Downtown galleries, art studios face rising rents and scattered sites

• Above & Below, art studio and gallery: 104-B West Evergreen Blvd. www.above-below-art.com, 360-561-4245

• Aevum Images, photography studio: 1006 Main Street. aevumimages.com, 360-735-1595

• Angst Gallery, adjoining Niche Wine Bar: 1015 Main Street. angstgallery.com, 360-553-1014

• Art on the Boulevard, nonprofit gallery: 210 W. Evergreen Boulevard, suite 300. artontheboulevard.org, 360-750-4499

• Aurora Gallery Fine Art and Custom Framing: 1004 Main Street. www.auroragalleryonline.com, 360-696-0449

• Dengerink Art Supply, inside Firehouse Glass: 518 Main Street. www.dengerinkart.com, 360-606-1740

• Gallery 360, nonprofit gallery in Slocum House: 605 Esther Street. www.gallery360.org, 360-693-7340

• Firehouse Glass Studio and Gallery: 518 Main Street. www.firehouseglass.com, 360-695-2660

• Melt Glass Art Supply: 502 Washington Street. www.meltglass.com, 360-771-5617

• North Bank Artists Gallery and artist studios: 1005 Main Street. www.northbankartistsgallery.com, 360-693-1840

Autumn arts preview

Here’s a sample of special upcoming events in downtown Vancouver’s art galleries and studios this fall; in addition, most galleries change individual exhibits monthly or bimonthly, so there’s always something new to see.

• First Friday Art Walks are held year-round, 5 to 9 p.m. on the first Friday of the month; Vancouver’s Downtown Association regularly updates its monthly event “hotsheet,” featuring descriptions and a handy map. Visit vdausa.org/first-friday-downtown

• Art at Vancouver City Hall, now through Oct. 31: Laura Hughes, architectural light, and Lynn Nadal, pen-and-ink drawings

• Take a break, make art. Starting at 9 a.m. Sept. 4 and running throughout the day, Art on the Boulevard at 210 E. Evergreen Blvd. will provide everything you need to paint, color, trace, stamp, draw, cut, paste and fold inside the Vancouver Marketplace courtyard. There’s room at the art table for everyone, so stop by anytime. Visit artbreakday.com

• Focus on Slocum. Artists gathered on Aug. 1 outside Slocum House for a festival of plein air, or open air, artistry focused on the historic property. Enjoy the results and vote for the People’s Choice during September at Gallery 360 — which is inside Slocum House, 605 Esther St.

• Southwest Washington Watercolor Society fall show, Sept. 28 to Oct. 25 at Gallery 360, 605 Esther Street

• “Heart & Stone,” a huge stainless steel heart atop a basalt boulder, will be installed as public art at the corner of Sixth and Columbia streets during First Friday on Oct. 2. The artwork, by Cobalt Designwork of Vancouver, was chosen during a competitive selection process aimed at honoring Vancouver’s “Founding Mothers.”

• Open Studios Tour, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Nov. 14-15. Free self-guided tour of artist studios, downtown and countywide. Visit ccopenstudios.org

• Toys for the holidays. Several local galleries will embrace a whimsical, nostalgic “Toying with art” theme in December

Vancouver’s Downtown Association art gallery page: vdausa.org/enjoy/art-galleries/

Vancouver Arts District: www.vancouverartsdistrict.org/

Arts of Clark County: www.artsofclarkcounty.org/

In July, Maureen Andrade emailed out a cry for financial help for the North Bank Artists Project.

The cooperative art gallery and studio space on Main Street, the base of a community that claims some of the credit for downtown Vancouver’s growing image as eclectic and artsy, wound up making its rent payment and negotiating a new 10-month lease. But Andrade, executive director of the nonprofit group — and leader of the successful effort to have downtown declared an arts district in 2014 — is certain that the gallery will have moved to a new home by this time next year.

Group president Kaite Thompson Chaise delivered that message to a couple dozen art lovers who gathered to admire a new installation in early August: “North Bank is looking for a new place to live by the end of May. We have to raise funds to find a bigger, better place after 12 years on Main Street.

“We need to keep it here in Vancouver because Vancouver needs art,” Chaise added. “Without art, the world would be a much sadder place.”

Most observers wouldn’t hesitate to call downtown Vancouver a happier place now than it was during the years when the Great Recession stalled redevelopment here. Long-stagnant commercial real estate values are on the rise again, and so are the rents that landlords can charge for everything from apartment units to downtown storefronts.

All of which may mean a threat to the relatively modest business of art — galleries and studios that cost money to maintain but don’t generate anything resembling the cash flow of downtown staples like bars and restaurants.

