Help Me Help Ottawa Arts: My Newest Role In Our Community!

I’m pleased to announce that I am now the Gallery Director at Exposure Gallery, located on the second level of Thyme and Again on Wellington St. West in Hintonburg.

Exposure Gallery exhibits and sells the work of emerging and established contemporary Canadian photo based artists. The gallery’s curator is Ottawa artist and designer Carrie Colton. She plans to focus on local and regional artists. Click here to check out the site.

I’m responsible for marketing, sales, and community outreach and development. I’m pretty damn excited about the prospect of helping local and regional artists sell their work.

But wait a minute, you might be asking, aren’t you a theatre guy?

Yes. Yes, I am. And I will continue to be a theatre guy.

For example, I’m appearing in two shows at this year’s Ottawa Fringe (G-Men and Deliver’d From Nowhere), my play Prisoner’s Dilemma is also being produced and directed by Wayne of the Many Faces, I’m editing a Fringe “gossip” newsletter with Jessica Ruano, and I’m off to the Winnipeg Fringe later in the summer. I note also that my play Home In Time will have a workshop performance, directed by Peter Hinton at the Ottawa Little Theatre on April 24th.

My long-range ambitions, however, involve more than theatre. I’m now creating a company that will eventually produce and market all the arts, including the visual arts. The sooner I start building relationships in the visual arts community the better.

Galleries are also great places for the different arts to come together. For the proof, you need only attend one of the very excellent Cube Salons.

Moreover, from a personal and artistic perspective, working for a gallery makes a lot of sense. I spend as much time in galleries as I do in theaters and I’ve always been deeply influenced by the work of visual artists.

From a hard-nosed business perspective, working for a gallery also makes a lot of sense because theatre audiences and visual arts audiences overlap. It’s also a great excuse to network with mover and shakers in Hintonburg.

Most importantly, my new position gives me a chance to pay some of my bills by helping other artists pay some of their bills.

Check out the virtuous cycle I’ve created: if you buy art from me or help me sell art, you support the artist whose work is sold and you provide me with the means to continue my work in theatre and beyond. Not bad, huh!

And it’s those kind of virtuous cycles — artists working for and with other artists — that’s going to help the Ottawa arts scene boil over.

Who wants to help me turn up the heat!

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Tagged: Cube Salon, Exposure Gallery, fine arts, Hintonburg, Movement, Ottawa, Ottawa arts, photography, Sterling Lynch, Thyme and Again

Posted in: Business of Arts