The walk begins at the Gallery At The Station: a modest, modern one-room spot on the main floor of Union Station, well lit by large windows with white mesh shades that protect the artwork. The gallery is open to the public, a fact confused by the fact that other museums in the building charge entrance fees. Recently, the gallery has began advertising its free admission to encourage the shy passer-bys often seen peaking in the front windows.
“They encourage people to start down here,” said Mavis Hollie, secretarial assistant, “because we close earlier.” The gallery was put in with donations and opened in September. Approximately 60 volunteers currently work at the station giving guided tours and manning exhibits.
“This entire facility, Union Station, is run by volunteers,” said Roberta Beverly, director of Union Station Foundation, which funds preservation of the station. “If we didn’t have volunteers, we’d be in deep doo-doo! It’s amazing the people that are interested and will volunteer. We have a very good relationship with all the galleries up and down the street.”
Each month the display changes. Artists submit work to the board—also volunteers--to be considered for exhibit. If chosen, there is no fee to the artist, and the booking is currently well into 2003, booking approximately two years ahead of time.
“This is a sales gallery,” explained Beverly. Artists set their own prices, 30 percent of the sales goes to the city because the station is city owned, but pays no lease, instead paying the 30 percent directly to city.
“We had 56 in here once,” recalled John Moline, gallery coordinator volunteer, noting the space available for both three- and two-dimensional works. “Our average is around 36.”
“It has the appearance of being quite modern,” said Beverly. “It’s in contrast to the old building it’s in. It’s a different era, so that sets a gallery apart, makes it very visible.”
Aspen Studio Leaving Union Station, the Gallery Walk proceeds down 25th toward Jefferson Avenue. Less than a block brings it to the Aspen Studio of Taxidermy & Fine Art, its purple-tiled front welcoming visitors into an impressive layout.
Owner C. Brent Morgan has been in taxidermy for 35 years, and on 25th for eight. He takes special pride in his showroom that displays both animal and art.
“I said, I’m gonna have me a showroom where if I have an elk hangin’ on the wall, I can have an elk picture hangin’ next to it,” said Morgan. “One accents the other.” What inspired that combination? Morgan says it was women! The wives of his costumers complained that men spent too much money on taxidermy.
“Fifty percent of what I have in here is for women,” he said, pointing out a bright picture. “When you go into a well decorated place, you have three dimensional as well as two dimensional.” Framing is done off-site. Morgan’s is one of three galleries on the walk that does framing. “I deal in more custom and expensive framing. I deal more or less like an interior decorator who deals with fewer people--and more personalized things--than people who go out and get everything themselves. I wanted to be the Nordstrom of galleries,” said Morgan. “I’m always lookin’ for something else to make my showroom more unique than anybody else’s,” says Morgan, pointing out his antiquated furniture and display cabinets. “I enjoy anything that’s 1870s to the turn of the century, from Geranimo bein’ chased to Teddy Roosevelt bein’ president.”
At Christmas visitors can see an antique one-horse sleigh. The antiques fit the building’s era, which, though fully restored, is not on the city’s Register of Historic Buildings.
“I’m thoroughly fascinated with the Old West. I wanted a building with character. I like the old stuff, that’s why I’m on 25th Street.
Taxidermy’s my bread and butter. I have a special niche. You go into every gallery, they each have a niche.”
Wasatch Art & Frame
Moving onto the next block, the Gallery Walk enters Wasatch Art & Frame, finding much floor space, original paintings, and a wide selection of prints. In October it had been open just two months. Owner Mark Odell spent a year renovating and remodeling, being too much in love with the street to not do it justice.
“As a gallery (we) continue to foster the arts in Ogden, and the Gallery Walk in particular,” he said, “We wanted to showcase specifically Utah artists and let people know just how good they are. People come back from vacation on the coast and show us, ‘Look what I got in California!’ I hate to tell them, ‘Well, that’s a Utah artist actually.’”
Beside a neat collection of prints, catalogs of “predominantly Utah artists” are on hand for customers to order from. “We feel like pioneers down here on this side of the block. But I think the street’s going to explode,” he said, noting the 60-unit development project going up across the street from him. It gives him much hope for the vitality of the street. “That’s gonna put a lot of demands on the street.
“We found when we were down there (at a previous location) that the public has a hard time distinguishing between originals and open editions.
“We’ve framed everything from buttons to a full wedding dress…You’d be surprised what people frame.”
What of the competition? “All these guys do good work, I know by doing this I might lose business to them, or I might gain business from them. On the whole, we all gain.” Before opening, Odell leased the building next door to Gallery 25, the next stop on the Gallery Walk. “Joe D’Agnillo came and talked to me and I thought, ‘Well, it’s a pretty good marriage between the two.’”
That’s the common consensus on the Gallery Walk: the more the merrier! As Odell puts it, “You’re no longer depending on walk-by traffic, you’re a destination.
“That’s what it takes, is not to be afraid to do it.”