What’s happening downtown is a classic, if unfortunate, gentrification pattern, leading local painter, printmaker and photographer Michael Smith to note: When rents are affordable, artists gratefully take up vacancies and contribute color and character to the neighborhood. As the vibe lifts, so do property values. Eventually, the artists have to start looking elsewhere.

“That’s called being a victim of your own success,” Andrade said.

Some galleries are nonprofit co-ops that subsist mostly on member dues, sales commissions and, in the case of North Bank, rents charged for individual studio spaces; others are for-profit ventures whose real revenues come from services like framing pictures and selling supplies.

“Each gallery has its own way of supplementing its income. The community loves art galleries, but we can’t count on just art sales,” said Susan Williams of Gallery 360. “Maybe we could — in the best of all possible worlds.”

In the world of downtown Vancouver, artists and gallery owners look to the First Friday Art Walk to stoke sales and awareness. Galleries do significant business during those popular monthly outings, Andrade said — especially when the weather is good — and so do the establishments where all those art-admiring walkers go to rest and refresh.

“We bring hundreds, maybe thousands of people downtown,” Andrade said. “We fill the restaurants and bars on Main Street. What if this First Friday was the last First Friday?”

‘Vitality lagging’

According to a July 2014 report on the local arts economy, prepared by the government-appointed Clark County Arts Commission and the nonprofit Arts of Clark County, there are 78 nonprofit arts organizations and numerous for-profit arts businesses and entrepreneurs here. In 2012, the report found, Clark County’s “art industries” supported nearly 5,000 jobs and accounted for $54.5 million in sales and revenues.

That may seem like a lot for a county that’s more suburban bedroom community than independent cultural center. But by another reported measure — the Creative Vitality Index, a sophisticated way of assessing the economic value of art-related jobs and revenues — Clark County’s “creative vitality is lagging.” Lagging behind what? The national baseline score is 1.0; Clark County’s score in 2013 was 0.563. There’s no score for Portland in the same time frame, but in 2010, at the height of the Great Recession, Portland was still up at 1.58; more recently, the report notes, even Spokane County had a higher score than Clark — probably thanks to its university arts scene and mature arts infrastructure. By contrast, the report calls the arts infrastructure in Clark County “fragmented or nonexistent.”

Monthly pledges?

That’s not at all how Michael Smith, who has a downstairs studio at North Bank, sees it. Smith described the downtown arts scene as energetic and coherent but he fears that there’s a price to be paid for that, without some sort of creative solution to the problem of rising rents.

“It’s quite a vibrant scene, and my worry is that it becomes fractured,” he said. “We need to stay connected and close. When people go to see art, they’re not interested in visiting just one gallery. They want to make an evening of it. That’s why the First Fridays are so great.”

The solution could be as obvious as a public radio-type pledge drive, multimedia artist Reid Trevarthen and North Bank president Chaise both have suggested: a reliable group of art lovers who really need not ante up much — $10 or $20 per person, per month? — to keep the place afloat.

Downtown district

North Bank was founded as an affordable, cooperative studio space and gallery — and a base for professional development, educational opportunities and community outreach — by artists Rebecca Seymour and Greg Lueck It opened its doors in 2003 at the bottom of Main Street, at what’s now Firehouse Glass.

Andrade, a painter, was one of the original members. She took time off to raise her children and to work as a nurse — until a back injury stopped that physically demanding career, she said. By 2013, her kids were older and she was looking for another job, just when North Bank had grown to the point where operating as an all-volunteer collective wasn’t working anymore. Andrade became the nonprofit organization’s first executive director.

Two years into that tenure, she said, “It’s much different than I thought it would be.” While the job has plenty to do with art and artists, it has everything to do with “behind the scenes business,” Andrade said. “I am running a public charity and I need to run it well.” Her vision of running a public charity never included blatantly begging for dollars, she said.

Ironically, in 2014, the city council finally followed through — 17 years after the idea was first raised — on an ambitious proposal from ambitious artistic folks when it declared a chunk of downtown an official Arts District.

“We have seen the arts as an important building stone,” said Lee Rafferty, executive director of Vancouver’s Downtown Association. “We think art is crucial to creating a downtown that’s authentic and unique. Having an arts district is a wonderful way to celebrate that.”

But what exactly is the arts district? It’s a designation of a destination, that is, a marketing strategy with maps and signs and a website. It doesn’t provide any concrete financial benefit — or protection — to downtown arts businesses. The website hasn’t been updated since May.

Revenue, reinvention

Across the street from North Bank is its opposite: the Aurora Gallery, founded in 2004 by painter and entrepreneur Elizabeth Steinbaugh, who’s been running galleries and frame shops since the early 1980s. In the case of Aurora, she said, “the framing really is the business. Even though I like to pretend otherwise.

