blue rain gallery "expansion beyond indian art"
04.26.2006
Question: Why has Blue Rain Gallery expanded beyond Indian Art?
A question I often get asked is "I thought Blue Rain Gallery was a gallery featuring only Native American art; why did the gallery start carrying non-Native American Art?" This is an honest-to-good observational question that I love to engage in. There are many answers to this question.
First of all, Blue Rain Gallery was indeed founded as a contemporary Native American art gallery with the intention of offering the finest in contemporary Native American art available on the market today. We honor and affirm our roots by striving to maintain the gallery’s early concept of who we are and what kind of gallery we want to be.
I always look forward to visiting a collector’s home whether on invitation or making a delivery or installation of a fine art piece. During these visits I often notice a diverse selection of fine art in these magnificent homes all around our country. I began to observe wonderful connections between these different art objects. We also ask a lot of questions in the gallery and we developed the knowledge that many of our Native American art collectors also collect from other genres as well.
A goal of the gallery is to provide new and exciting work to our collectors on a consistent basis. During the year 2000 we decided to pursue artists from different backgrounds. We knew that we wanted to focus on local artists from the Southwest; not necessarily with a southwestern style, but more on a fine art level.
Our first major, non-Native American artist was Randall LaGro. Not only was Randall non-Native American, but his artwork was not typical of art from the southwest. Why did we take on Randall’s different work? Simple... we loved it and felt many of our collectors would too. His paintings and techniques are superb and unique.
Shortly thereafter we proudly represented Jim Vogel and his wonderful paintings of people and life in Northern New Mexico. From these intial distinctions, we quickly acquired more non-Native American artists: Star Liana York and her beautiful sculptures in a variety of realist forms depicting animals and people; John Berger and his one-of-a-kind beautiful segmented hand turned wood vessels with detailed organic carvings; Kevin Short and his bold impressionistic landscapes and modern Americana subject matter; Rio Grande weaver, Donna Lopez and her modern wool weavings containing color saturations of graphic geometric designs. A year and a half ago we started working with one of Northern New Mexico’s most well known and respected devotional artists named Gustavo Victor Goler and his magnificent wood carved santos, bultos, and retablos. This year BRG will introduce two new painters; Sean Diediker and Scott Matlin.
I have seen works by Tammy Garcia, Tony Abeyta, Jim Vogel, Victor Goler and Preston Singletary all displayed elegantly in one home. A simple cliché states "Art is art", but art is difficult to define. We all like different things; we all see different things in art. The bottom line is, we all relate to a piece of fine art differently and Blue Rain Gallery offers a diverse and unique selection of fine art to collectors from all over the country. Whether created by a Native American artist or non-Native American artist, these art pieces can and do live harmoniously together anywhere.
Peter Stoessel
Director, Blue Rain Gallery
