Tabby walked through the gallery, stopping and admiring some of her favorite pieces. The Crypt was not for everyone and she was okay with that. She had cultivated her stable of artists and the pieces she displayed very intentionally.
She hadn't named her gallery The Crypt. She had inherited the name when she bought the space. It had originally been a bar. A developer from California trying to cash in on the "Keep Portland Weird" vibe without really understanding what "Portland Weird" really was. He bought the basement space on NW 23rd and turned it into a wine bar. With a vampire theme. Dark walls. Deep red leather booths. Only served varieties of red wine. All of the waitstaff and bartenders dressed as creatures of the night. If he had leaned into the camp aspect it might have worked out. But before it could really get off the ground The Willamette Week had called it that Twilight bar and it was all over.
She had taken the property off his hands for a song. She kept the dark walls, the small bar and the name. She tore out the booths and repurposed a small handful to make a circular seating area in the middle of the space. She kept the lighting dark, placing small spotlights to light the art pieces. The Willamette Week called it the best art space of 2010. She understood "Portland Weird."
Originally she had planned on calling her gallery Nightmares and Dreamscapes but she wasn't sure if King would allow her to use the name. Keeping The Crypt was a lot less expensive and she felt it worked almost as well. Even if the previous owner hadn't understood the Portland market he did use a good graphic designer for the logo.
She stopped in front of one of her favorite pieces. It was a series of paintings called The Picnic done in an impressionistic style. The first was clearly an homage to a Monet or a Renoir. A couple in a park having a picnic. Everything gauzy and unclear. Each painting after had an element done in a more realistic style. The couple and park still hazy but now you can see the food is clearly rotten. Another showing that what you had thought was a picnic basket was actually their gas masks tossed to the side. Finally the last one where everything was done in crisp realism except their faces were still impressionistic. Until you realized that they weren't, they were melting. Disturbing and beautiful.
Much to the frustration of some of her patrons none of the art in her gallery was for sale. She made her money off of the bar and the merchandise she sold. T-shirts, coffee mugs, originally they were things left over from the previous owner but when she saw the demand for them she had reordered and added to her little shop. Crass commercialism according to some of her critics, but as those critics were generally owners of other galleries that couldn't even draw a crowd on First Thursday she wasn't worried about their opinions.
She would, on occasion, act as a liaison between artist and patron. They could commision their own pieces if the artist was amenable. And if she knew who the artist was.
She didn't always know who was providing the art in her gallery. Some pieces just came to her. One of her most prolific artists, Ian U, would send her pieces to display, the only marking on them being his signature in the corner, no return address, no way of contacting him. Just the piece. Gorgeous, disturbing works that seemed to capture the patron's attention in deep ways that the other work didn't. She would often find someone standing in front of one of his works moved to tears, or rendered speechless. On more than one occasion she had to walk a patron to the door because they couldn't tear themselves away from what they were seeing.
She liked being able to provide that for people.
She remembered her first Escher viewing. Getting lost in the stairs. Up, down, sideways. She had been amused and then disturbed by the line drawing. Seeing something so normal, so every day, so common and then realizing it was not. That there was nothing right about those looping stairs. That it was the stuff of your nightmares. Similar to ones she had about elevators that went sideways, out of control. Or running and running and running and never getting anywhere. Escher was the stuff of her nightmares. Seeing it on a canvas was oddly soothing to her. It made her feel like someone out there understood her fears and was able to capture and tame them.
That had been the start of her collections.
Then eventually her gallery.
She knew the pieces weren't for everyone. Not all of them were even for her. Some of them were so disturbing she had only really studied them once. And some never made it out onto the gallery floor. They were either returned to the artist or wrapped and put in the vault if the artist was anonymous.
She was also fairly certain more than one piece on her floor was a faithful rendition of a crime that had been committed but as long as she had plausible deniability, and the art was well done, she would display the piece anyway.
Today as she walked the floor she was taking notes on which pieces would come down to be replaced by new. She rotated the artwork every few weeks only keeping a few core pieces up continually. She wanted to bring in new people who were curious about pieces like The Picnic but she also wanted to continue to bring in those that had come before. The blend of familiarity and novelty.
She thought back to her speed dating disaster. If art was just a scam she was going to be the best scam artist she could be.
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