As I look out on a slightly gray evening, I find myself thinking back three years... to the final days of the Red Dragonfly Gallery, as a brick-and-mortar venue.
Whereas it was a sad time for us — at the time — from my current vantage point of three years later, I find myself feeling quite grateful that we did close the gallery when we did, rather than trying to stick it out for another 3-year lease.
We would not have made it through "the Covid years" and would likely have lost even more money, had we tried to stay open.
Enough time has passed now that I can look back and remember the really good and wonderful things about the gallery, separated from the hardship and annoyances by time. "Time heals all wounds," or so they say.
The red dragonfly wire sculpture that gave name to it all...
For a while, we were the stewards of our small city's only alternative and non-mainstream art venue... and in the course of being that, we were able to give exposure to some "bleeding edge" artists who might otherwise have struggled to find an outlet for their creativity. So that was definitely a good thing.
Being in a "tourist town," I'd have to admit that the vast majority of people who walked through our front door didn't really "understand" what they were looking at. I think the average person we saw was mostly hoping to find the art genre we used to call "Sailboats and seagulls."
Not that there's anything wrong with seaside realism, as an art style. It just wasn't what we were doing. In spite of various requests for something "different," we kept our curation pretty tight.
Final few days...
One of the things I really got to appreciate firsthand was the huge difference between art that was mostly "weird, for it's own sake" and art that was "weird, with a mysterious 'IT' factor."
Of the 50-odd artists whose work we represented, there was always the same dozen or so who had that "it factor" that caused people to look at the work and exclaim "this is REALLY not my usual preference, but I really LIKE this, and I don't know WHY!"
That is — at least to me — what great art is about.
In the course of the years we wee open, we really started feeling the transformation happening in the art world; the increasing presence of digital art... as well as a subtle but definitely noticeable shift in the art appreciation public from a paradigm of "art as objects" (that you own) to "art as experience."
All things eventually come to an end...
In a sense, it was an echo of what web marketing guru Seth Godin posited would be increasingly true of self-help and educational books: They would have less and less value as "standalone" items, and instead become "souvenirs" of an event. Rather than reading a book and attending the author's workshop, you go to the workshop and buy the book as a souvenir.
With art, you see the art at some venue, and buy a print of it as a souvenir of the art show.
All in all, I am glad we did have the gallery, but I am also glad we closed when we did. When I had my first gallery (1985-1999) I vowed never to get back in the biz... but I don't regret that I broke that promise to myself!
Thanks for stopping by, and do please leave a comment if you feel inspired to do so!
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All images are our own, unless otherwise attributed
