SeattlePrintmakersCenter

141102 A marriage of good art and good business 

The good art is what I have in my gallery, front to back. 

The good business is the aggregated startups. 

Marriage of these is an agreement that gives its equity to the other, and vice-versa. 

Case study

For example, an artist stopped by the other day because she saw, through the windows of our family art gallery, a small art object that reminded her of one of her own, and she mentioned that she still has an print I made in 1966, and which she and her husband bought. “We recently downsized, but I kept your art and it’s hanging in our condo.”

To say I was complemented would put it mildly. But there was more to this encounter than that. What she told me about her work as an early developer of the Schack Art Center in Everett was a clue toward solving the question, “How do I develop the Seattle Printmakers Center, with success anything like the Schack Art Center?”

In an email to her a few days later, I stated, “. . . the Seattle Printmakers Center as slightly different inasmuch my concept is that the development is planned around self-sustaining small businesses. One list I made has twenty of them! The business’ profits go to support the operating costs of the center’s non-profit sectors. So I visualized not only artists work/living units, but also what “work” went on in those units, i.e., the work of the twenty small businesses.”

I picture the working/living spaces as being designed to be work spaces for the worker/owners of the twenty small businesses. Visualize, for example, one of the worker/owners as being in charge of producing the medallions that go on the Halfwood Line of presses. His or her home has the space and furniture of a medallion-maker—resembling a metal designer or jeweler’s workshop. They produce hundreds or thousands of the decorative accouterments of the Halfwood line—everything from the “badges” affixed to the presses to printmakers’ specialty jewelry that are sold in the on-site Printmakers Store.

As for the marriage, above, the artist who stopped in to the gallery has a 1966 print I made, and in my gallery (and in our family collection), there are a few remaining impressions which can be used to finance the planning and completion of the Seattle Printmakers Center.

In the days and hours since meeting with her, I have been riffling through the many potential ways the entire contents of our art gallery (and condo storage room) can be liquidated over the period of a year or two and put to supporting the Seattle Printmakers Center.

In my riffling, my eyes settled on a small envelope I made for the Rembrandt & Wine concept, and in my imagination I saw myself producing a dozen of these envelopes, by hand, as special invitations to people who would like to partake of a sip and print experience as part of the promotion for the Seattle Printmakers Center.