Reflections on What Once Was...

I always get in a bit of a reflective mood this time of the year.

Perhaps it is a little more pronounced this year, because the end of June this year marked the 5th anniversary of when we had to close the brick and mortar Red Dragonfly Gallery.

Empty gallery space on out last day

I suppose it's only natural to feel a degree of sadness connected with the end of something, particularly when that end only served to underscore the fact that you had what you believed to be a great idea, but there was not enough public support for it to come to fruition.

Of course it's easy to make excuses, and blame external factors on one's own shortcomings.

Where is I retain a bit of sadness when I look back on that particular phase of our lives, I also feel a certain degree of gratitude for the fact that we closed and got out of business very shortly before the whole COVID pandemic debacle struck, and lockdowns would have caused the end of the gallery anyway.

Many local art spaces closed during the next two years... and three years later, very few have reopened. Seems like most of them are real estate offices, now...

There are those who feel little such guilt and regret when their businesses end, but perhaps art galleries are a special case in the sense that offering somebody's work for sale to the public is giving them a shot at exposure to the world, and a small chance to fulfill a dream of being an artist.

Artists are fairly universal in sharing the dream of "being an artist" in the sense that we want to create and wouldn't it be amazing and awesome if we could actually end up making some sort of living from our art!

Of course, the vast majority can't.

But that doesn't mean that we don't dream. So perhaps that vague feeling of ennui and regret circles back to the idea that the closure of an art space represents a small "crack" in that dream.

Even so, I am mostly content to not be in the gallery business anymore.

The entire industry has changed so much; everything is far more digital these days, and physical art doesn't have as much "presence" in our lives as it once did.

Times change, and I try to move on.

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