A year ago, I took a leap of faith and moved the contents of the studio I had called home for 6 years to a new space on Fabric Row in South Philly. The previous home of Brooke Lanier Fine Art had been a 4th floor walk-up on a little-traveled side street in Center City Philadelphia. When I signed the lease in 2012, it was raw drywall and the masonry was full of holes. I fixed it up into a space I was proud of and used it as a combination studio, classroom, and gallery. Other than a couple of shows featuring the work of my students, the first show I curated there, Try to Understand, included David Aipperspach, Paula Cahill, Laura Krasnow, Brooke Lanier, my intern Yanlin Li, Sarah Pater, and Tamsen Wojtanowski.
A year later, I curated “Unintended Consequences,” with the help of my intern Alyssa Wilgruber. That show featured Geoffrey Agrons, Diane Burko, Jennifer Manzella, and Ekaterina Popova. It also included some of my new investigations into watercolor.
I spent the following months preparing for my solo show “Familiar Forms” that Susanna Gold curated at The Noyes Museum, searching for new studio space, and packing. It was madness.
After 9 months, I miraculously found a space that I could afford within walking distance of my home that is in a good location for a business. It is on Fabric Row, which was named Philadelphia Magazine’s Best Place to Shop in 2019. Plus, it has a storefront on the ground level and a studio space downstairs so I can have designated clean vs. messy space. A big limitation of my previous space was that I had to choose how I wanted to use the room and was unable to make things and have a gallery simultaneously. There is a greenhouse with a window well downstairs that provides natural light and a little indoor jungle.
I moved in December, 2018, which everyone knows is the least chaotic time of year for moving. I quickly began sprucing the place up once I returned from visiting my family over the holidays. Laura Krasnow drove me to Home Depot more than once and helped me load up on lighting fixtures, paint, and everything else. It just about broke my brain trying to pick out a gray for the walls.
It was a real life demonstration of color theory principles, proving that a color’s appearance is hugely impacted by its neighbors (like a warm-toned wood floor) and factors like the color of lightbulb in the hardware store vs. the gallery. As much as I tried to get the most neutral gray possible, people think it looks kind of blue, which makes me scream internally a little bit. No one disagrees that it really makes small works on paper pop, though, which was the whole idea.
It took a few more months to get my studio together and make preparations for curatorial endeavors. I went on a lot of studio visits, including a trip to New York, scoured the internet for interesting people to meet, went to a ton of shows, and met a lot of new people. I was networking like a maniac. During this, I was also teaching a watercolor class at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, and working on my own art.
Once I decided which bodies of work by which artists would play well together, I had to narrow it down to specific pieces. I made little watercolor scale models of the gallery, figured out the timeline, wrote up consignment agreements, wrote a press release, designed promotional images, contacted the media, installed the artwork, emailed everyone I’d ever met to invite them to the opening, and hoped for the best.
“The Poetics of Decay” featuring Susan Abrams, Noelle Egan, Jennifer Manzella, and Dolores Poacelli was reviewed by Edith Newhall in the Philadelphia Inquirer alongside the Duchamp Siblings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Edward McHugh at Works On Paper. It was a huge achievement for a brand new gallery, and we had great attendance at our receptions. Overall, it was a strongly positive experience.
For our second show, “Selective Memory,” I decided to expand the scope of the gallery. In addition to Philadelphia-area artists Tasha Doremus and Ross Carlisle, we had Brooklyn-based Elise P. Church and Rachel Guardiola who had just moved to Syracuse from Baltimore.
It was a beautiful show of artwork that pushed the boundaries of photography, and it was wonderful being surrounded by these pieces and getting to know them more each day.
We finished the year strong with “Fluid Dynamics,” featuring Geoffrey Agrons, Sebastien Leclercq, Deborah Weiss, and a few of my own paintings. I had an excuse to make the first large painting I’ve made all year since there is a window to the storage room in the middle of one of the main walls and none of the other pieces were large enough to cover it. (I’m going to ask my landlord for permission to drywall over it once this show is over.)
We got a belated Christmas present in the form of the second Inquirer review in our first year! I was so honored to be alongside the Horace Pippin show at the Philadelphia Museum of art and the two current shows at Pentimenti Gallery.
In light of this new development, we have extended the run of the show through the end of January.
New Year’s Eve and January 1st the gallery is open by appointment and by chance.
We will be open 11-5 Thursday January 2nd and Friday, January 3rd.
Beginning Saturday, January 11th, we will be open 11-5 on Fridays and Saturdays and by appointment and by chance.
The gallery will not have an officially curated show until March. The opening reception for “In Bloom,” which will include Cynthia Back, Steve Donegan, Marisa Keris, and Heather McMordie, is March 27th from 5:30-8. I’m working on curating the summer and fall shows. September 23-27th we will be participating in the 20/20 Photo Festival and featuring photographs by Anthony Huber and Laura Krasnow.
Thank you so much to everyone who helped make my first year as an official gallery a success. When I slip into using “we” instead of “I” when talking about the gallery, it is because despite being the only employee of Brooke Lanier Fine Art, so many other people – including the artists presently on display- are involved that it seems wrong to think of it as a solo effort. I owe so much to everyone who helped me with receptions, random errands, fix-it jobs, spreading the word, inviting friends, and giving me encouragement. There are too many people to name but among them are my wonderful husband Jim; my mother-in-law Margie who made cookies for all of my events; my brother Hudson Lanier and brother-in-law Paulson who provided amazing tech support; my sister-in-law Laura Lanier; my parents; my friend Jacqui who came to all of my events and helped me with Philadelphia Open Studios Tours; my buddy Chris Stanwood who helped me put in railings and shelves (and is starting a stretcher-building business); and the lovely people at InLiquid and The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, especially Genevieve Coutroubis.
Thanks also to people who told me to take a break, which I’m going to do… sort of. I’m taking February to get in some studio time before the spring show. My brushes miss me, and I have a solo show this fall to prepare for.