It's almost April 20th — and I'm not saying that as some kind of tip of the hat to the weed aficionados out there — but because it represents more of an informal anniversary of sorts.
It was on April 20th in 2019 that we made the final decision to close our Red Dragonfly brick-and-mortar art gallery. In retrospect, that was actually a smart thing to do... which I can say now, with three years of hindsight to my credit!
The original "Red Dragonfly" was a paper and wire sculpture...
Even if we had decided to renew our lease for another three years, chances are really high that we would have had to close down once COVID-19 hit and we had gotten even a little ways into lockdowns and limitations and restrictions.
Now that I have a little bit of distance on it, I don't really miss having a store, and I don't feel sad about the closure anymore. I've been in the art gallery business twice now, and whereas I have a fair number of fond memories from those years... on the whole it is not something I'd want to do again.
One of the facts of life that has definitely been underscored by all this is the fact that you don't get in the retail store business in the hopes of making money! It's more something you do because you really like it and you enjoy the interaction and the products or your particular industry, along with the fact that you get to try to forge your own path.
The Only Constant is... Change!
It's interesting to consider just how much the art world has changed, in just the three years since I left the business.
All of a sudden, NFTS became a big deal and a hot property. And with digital art becoming more and more important, the idea of art being something you actually go into a store to look at and buy seems to be fading in terms of importance.
Being an artist, myself, I'm also feeling the effects of trying to still be in the business of art that exists tangibly in physical space… and I have to admit that occasionally it feels like the walls are closing in on me a little bit. Maybe that's just an illusion… after all, people are still buying houses, and living in them as homes, and presumably decorating them with something.
At the same time, there also seem to be more and more digital nomads in the world and if the sum total of your possessions consists on what fits in your backpack and in your laptop bag then you probably don't have a whole lot of room for art in your world. That is, unless you just can enjoy it on the screen of your laptop or your phone.
I'm not complaining mind you. The world has always being in a constant state of change, and it's pretty much par for the course that the things we love at some point become obsolete at a subsequent point. I'm not worried about the future of art per se, it's just in flux and the formats with which we enjoy art continue to evolve and change.
As artists — or even purveyors of art — it's up to us to change with the world… or potentially be left behind.
Thanks for stopping by, and do please leave a comment if you feel inspired to do so!
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All images are our own, unless otherwise attributed
NFTs are the latest thing but the wheel also turns. Try and do both I say! You got out just in time: I think about the bullet I dodged when I almost opened a bookstore with someone in November 2019. Although bookstores did well in my city after the first lockdown was lifted, I'm not sure that we would have survived as a new business. So many freshly-opened places didn't
I would think that was also a bullet well-dodged. From what I hear, South Africa had some extremely touch restrictions.
We're grateful, on a daily basis, that we called it quits when we did.