Momentum carries Denver art community through downturn

By Tom Fucoloro and Julio Trujillo
Special to INDenverTimes

Earlier this year, Brianna Martray was worried. A full-time artist, Martray spent the last four months of 2008 selling about $150 worth of small prints and was considering working at Whole Foods Market to make ends meet.

Then 2009 rolled around and Martray’s colorful wood-block work attracted the one type of patron whom the recession could not hurt: a bankruptcy lawyer.

“He bought three pieces, and since then sales are starting to come in,” Martray said.

FIRST FRIDAY

[flv:/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/FirstFridayV2.flv 320 240]

Martray works in a studio that is part of the Core Art Space on Santa Fe Drive. She uses her hands as her painting instrument for pieces done on rectangular wood blocks. Her billowing colors and scratching details recall abstract, mysterious landscapes. Some of her works are done on three sides of parallel wood blocks, allowing the viewer’s position to change the perspective of the painting.

Martray said Denver’s art community has surprising resilience during this economic downturn.

“People are still buying art,” Martray said.

“COMING IN SWARMS”

Despite a constant drizzle and temperatures in the 40s, hundreds of people gathered on Santa Fe Drive for the First Friday art events on May 1. People mingled inside art galleries, listened to street and gallery performances and watched a storefront presentation of the Brazilian capoeira martial art.

“People are still coming in swarms,” said Deborah Williams, president of Denver Art District on Santa Fe, a group that promotes artists and galleries in the area.

“There aren’t as many sales, but it’s not as bad as we might expect.” Williams suggested that since the First Friday events are free, people are more inclined to spend some of their money on art.

Martray said most of the artists she knows are still making sales, and the savviest ones are taking risks during the downturn.

One person taking a risk is Terri Claus, an artist and the owner of Color and Light art gallery at East 22nd Avenue and Lafayette Street. It is an unusual location for an art gallery, and it has an unusual philosophy to go with it.

“I think I am more willing to break the mold of how to do things because I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Claus said, smiling widely. Claus, who lives in the neighborhood near the gallery, approaches her gallery with a hope of democratizing art ownership and creation. The gallery even has a basket of donated art that people can take in return for labor, like mopping the floor, cleaning the windows or running some fliers to another part of town.

ARTISTS USED TO TAKING RISKS

Perhaps the most unusual part of the gallery was to open its doors in November, well after the spending and overall economic decline had begun. But as Claus saw it, “Well, economy, whatever. I’m 48. Time’s ticking.” She had always wanted to open a shop of some kind, and an art gallery worked because it did not require an exceptionally large amount of startup capital. Well, and because she’s an artist herself.

But she is also a teacher, and learning is a large part of Color and Light. In addition to displaying and selling art, people can learn how to make art whenever the gallery is open.

“If someone sees an amazing artwork that they love,” she said. “I can sit them down and give them a few pointers and say, ‘You can make, maybe not that, but you can make something that gives you as much joy as that.’”

Artists can display art on a system she calls a “short-term consignment co-op.” Basically, Claus will display artists’ work and take a smaller commission than the industry norm. In return, the artist will work at the gallery or do some other kind of work for her. If for some reason an artist cannot work at the gallery, they can pay so that someone else works in the gallery for them.

Of course, artists are not guaranteed sales, and traffic to the gallery is slow. Claus said she has not made any money since she opened. But she said she expected to feed money into the gallery for at least a year or two, and she spends a lot of time networking and trying to spread the word about the gallery in an attempt to make it a destination.

Both established artists on Santa Fe and experimental galleries outside high-traffic areas are going to have to be creative as spending continues to decline. But Claus is not scared of opening a new gallery, and Martray sees an art impetus in Denver that might just keep artists from eating their shoes.

Martray said the Denver art community benefits from an excitement people have about art in the city after the 2006 opening of the Frederick C. Hamilton wing of the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007.

“There’s a momentum,” she said. “It’s like physics. It can’t really be stopped.”