Lawrenceville galleries: A revolving door
After a two-year run, last weekend saw the last of LaVie gallery in Lawrenceville. With an impromptu closing party scheduled for the Friday evening before Labor Day, gallery co-owner Bronwyn Loughren says, "We closed quick, so there wasn't the usual crowd."
Loughren and business partner Thommy Conroy found out a week earlier that they could close the space because Equita, a store currently selling earth friendly "green" products out of a Lawrenceville location known as the Ice House lofts, took over the lease with plans of relocating to LaVie's location on Butler Street and opening to the public after Sept. 15.
"We're closing because we have other things that we'd like to do," says LaVie gallery co-owner Bronwyn Loughren. "I've learned that I don't want to be a businesswoman for the rest of my life. In the end, the idealism gives way to reality, and it doesn't matter if I'm selling artwork or widgets, it's still a business, and that's dry and a bit too linear for my taste."
Known among local artists as a unique venue that focused on the selling of their works as opposed to mere display, LaVie was heralded as the hippest gallery to hit Lawrenceville in years when it opened.
"Somehow they have been able to corral some of the best young artists in town, and show their best work consistently, month-after-month," wrote art blogger Merge Divide last week on the blog "Serendipity" (dgrim.blogspot.com/). "The receptions have been well attended and elegantly provisioned, and the prices have always been affordable. Often the best art venues come and go quickly in this town, and leave folks reminiscing about them for a long time afterwards."
Catering to the younger set, the goal says Loughren, was to cultivate interest in collecting art on the most basic level.
"At La Vie we wanted to cultivate a new collector -- give someone who had never thought to invest in artwork a starting point," she says. "To present artwork with thoughtful curation and careful discretion is a lot of work; being able to say no to artists even if you like them because you don't just take anyone -- this has strengthened our reputation and we've had some stellar shows at La Vie."
True enough. Over the past two years, Loughren and Conroy managed to produce an event monthly, drawing in a large crowd with each new show. As for the closing party, Loughren says, "Probably 100 people came to the closing, sales were good and a diverse crowd, as usual."
Loughren says that even though the closing did "feel like a funeral," with everyone whispering how sorry they were to see the gallery close, she says, "It's a great thing that I'm closing. It frees me up to do so many more things and contribute more fully to the community, rather than worrying about the details of owning my own business."
"Thommy and I intend to continue to curate shows in other venues, we're interested in having openings in surprising spaces. La Vie doesn't have a storefront, but La Vie is the two of us, so it isn't going to disappear. We're both very invested and committed to the Pittsburgh art scene."
LaVie is not the only Lawrenceville gallery to close its doors recently. In January of this year, John Morris' Digging Pitt and Digging Pitt Too Galleries closed after producing more than 60 exhibits as well as special events like artist talks, readings and workshops.
From its opening further up on Butler Street (4417) in Lawrenceville in February 2005, the gallery, and its sister gallery Digging Pitt Too a few blocks back on 45th and Plummer Streets, had been a vital part of the Pittsburgh cultural scene. Digging Pitt's flat file archives included the work of more than 200 regional and national artists. Digging Pitt's last exhibit, the "Blogger Show," was extravagant in its scope. The exhibit encompassed four venues in two cities, showcasing the work of more than 30 art bloggers.
A native New Yorker, Morris moved to Pittsburgh with the specific intent of opening an art gallery that focused on the flat file archive concept, that is to present a large majority of artists works on paper in a few sets of common flat files, the kind typically used in the print industry.
Choosing Pittsburgh based on the advice of his sister, who used to live here, Morris says, "I just assumed that since Pittsburgh had major art schools, and huge institutional brands like the Carnegie International and the Mattress Factory and was so relatively cheap, it would be a good place to try out my gallery idea."
But even so, fewer buyers than expected walked through the doors. Morris says he has no real regrets. "Even as bad as I was at doing it, I still managed to only spend a bit more here running a gallery than it might have cost to rent a decent apartment and studio in New York."
If anything, he says, "I think the major thing I realized after I started was just how relatively isolated things are here. Very little local press reaches outside the city and everything loops around in the same bubble. This was a huge problem since I hoped to make and keep relationships with people and buyers out of town."
Still, there seems to be no end to new galleries opening up in Lawrenceville, with the latest, Luke & Eloy Gallery, planning to open Sept. 27 at 5169 Butler St. (Details: www.lukeandeloy.ning.com)
"I really am not sure why other people do it," Morris says. "For the most part, I'm surprised that more people haven't done it -- the cost difference is huge when compared to most other places. For example, I know two women in New York who ran a small Chelsea Gallery named Clementine for 12 years. At the end, when they decided to close, they had a monthly overhead of over $80,000, most of which was rent."
For whatever reason, opening an art gallery seems to be an attractive idea for many, regardless of the outcome; even in a place that clearly doesn't have a public that will support it. Such is life, or should I say c'est la vie?
