured the design-art hybrid work of Fernando and Humberto Campana in the exhibition, Antibodies. Their functional yet incredibly artistic designs take inspired living to an entirely different level.
Antibodies, Fernando and Humberto Campana ( photo by David A. Lee )
But it was the museum’s contemporary collection that delighted us most. As we walked up the stairs past the giant yellow Isermann installation ( see above pic ), so the magic began. Marina Abramovic’sThe Kitchen V, Carrying the Milk, held us spellbound, as we watched the artist as she stood, she the very subject of the Vermeer-esque vignette, holding a bowl of milk, at times struggling to hold her pose.
The Kitchen V, Carrying the Milk by Marina Abramovic
Moving away from the Abramovic video installation, our eyes were caught by what from a side angle looked to be an interesting light sculpture installation, but then I stood in front of it and that’s when something bewitching and delightful happened.. see the video!
Exploded View ( Birds ) by Jim Campbell
Here are a few more of our favorite highlights from the contemporary collection–
Casualty in the Art Realm by Robert ArnesonExploded Crystal Chandelier Headache by Ed RuschaRainbow Picket by Judy ChicagoMr. Forager, contemplating Corona 2003 by Anish Kapoor
Corona 2003 by Anish Kapoor ( above ) with its beautifully disorienting reflective surface and its acoustic properties ( when standing in front of it, as Mr. F is above, someone a few yards behind can hear what is being said into it ), we found it much more interesting than his giant Marilyn Monroe sculpture getting so much attention outside. I’m glad we took the time to escape the masses huddled around her upended skirt to experience something much more satisfying.
Unless otherwise identified, all images are by Artsy Forager. Other image sources are linked above.
A gallery that takes advantage of a beautiful space, displays a wide range of interesting work in a well-designed and thoughtful way AND feels comfortable and unpretentious? These kind of galleries are my happy places. Foster/White Gallery in Seattle definitely qualifies for a spot on that list. Thanks to our time in Seattle being super limited and the tiny brain melt in which I somehow forgot that almost all galleries are closed on Monday, our only full day there and the day I’d planned to do lots of gallery hopping, I had to narrow down my galleries to visit to A) shows I really wanted to see and B) galleries that were close together. So we took a few hours before leaving on Tuesday to visit Greg Kucera Gallery, Grover Thurston Gallery ( more on that show next week ) and Foster/White Gallery, which was by far our favorite overall gallery experience.
Casey McGlynn: Manchild and Rachel Denny: Works of Nature at Foster/White
Foster/White has been on my list of galleries to visit for quite a while and when I saw that they were showing Rachel Denny’swork, it quickly went to the top of the list for our time in Seattle. But I’m one of those people that saves the best for last, so while I saw Rachel’s work out of the corner of my eye upon entering the space, there were so many other wonderful works around each corner that I made my way around the whole gallery before I spent some time with Rachel’s amazing sculptures.
Sculptures by Paul Vexler at Foster/White
Speaking of amazing sculptures, these bent wood pieces by Paul Vexler were exquisite. The way the grain of the wood caught the light from the window drew attention to those beautiful curves. As impressive as his work was ( and there is a large hanging piece in the F/W lobby that is to die for ), Cookie the elephant by Shay Church both delighted me and drew me in.
Cookie ( Asian Elephant ) by Shay Church
Cookie is part of Church’s Wet Clay series, site specific installations consisting of a wooden armatur covered with clay and sand. In this series, Church focuses on elephants and whales, gentle yet imposing creatures who must survive long migrations. With each passing year, those migrations grow more and more dangerous and daunting for these animals. Cookie leans into the wall for support, seeming to struggle to stand. As the clay has dried, it has begun to crack and fall, adding to the emotional impact of the piece. We are watching Cookie deteriorate before our eyes.
Bone Yard by Evan Blackwell at Foster/White GalleryBone Yard ( detail ) by Evan Blackwell
Another installation that caught our eye was Bone Yard by Evan Blackwell. The white clay pieces, pinned to the way may appear to be fragments of bone, but upon closer inspection, we see that they are actually broken pieces of model jets. Perhaps a commentary on our military policies? Or our desensitization to such destruction?
Staccato Surface by David Alexander
The abstract, colorful reflection of Staccato Surface by David Alexander had unbelievably lovely gestural movement and a gorgeous palette. Photos do not do it justice! Finally we made our way over to Rachel Denny’s work. I’ve been a huge fan of her work since the very first time I saw one of her Domestic Trophies online and have been looking forward to finally seeing her sculptures in person. I was blown away by just how intricately constructed they are, their palettes & construction perfectly designed to catch and direct the viewer’s eye. I was just as delighted by her work as I’d hoped to be.
Rachel Denny: Works of NatureSweet Tooth ( detail ) by Rachel Denny
To see more of each artist’s work and more of the amazing work on display, please visit the Foster/White Gallery website. If you’re in Seattle, Rachel Denny & Casey McGlynn’s current shows will be up until April 28, 2012. I highly recommend a visit!
