A Space for Artists: The Vestibule
In one sentence:
Art lives in a vestibule, the passage between the private and public life, between inside and out.
What is The Vestibule?
Mission
The Vestibule’s mission is to become a micro-cultural center. The Vestibule brings public art to a primarily residential neighborhood in North Seattle which has few dedicated art galleries.
As a nontraditional gallery space, we enjoy exhibiting work that makes an exchange outside of the capitalist economy. The sharing economy supports an idea of art as experience rather than art as object. What in the world does that mean practically? We often, but not exclusively, support site-specific, time-sensitive and sculptural works. We support projects that benefit nonprofit organizations. Historically we have shown 90% women, womyn and queer artists. This statistic does not indicate an exclusive rule, but demonstrates our goal to support artists not represented by commercial art structures. We encourage submissions by persons of color and indigenous artists.
Vision
Art lives in a vestibule, the passage between the private and public life, between inside and out. Vestibule names not only passages in architecture but in the body — eyes, nose, ears and the so ons and so forths. Art passes between. We dream of a culture in which everyone opens the vestibule of their private home and private life to public life. Private life doesn’t have to be the end of life. Public life can be the aim of life.
Programs Offered:
Artist Installations:
The gallery supports exhibitions by emerging artists who show work, commission-free; earned income from short-term rental offsets the cost of maintaining this space.
Exhibitions at the Vestibule are time sensitive. For a few evenings, we hold openings and receptions for a short time to gather viewers and artists together.
As a nontraditional gallery space, we enjoy exhibiting work that makes an exchange outside of the capitalist economy. We often, but not exclusively, support site-specific, time-sensitive and sculptural works.
Sleep with Art:
You can sleep in our Air BnB beside our permanent collection of local art any time during the year.
For a few weeks, we preserve key elements of these exhibits for Air BnB guests and visitors-by-appointments to appreciate in a longer, more intimate relationship. As we grow hope to offer longer stays with these unique shows.
What I like about this program:
The Vestibule provides a new way to experience works of art that are installation based and site-speciifc. Instead of a white box gallery, artists can install work in a space made for living, sleeping and moving around.
Fees:
None!
Spend the night in the gallery: $25 and up
The Interview:
1. What in particular made you decide to create your space for artists? Is there a specific story or incident that propelled you in this direction?
There’s a long and a short answer to these questions. I created the Vestibule with my husband John. In this interview, I’ll speak mostly in the first-person singular, but this is a plural project. We’ve been together since college and after that, we moved to New York. The long story would involve telling you about trying to become ‘artists’ and found it hard because of money and space and so on. The short answer is going to Pierogi gallery in Brooklyn. That was one of the first galleries that we went to regularly when we moved to New York. At Pierogi, they have flat files that you can open. You have to put on white gloves. Those gloves gave us a new relationship to art — great art, trendy art, New York art. We’d thought that was all boxed away in Chelsea. At Pierogi, we could be intimate with art. We could browse, we could hang out. The gallery didn’t expect us to buy anything. Although we don’t have flat files and gloves at the Vestibule, the experience of being intimate with art and spending time with work stayed with us what we would want to offer if we were able to make our own gallery space. (We still want to have flat files and gloves! But it’s still a matter of money and space.)
2. What do you hope to achieve with your space and programming? What in your mind makes your space unique, special?
There are two big reasons, we think our space is special. First, because you can spend time there. You can have a private experience with the work if you book a night. You can also just hang out. There aren’t many dedicated art galleries in Ballard or in North Seattle in general and we hope that when people make it all the way to the edge of town, they feel comfortable sitting down — we have a couch! — or even booking a night to have longer, private time with art.
Second, we fund our project without depending on 1. a nonprofit, donation model or 2. a standard capitalist exchange of money for objects. The sharing economy allows people to pay for an experience rather than a thing. The price of a night is accessible. We allow the artists to sell their work, but we don’t take a commission on work under a thousand dollars. Trying to sell enough work of that cost would take so much effort for so little profit that it seems more efficient for us and better for the artists to secure income through Air BnB than to try to squeeze money out of people who aren’t making any in the first place.
3. What is your vision for the future of your space and the art world in general?
For our own space, we hope to more carefully coordinate and curate shows compatible with renting via Air BnB and the art we want to show. It’s a trick balance to get enough money by renting to the general public who just wants a night in Seattle and to show innovative work that might push the boundaries of what the ‘general public’ — whoever they are — might be comfortable sleeping with. So, we’d like to target a more specific group who really want to come spend the night in an art show. That might involve more advertising and quite frankly, some help — I find that I’m reaching my limits in terms of time and energy however much we’d like to do more.
And… someday we’d like to buy a plot on an island, rebuild the Vestibule as a total built environment, total Kunstwerk, architecture on up, and host guests and artists there. Someday.
