Ask an Expert with the McCool’s and Good Luck Have Fun Gallery
How to start a gallery
Have you ever wondered, how can I do that? How can I get my art in a gallery or coffee shop? How did that artist get their piece picked up by this big retailer? I find the best way to find out is to ask, and while I do that on my podcast I wanted a way to keep the conversations going. Ask an expert, is a section of my newsletter that stays in touch with artists I have already talked to and reaches out to those too busy to come on to the show.
If you build it they will come, definitely applies to the gallery Good Luck Have Fun. The McCool’s made a DIY gallery in their garage and by doing so have learned a lot about the Austin art community. Good Luke Have Fun was just declared the Most Immersive Art Gallery in a Garage by The Austin Chronicle. I asked them about their gallery and what advice they might have for artist and art lovers alike.
How did you get the idea of creating a gallery in your garage?
We knew we were about to move into a location that had a 2-car garage, and we were strategizing about ways we could live without owning a car. So doing something in the garage was kind of a way to force ourselves to commit to not getting a car and parking it inside. But we also had been to some other people’s homes where they had turned their garages into a place to display art and we loved that idea. And on top of that, I (Tim) had left all of my teaching jobs behind when we moved to Austin so I needed a project to commit myself to, also as a way to reach out to other artists in Austin and learn more about the Austin art scene and who was making work that wasn’t necessarily being featured in all of the galleries around town.
How do you find artists for your gallery?
We started out with personal recommendations from friends and other artists, and also by browsing through the Austin Studio Tour catalog. We would reach out to people we saw in the catalog whose work stood out to us and then contact them and see if they were interested in sharing more of their work with us. We sometimes get cold emailed by people who are looking for exposure for their work, and this is difficult for us because we often have a pretty solid idea of how we’re going to plan our exhibition schedule about a year in advance, and we’ve basically never changed our plans because of what someone wrote to us in an email.
For artists who are looking to show their work in galleries, I would say the two best ways to do that is first to make a concrete connection with the gallery by attending events, getting to know the gallery’s programming, and understanding the decisions why the gallery is showing the work that they do. Second is getting to know the artists who show at the gallery, because those personal recommendations carry a lot of weight. If we get word about another artist from someone we’ve already worked with, that could carry about 100x or 1000x more weight than a cold email from someone we don’t know.
What do you like about other galleries that you try to bring into yours?
We like how there are galleries around town that really shine the spotlight on Texas artists, and Austin artists in particular. When we were thinking of what we might focus on for our gallery project, we had a conversation about the type of work we might want to exhibit and decided we should focus on learning and highlighting the work of Austin based artists. There are a number of other galleries around town that also do that, and while I think it’s also very valuable to have artists coming in from out of state or out of the country, it made the most sense to us to get to know our local scene better and focus on those artists.
What goals do you have for the gallery?
Similarly to our last answer, there are a lot of artists working in Austin that are making really cool and interesting work that are underexposed and we are interested in focusing our little spotlight on those artists. When we’re curating shows our goal is to give people space to experiment and maybe try something that they wouldn’t have to space or time to do otherwise. Our garage is more of a project space to test out ideas, so we’re hoping that for each show we produce it’s an opportunity for an artist to make work in a direction that they have not gone in yet. A successful show for us will also group together artists who are not familiar with each other’s work, and we always have the most fun seeking out connections between other artists and looking for the kinds of overlap in visuals or ideas that have gone unnoticed.
How do you make money having a gallery?
Our gallery isn’t a commercial venture so that provides us with a lot of flexibility and the opportunity to experiment. So we’re fortunate in that regard not to have to rely on the sale of artwork to provide us with money for rent.
What is the hardest part about starting or maintaining a gallery?
Remembering what color of white paint we used for the walls shouldn’t be so hard, but we have managed to make that into a whole difficult thing for ourselves. We should really just write it down somewhere and stick to it. But we’re always going to a different hardware store and then forgetting what brand we went with last time. We should just go to the Sherwin Williams down the street and leave it at that.
But for real: a lot of work went into starting this project but arguably the more difficult part has been in maintaining it. There have been a lot of challenges along the way and the benefit of not having to rely on sales to fund the gallery is that we are able to make a lot of mistakes and then learn and recover from them.
It does take a lot of time thinking about what new shows we could put on. It has not been difficult finding artists or curators who are passionate about working with us. That has been one of the more surprising things about this garage gallery. We haven’t had to deal with a lot of rejection ourselves from the different artists we’d reach out to who we want to work with. But one difficult part is having to say no to the artists or curators who are looking for a home for their artwork or exhibition idea, who we can’t fit into our schedule. It shouldn’t be surprising that in a creative city like Austin there are so many artists who are really passionate about sharing their work, but there are so many, and having to turn down work or ideas for shows is hard.
What advice would you give to other people who might want to start a gallery?
There are so many places to start, because there are so many different types of art out there, so many different types of gallery models, and ways to experience it and share it. We didn’t start out with one strict goal or objective that we were laser focused on, but I don’t think this would necessarily be the worst idea for starting a gallery. Like for example, you find that there’s a lack of galleries showing a particular type of work, and you want to fill that gap. We had established a goal of showing Texas artists, but we had some flexibility in that at times we were more interested in showing paintings, at times we were more interested in working with one specific artist on their solo show, at other times we were more interested in working with groups or with guest curators. So we’ve been really flexible but I’d like to say that’s down to the experimental nature of our project rather than any other factors. But this is a part time focus for us that for a week every couple of months becomes a full time focus, so I guess I would advise people to figure out how much of themselves they want to dedicate to the project, whether it is something you want to spend your entire waking hours thinking about or if it’s something you want to do on a more partial time basis so that you can save time for the other things in your life. I think having a commercial venture type of gallery is valid, and also having a thing in your garage or backyard where it’s mostly about hanging art and hanging out is valid, but figuring out what you want out of your gallery running experience early on will help give you some direction.
You can find more information at…
Instagram: @glhfgallery
Instagram: @tim_mccool_art
Website: https://www.glhfgallery.com/