Art Roundtable: Fair Play
By OCinSite At-Large | March 07, 2012 9:34 AM
Peter Blake | Photo by Sean Armenta
Two gallery owners share how art fairs can benefit the local art scene.
Peter Blake, Owner of Peter Blake Gallery:
You can’t keep running an art gallery in 2012 without art fairs. Where before it might have been a weapon in your arsenal of marketing, it’s now become your nuclear bomb. [At Art LA], this town had three of the best galleries of their kind. For the first time, we’re in a position where we’re now exporting from the county. Now, we can stand up and say, we’re Orange County, we’re doing fairs, and we’re going to be on a national level. One of my goals in the future is to bring an art fair to Laguna—as an addition to what we have, an addition to the people who come in and enjoy artwork at Festival of Arts, at the Sawdust Festival, at Wyland and many other galleries here in this town. For all the years that I’ve been in business, there’s been a ceiling—it’s called Orange County. And we’re going to break that ceiling by doing art fairs and bringing a fair to Laguna.
Sue Greenwood, Owner of Sue Greenwood Fine Art:
Nothing else can compare to the experience of participating in an art fair. You meet art collectors and other art dealers on a global scale. Art fairs have an attendance of 10,000 to 30,000 art aficionados that come through per day, which accelerates the visibility of the gallery and its artists on a very grand scale. The stronger the gallery program and the artists you represent, the farther you can travel with the art fairs. They are vital part of the art world’s global economy. Doing the art fairs is what got us through the tough economy, as it brings new collectors to Laguna Beach who would have never even heard of the thriving art scene we have here. Our goal is to see how far we can take the gallery both nationally and internationally—to go as far as Art London.
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