For the art world in general — phew, boy, big question! I hope there is an art world. I can’t help but think despairing thoughts about our political, environmental future. And thoughts about the dominance of capitalist and technological culture.
Doom and gloom aside, if I am going to be hopeful, then this is what I would hope for:
Work that disappears. I love time-sensitive and situated work. This isn’t the only kind of work I love. There are paintings and mass based sculptures I adore — who wouldn’t want to sit beside a Vija Celmins all day or a kneel by a Kehinde Wiley, a Louise Nevelson just to name a few off the top of my head. But I do want to see an art world that supports art that is not a portable, consolidated object, but an experience. Last year, we hosted an installation by Cicelia RossGotta. She laced a net across the gallery, hosted an event where she read poetry and threw milkweed pods over the net. The pods represented the pregnant, erupting body. Over three weeks, each gallery visitor opened a milkweed pod and added it to the installation. The installation has disappeared except for photos. I want to see an art world that hosts temporal, elusive work like that. What if she hadn’t had a space to make it?
A more permeable art world. More metaphorical white gloves — colorful gloves would be even better — that give those who love art a chance to access it. Making a gallery or museum inviting not just to the wealthy or to those with a fine art education
4. How do you see the art world today? Please explain.
Honestly, I really just see it from Seattle. I don’t feel qualified to comment on the art world. When our kids are older, I’d love to make pilgrimages to LA and New York and Bejing and Venice… maybe I’ll be able to have a global perspective then. Locally, the art world is fragile. It’s not that there is no art — recently there has been influx of small, informal spaces like ours. But galleries in Seattle come and go. I don’t see the New York or LA gallery scene disappearing. But here, I think that the art community here has trouble sustaining long-term noncommercial and non-institutional projects.
5. What do you look for when choosing artists for your program?
I look for artists who need space. As I said above, that could be because they want to create time-sensitive and situated work. But I also look for artists who are ‘emerging’ in some sense. I want to be very clear that ‘emerging’ is not a euphemism for young. Instead, it connotes a period of development. An artistic life stage that can correlate to any physical age. Emerging artists might not yet have found a space to show work because they haven’t yet had a chance to be seen –a vicious cycle that makes it hard to get exposures.
I don’t look for artists who want to sell a lot of work or sell expensive work. Because we are not a large commercial space, that’s just not going to happen. We have neither the physical space nor the motivation to focus on retail sale. Or… possibly because I just wouldn’t be good at selling it! I have a degree in philosophy, not an MBA.
6. What are the three most important things artists should do for their career?
- Work. First, work. If you can, do it first thing in the day, every day. Working every day, however briefly, keeps up the strand of thinking holding together your project. Your act is you, said St. Exupéry. So work.
- Set aside time to apply for grants, grad school, shows — whatever you need at this point in your career. If you don’t try to show people what you’re doing, you can’t expect them to look. But first, work.
- Show up for other people. If you don’t show up for them, you aren’t participating in the community that you need to sustain you, to sustain art. That might mean going to openings, going to studios, having coffee. Don’t just like them on Instagram.
7. What are three things artists should definitely not do?
- Try to please me or any other curator.
- Apply for things more than they work. Every day, whenever possible, first work.
- Quit. People who make work may not get attention. People who don’t make work, definitely won’t.
8. What does your day to day look like? How do you organize this space / project to keep it manageable?
I get up and write. No wait! I get up, snuggle some children, make breakfast for those children, make lunch for them, argue with them, tell them that was sweet but please put your shoes on, wait for them to put their shoes on and some interminable time later find myself in the car after dropping them in the school. Then, I try to remember what I intended to do that day. And THEN I write. I try to maintain my own creative writing practice of nonfiction, fiction and hybrid work. After writing, I usually focus on tidying up for teaching — reviewing course or reading for the philosophy class I teach at writing center.
I work on the gallery for whatever remains. Most often, that means cleaning the bathroom at the Air BnB, responding to guests and endlessly coordinating that with our gallery calendar. I look at art, make press releases, post things on line and if I’m lucky do a studio visit or review work for a funding organization in Seattle. At the end of the day, I flip through Instagram try to catch up on what artists are posting, what shows I shouldn’t miss.
Not getting lost in all the shows and work I might have missed is important to maintaining my energy for sustaining the project. John contributes to the aesthetic of the gallery, but I do all the day to day and taking on one too many shows or one too many Air BnB guests back-to-back and I could burn out. We have entered our third year and I just want to keep it all sustainable.
Last Words of Advice:
‘We are what we pretend to be’, said Kurt Vonnegut. I think that’s important.
Article in The Seattle Times:
“An Airbnb that’s an art gallery? As Seattle rents soar, DIY art galleries crop up in homes, garages”
-By Gayle Clemans
Sleep with Art
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