We’ve set aside part of our wall space for some inwardly focused spiritual art. Here we have some pieces from a talented local artist, Aditi Samarth.

Aditi Samarth

Aditi’s works feature repetitive images and patterns to represent visual incantation from eastern meditative traditions. She also plays with opposites such as chaos and order, and pattern and color.

We’ve set aside the central part of our north wall to some colorful abstract art from: Melissa Ayr and Fil Booth.

Melissa Ayr

Melissa paints large and bold. Her fluid forms have both vivid color and rich texture.

Fil Booth

Fil’s work offers subtle tones of color and geometric forms.

We are honored to have art from two gifted artists: Faith Scott Jessup from Denton and Brian Davis based in Dallas. Both paint images of flora and fauna, but in completely different styles. Kim and I have named this our nature wall.

Faith Scott Jessup

Faith’s paintings of lizards, flowers, insects and other animals, often juxtaposed with interesting objects are lush and full of curves. She has a great eye for detail, and a fine hand.

Brian Davis

Brian builds his canvases of birds, insects and other animals from his observations of fauna in his surrounding, urban landscape, near White Rock Lake in Dallas. His works are extraordinarily textured and feature broad washes of color.

We finally opened the doors, albeit quietly, on August 12. Many of our participating artists and significant others, came for an informal opening reception in the early evening. Kim and I thank them all. I’m greatly encouraged by all the warm and positive comments.

It’s been quite an effort, both physically and psychologically, over the last several weeks; so many details, so many loose-ends, so many steps to climb, and pieces of art to display, and price and label and enter into our computer systems!

Hence, it’s taken me a few days to recover and find what might pass as a routine. Of course, the relentless blogging continues unabated since it’s a key part of our marketing plan. For the most part, we’ve now finished the start-up phase – only a few more items to complete. Next, comes our marketing and promotional effort, and our “grand opening” events planned for mid-September.

We are opening on Tuesday, August 12 at 10am. Your friendly art251 owners may be on life-support due to exhaustion, but we’ll be open!

Our opening show is appropriately called “Sneak Peek Week”. It will run from August 12 until August 19. We’ll be giving our gallery visitors an opportunity to preview all the wonderful art on display. Customers can purchase or reserve a piece, and will be able to take delivery after the Sneak Peek Week show closes on August 19.

To celebrate our opening from 4-7pm we are hosting a low-key reception for our artists and anyone else who happens to stop in. There is no dress code for this event, although some clothing is required. Our official grand opening events, complete with more formal dress code, are scheduled for mid-September (more details soon).

So, this week please come take a sneak peek!

Kim and I have been wiring, re-wiring, pre-hanging, hanging, re-hanging, moving, positioning and re-positioning over 60 pieces of 2D art on our cable system over the last 72 hours. I’m writing this entry during my ladder climbing rest period. And, I’ve lost count of all the 3D works, such as ceramics, gourds, metal sculpture, handcrafted boxes, fused glass and jewelry, which Kim has carefully placed on and in our displays.

I think climbing a 12 foot ladder over and over should be an Olympic sport. Our track and cable system has turned out to be one of our better decisions – it would probably have taken 10 times longer to position the wall art and by now we’d have hundreds of holes in our still pristine walls (holes that would now need to be patched and painted). Ninety-five percent of the wall art is now in place, but we have yet to level it – that happens tonight. Then, I have works from 3 remaining artists to hang tomorrow.

Each piece of art looks really good on its own merits. That said, many of the works in here – I’m gazing at them now – look even better next to one another. Additionally, we’ve tried to lay out the works in a holistic way so they complement and/or contrast each other in a coherent and aesthetically pleasing manner – I think some my refer to this as basic curating. I now get goose bumps from looking at all the wonderful art in here!

Kim has also been adding all our artists and their art to our gallery management software system. This will help us keep track of all our inventory and smooth the sales process.

Our Art-o-mat machine, newly refurbished on the inside, refinished on the outside, and painted a deep shimmery blue will be taking up official residence in art251 in mid- to late-August. We are very honored to be the only Art-o-mat location in North Texas. Most of the other 90-plus machines can be found scattered around the U.S., in museums, boutique hotels and funky art spaces. Find ours (2nd row, 4th column).

Clark Whittington, National Bureau Chief of Artists-in-Cellophane, runs the Art-o-mat program from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Clark first came up with this crazy scheme in 1997, and has since recruited around 400 artists. As a sign that pop culture has caught up with the Art-o-mat program, I recently found that Clark has an entry in Wikipedia.

We do have art in common, although art251 doesn’t possess any works by Remington or Russell. No, I had something more specific in mind.

