We finally did it! art251 opened its doors on Tuesday, August 12 for a Sneak Peak preview only, no sales. Then on August 19, we officially opened for business. So, what now? Well, it’s time to tell our target customers about our space and all the exceptional art inside.

art251 website re-design

Now that we have artists signed, art on the walls and most of our systems in place we’ll be concentrating on rebuilding the art251 website. I have much of this in place already, but will need more content from each artist to make the website look as exceptional as the art within our walls. We’ll have a section for each artist with biographical material, narratives about artwork and images of all the art in the space. We’re aiming to launch the new website before September 6, Ft.Worth Gallery Night.

art251 events — September 6, Ft.Worth Gallery Night

We’re participating in the semi-annual Ft.Worth Art Dealers Association (FWADA) Gallery Night on September 6. So, we’ll be keeping the doors open until 9pm and serving some tasty refreshments. You are all welcome. Since we’re not an official member of FWADA, yet, we’ve taken out a couple of Gallery Night ads in Ft.Worth Weekly to promote art251 independently. The ads will run in the August 27th and September 3rd issues. The nearby Young Artists of Texas (YAT) space in Keller will also be open for Gallery Night, so we plan to take advantage of their traffic and do some cross-promotion.

art251 events — September 13-27, Grand Opening Events

We’re planning some fun events during September 13-27 to mark our official opening. As promised, we’ll have no inflatable gorillas dangling from our rooftop. We do plan to have several public events including time with artists Sara Moe and Carolyn D. I’ll write more details soon. To announce our grand opening we’ve bought 3 months of ad space in Society Life magazine. The magazine is distributed to around 36,000 households in Keller, Southlake, Westlake, Colleyville and surroundings. This is our target customer base, so we’re expecting our visitor numbers to start increasing as the ads run in September, October and November.

Art-o-mat is a big hit

We’ve sold a dozen or so “artpaks” from our beautiful blue Art-o-mat machine, including 5 items just today to two fans of Art-o-mat from Amarillo. As we had hoped, the machine is proving to be a big hit, especially online. We’re getting some great — and free — exposure on KERA’s art&seek blog, the Glasstire blog and several other nationally influential arts websites. All this will help us attract art lovers and customers.

Art sales and other feedback

Aside from the Art-o-mat items, we’ve sold works by James Johnson (metal), Kim Norris (pottery) and Marnie Vollenhals (oil canvas). While this may seem slow, we are actually ahead of our plan for the month of August, and all done in the space of one week and with no advertising. We are encouraged by the amount of walk-in traffic, which while not generating immediate sales gives us a great opportunity to promote our space, discuss the art and spread the word. Generally, comments from visitors to art251 are very positive, and many are quite surprised to see so much exceptional art in the suburbs!

Welcome new art251 artists

We now have 26 signed artists. Over the last 2 weeks we added Dana Blanchard, Diana Chase, James Johnson, Drew Liedtke, Lori Love and Sara Moe. We are delighted to have each of them on board.

art251 space update

Our last 3 remaining fixtures are now installed. This includes: two movable walls that give us an additional 150-300 sq.ft of display space; cool cylindrical and shadow box shelving, which doubles as pedestals, for more of our 3D works; and a low bench that hides the mess of cables and electrical boxes on our rear wall. I still have the track and cable system to install on these new movable walls — should be done by August 31. Then, we’ll be able to make way for more art, and move existing pieces around. We’ve also placed some displays in and near the windows to attract foot traffic (this is working).