Gallery 25 Inspired by his wanderings in one of the nation’s gallery capitals, Santa Fe and Tous, New Mexico, Joe D’Agnillo is living out Van Gogh’s dream of a fully functioning artist’s cooperative. In Paris, er, Ogden, friend artists responded instantly to the idea, and Gallery 25 was born.
“It’s good for the community and emerging artists not well known yet,” said D’Agnillo. “We should give something back to the community. But I get more out if it than I put in! That’s interesting!”
There are nine local artists in the co-op. Pictures stand out vividly on the walls, gentle lighting studding the rafters overhead. Did it intimidate him and his partners to open so near other established galleries? Oh contraire!
“Businesses here attract each other,” says D’Agnillo. He emphasizes that a gallery is a museum and shop combined, welcoming those who wish to view with the option to buy also. “How many things in this world are free anymore?”When a customer is done looking, he is often advised of the other galleries.
“We’ll say, ‘Have you been to the Union Station Gallery?’” There are also sister co-ops in Utah, Local Color in Salt Lake, and Lamplight in Bountiful. “We show some of their brochures, and they show ours.” Like the friendly competition of “an artist’s village,” notes D’Agnillo, being close together allows instinct to lead the wanderer from one gallery to the next on 25th, the way one cruises a shopping mall. The co-op brings the classic to the age of convenience in a community where high culture and original art prosper.
Stuck-In-The-Attic
“I think it’s good just to have people know there is art in Ogden,” said Cara Koolmees of Stuck-In-The-Attic, an apt name for the smallest gallery space on the walk, located above Bistro’s restaurant. Also a cooperative, it “The six of us have changed from the original group, but the name stays the same. Most of us are watercolorists, or at least acrylic artists.”
Actually, we sell out of our home more than out of the gallery. You can see our work up there, and people contact the artists. We all have our cards up there.” One of the gallery’s friendly querks is that it lacks a sales counter.
Stuck-In-The-Attic, open about a year, believes in the vibrance of 25th, and can think of nothing downtown Ogden needs more than art. “I think it’s not a competition, it’s just art for everybody,” she laughed at the mention of its location among so many galleries. “Everybody’s trying to make it into a quaint place, a happening place. I don’t think art is an exclusionary thing. I hope (the walk) gets bigger,” she added, noting with regret that some walkers confine themselves to the Historic 25th sections, returning to their cars rather than making the hike up to Jefferson Avenue to the Eccles Community Art Center, the last stop on the walk. “A few more galleries between Historic 25th and Jefferson might help,” she noted. “I think this is kind of baby steps, to get things going,” said Koolmees with easy confidence. “I would like it if all of 25th Street was an artist onclave, with artists up above all the buildings.”
Fine Arts Gallery & Custom Framing
The Fine Arts Gallery on the corner of Grant is a swank, little spot that utilizes the vertical space of its small display area to carry prints and photographs by famous names such as Bev Doolittle, Cynthia Fisher, and Ralph Butler, as well as one local scratch artist’s glass etchings. Two thirds of the shop is workspace where customers help in the designing of the gallery’s specialty: custom framing, as testified by the 6,000 sample frame corners lining the walls!
“They bring me all their stuff, and we put it together,” said Dave Rees, owner.
Fine Arts prides itself on getting great work done fast, even large orders completed in a week’s time via a knack for networking help. Not to mention seven more workrooms in the basement!
Rees learned the trade young, and opened his first shop when he was just 24.
What exactly is involved in custom framing? First, he works with the customer to pick out matting and border size, and then orders the selected frame in length, which Rees then custom cuts. Everything is acid free, and all glass UV treated, to protect against fading, to “preserve your investment.” This is especially important to one who sells limited editions and lithographs.
“You know, we need more galleries on 25h Street,” said Rees. Four is not enough?? “No,” he says, shaking his head soberly. “There’s no point in arguing. We almost have to work together to make things work. You gotta offer things that nobody else offers. You gotta do your own thing, and go forward. Otherwise, they’ll just pass you up.”
In wake of this philosophy, Rees also offers photograph restoration by digital means. “It’s kind of something that no other frame shop does,” he said of the combination. In addition, he makes display boxes from frame moldings, from ornate to clean polish, all swade-lined.
“Exposure is everything. Give out cards, do whatever you can, let the work sell itself.”
Eccles Community Art Center
From Fine Arts, the Gallery Walk leaves 25th, marching up toward the Eccles Community Art Center on Jefferson Avenue. The Eccles echoes the community voice of the Gallery At The Station, booking local artists and artist groups to the delight of the public eye.
From start to finish, the range of tones and styles encountered on the Gallery Walk is as expansive as the imagination of the art world is- boundless.
Fife Tschudy - Winter 2003
keeps regular hours, open as often as possible, welcoming visitors to wander from the sidewalk up the stairs into a charming, lobby-style space. One of the six artists can usually be found hard at work in the office adjoining the lobby.
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