“It’s a different business model than North Bank,” she said. “They’re a co-op. I’m a for-profit corporation.”

Dedicated fine-art galleries “can be huge cash-flow businesses — but not in Vancouver,” Steinbaugh said. Look to big cities like San Francisco and Seattle to find works by internationally known artists on gallery walls — and art lovers spending discretionary dollars that were unaffected by the Great Recession. “People who had money, still had money during the recession,” she said. “They were still buying.”

Here in Vancouver, on the other hand, Steinbaugh proudly displays local talent at Aurora — “There is an unbelievable wealth of local artists here,” she said — and underwrites that with picture framing. “Framing keeps the doors open and keeps paying my employees’ wages,” she said.

While The Columbian was visiting Steinbaugh on a recent Monday morning, her new next-door neighbor stopped in with a framing job. Photographer Kate Singh has moved her Aevum Images studio several times, from solo space in The Academy building to shared space on lower Main Street, and now to a shared studio alongside Aurora.

Sharing space, projects, referrals and even barter arrangements are typical for arts businesses downtown, everybody interviewed for this story said. “We’re all in this together,” said Williams of Gallery 360. “We have succeeded as an arts community because of a cooperative spirit.”

Singh added that any working artist who wants to make money must also be a businessperson and, crucially, a smart marketer.

“You have to reinvent yourself on a regular basis,” she said. The recession eroded her livelihood of making big, sophisticated family portraits — people were losing and looking for jobs — so she embraced business portraits and professional head shots.

“It’s a matter of finding what your clients need,” Singh said. “It’s a luxury to have a beautiful painting or portrait on your wall. But there’s always a need for a head shot.”

And how much of a soul-crushing compromise is that, for a creative artist at heart? Answers are as varied as artistic personalities — with some gleeful about making any sort of living at all through their lens or brush, and others acknowledging the mixed bag.

Fledgling painter and pen-and-ink artist Deborah Roberts of Washougal was hawking her art — and musing about what sells and what doesn’t — on the sidewalk during this month’s First Friday. Her cuddly giraffes and rainbow-dappled birds sell well, she said, while her truly original — and frankly grotesque — versions of Alice, Tweedledee and other weirdos from Wonderland seem just to hang there. “Go figure, right?” Roberts laughed.

Painter Michael Lindstrom, who was also out on the sidewalk that Friday with oils and easel, working on a new piece, passionately described painting in nature and incorporating the raindrops and snowflakes that pelt his canvas. “I have a day job,” Lindstrom said. “Having this as a second full-time job makes it a very full life.”

“Every artist here, I have their stuff in my collection,” he added. “I think that’s very typical. We all love art, of course, and we want to support each other.”

Stars in alignment

Because patterns of foot traffic are crucial to the downtown arts scene, artists and gallery owners are painfully aware of each and every forced migration that affects their status quo. “It’s hard to get people to a gallery on a side street,” said Smith.

Just ask Williams, whose nonprofit Gallery 360 has been obliged in recent years to bounce all over downtown — with rent always the reason. What started out as the Sixth Street Gallery had to move up to Ninth Street; after four happy years there, Williams said, the landlord abruptly gave the gallery two months to move.

“All of a sudden it’s ‘Holy cow, we don’t have a home anymore,’ ” Williams said. “We were really worried.”

It all worked out, though, thanks to a unique “alignment of the stars,” Williams said: Gallery 360 wound up getting a great rental deal on real estate with a different, built-in draw: the city’s historic Slocum House. The historic house, in Esther Short Park’s southwest corner, has turned out to be affordable — if not exactly cheap — with the added bonus of many new visitors on Farmers Market weekends.

“It’s turned out to be an ideal location, with great support from the market and the city,” Williams said. “But if this was owned by a private landlord, I’m sure we could never afford it.”

Not a museum

When First Fridays started out, years ago, it was First Thursdays, with a grand total of something like two different destinations to shuttle between, Rafferty said.

This month, 21 different venues all over downtown took part; in addition to art galleries proper, numerous eateries and other local shops have been eager to show some art and enjoy some additional foot traffic. There’s no question of First Fridays’ success, she said, and VDA supports it wholeheartedly.

Rafferty wouldn’t comment about conflicts between specific landlords and tenants over rent — except to say that the downtown landscape “is not a museum. It’s always changing.” The downtown arts scene overall is “healthy and full of strong players,” she said.

Steinbaugh said she’s always surprised to field queries about the price of tickets to her Aurora Gallery. Across the street, Andrade said she sees people eyeball the North Bank gallery uncertainly as they move down the sidewalk — as if unsure whether they’re actually welcome, or if there’s some sort of catch.

“Guess what? We want you to come look,” said Steinbaugh. “This isn’t a museum. It’s free.”