Both the prestigious Amon Carter and art251 are prominently featured on the KERA art&seek blog. Check out the “links” section. I suppose it does help that our name also begins with the letter “a”. I believe we’re the only commercial art space to be so listed. We’re very honored to be in such good company. So, a big thanks to our friends at KERA!

Now fans of KERA will be able get a first-hand look at the trials and tribulations, and triumphs, of starting up and operating an art space in the suburbs.

Yes, it’s finally going to happen. We’ll be opening our doors – very soon now. No fanfare. No ribbon cutting. No airplane smoke-writing in the sky. No paparazzi. No videos on Youtube. No publicity, except my words on this blog. And, despite pleas from our children, no giant inflatable gorilla or rainbow colored balloon festooned with a “grand opening banner”. We’ll be doing all the fun and fluffy stuff in mid- to late-September, after we’ve ironed out any operational issues and when the weather is rather more forgiving, which for me is below 85-90?F!

We’ve been working around the clock recently on a myriad of different items: exterior sign up, computer hardware installed, Vonage service up an running, wireless configured, printer connected, document filing installed, fixtures for point-of-sale hardware set-up, small refrigerator delivered, storage for small supplies put together, bathroom supplies cabinet constructed. My thanks to IKEA for providing many of these well-designed components and fixtures at very affordable prices.

Tomorrow, it’s time to install our track and cable system for hanging our 2D art. This will save our walls from incurring trauma whenever we have to display or move paintings and it should save us time. Then, the rest of our fixtures arrive, hopefully, by Friday.

And, while all this goes on around us, and consumes us, we are continuing to accept and pickup art from our artists – 10 or so this week. Our space is actually starting to look like an art gallery! We’re worn out, but this is so cool!

Our main display unit is complete. We’ll be using it to display some of the beautiful glass and ceramic pieces from our local artists.

Mark, our millworker / carpenter is an old-school craftsman. He is a stickler for detail and a perfectionist at heart. Despite working with challenging materials, such as wood that warps slightly from not having been cured long enough, he’s managed to construct some wonderful pieces for us. He’s done a remarkable job translating our designer’s designs, and your friendly owners’ frequent requests for changes into reality.

Our exterior sign finally appeared outside art251, on August 1. It looks great and complements the interior color scheme and our marketing materials perfectly!

As with many other areas in starting up an art space and retail business from scratch I’ve now become familiar with an entirely new vocabulary. This time my head is buzzing with the language of sign construction: channel letters, raceways, returns, acrylite, wireway, weeps.

The sign was built by NTX Signs of Keller — we’re happy to have awarded our contract to a local company. They did a great job (though they do have a few minor paint scrapes on the trim to touch up). Although our sign was built locally it’s the result of our global logo design contest, which was won by two designers based in Montreal, Canada and Ulm, Germany, plus a few tweaks from your friendly art251 owners.

The sign installers did a great job in the 100°F heat, despite challenges with short ladders, broken drill-bits, unleveled trim and the unforgiving temperature. I can’t wait to see the sign at night. Get ready Keller, art in coming to town!

I couldn’t continue our construction saga without reference to the so-called “gotchas”. These are the miscellaneous problems that appear just when we have completed something else. As I described earlier, Murphy’s Law continues to prevail throughout this adventure of ours. So, we’ve had quite a few of these gotchas over the last 4 months, including: no access to our fiber-optic cable, air conditioning return vent in the wrong wall, air conditioning not up to building code, electrical outlets not working as advertised, and even missing electrical outlets.

Today, however takes the prize, because we were hit by two new gotchas on the same day.

Gotcha #1. Yes! We installed all our great halogen lighting. But… it turned out that the original electrical circuitry for our space was not sufficient for our needs. We made the “mistake” of trying to run all our lights and the air-conditioning system at the same time, only to find that the circuit breakers would trip. So, just when we thought all our lighting issues had been completed we find ourselves needing our electrician to split circuits, put more holes in the wall, run more new conduit and install new electrical boxes. Basically, our landlord wired the space for what looks like residential use rather than for retail.

Gotcha #2. Yes! Our exterior sign was installed today. It looks great. But… the electrician refused to connect it, because the sign company didn’t wire the sign with a grounding cable. So, it’s now 5pm on a Friday, and most people have gone home for the weekend, and it’s unlikely our sign wiring problem will be resolved until early next week. The sign installers will most probably have to remove it to be able to re-install the correct wiring. Oh, and during installation the installers scraped some paint off the storefront trim below the sign. So, now we have to get them to match the color and repaint as well

So, the lessons learned from this story are: when you fix something expect something else to break; never take anything for granted; assume it will always take twice as long plus a week to get anything completed; keep plenty of contingency funds in reserve; cut through the finger pointing as soon as possible; get second and third opinions whenever possible; grow a thick skin; never give up; and search for your sense of humor and cool-off somehow with your favorite relaxation therapy! I need some right now.