by Mary Louise Schumacher for the Journal Sentinel
If you read the paper this morning, you'll notice that the 20th anniversary exhibit at the Tory Folliard Gallery is my top pick for the event. Tory is running what is probably the most commercially successful gallery in town and is known for showing museum-quality, Midwestern painters. I talked to Tory about what she's learned during her 20-year tenure. A snippet of that ran in today's Cue. Here's a fuller version.
Mary Louise : How did you first get started? What made you want to open a gallery?
Tory: Oh, I guess that was a long time in coming. It took lots of years of looking at art and studying art and giving tours at the art museum. I was looking for something else that would connect me to the art. And I had a husband who also was great and encouraged me to go forward...
I started working with several artists. I was a private dealer for them, and I worked out of my home. In the beginning that was fine, but it started to take up the entire home. We couldn't do it on a regular basis, show art and live a normal life.
ML: Who were some of those first artists?
T: Guido Brink was probably the first one. When I had a show of his work I think I had 220 pieces in my home. We moved the furniture. It was one of those situations. And I had to develop a mailing list and start from scratch. We had such success with him that I thought, "Oh this is going to be easy"...but once we got into the gallery world I found out that a weekend of having art shows here and there is not like having your doors open five or seven days a week.
ML: What are some of the more important lessons you've learned after 20 years?
T: I've learned that you have to be patient. You are working with lots of different egos, especially with artists. It took a long time for me to build up the number of artists and the quality of artists that I wanted to represent. I had to be patient and continue to knock on their doors and call them constantly because they had never heard of me they weren't interested... So that took quite a long time to build up a group of artists that trusted me.
For the full text of this interview on Mary Louise Schumacher's blog, Art City, please click here.
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