Owner/curator Taylor Lyon of Graphite Gallery, with work from Joshua Chambers (top) and Ramona Nordal
GRAPHITE GALLERY: AN ORAL HISTORY
Interview by Paul Oswell
First of all, congratulations on 15 years, Taylor! Let's go back 16 years. How did Graphite Gallery happen?
Well, I’d been working in other galleries in New Orleans, and then 2008 came in hard and fast. So, those galleries closed and I was looking for what my next thing was gonna be. I always joke that I'd been dating a young lady for a while, and I grew the world's crappiest beard, just sitting on my couch watching Sally Jesse Raphael and she said, “You can't sit here and die.” So then a good friend of mine said, why don't we open a gallery together? So I put in my last, like, $6,000. We opened this place up in 2009. We were just starting to crawl out of the economic crisis, and it took us a couple of months to get open. We had to really renovate this space.
And you’ve never moved?
Always been here. I've thought about moving to bigger digs or what would be this ambitious next move, but I've branded this space, and I know this space. I also have the greatest landlord in the world. He's a very kind man, and he's excited about the culture we've built here. And, I don't know, I like that people have stumbled this far down in the Quarter. They discover something a little deeper.
How do you start as a gallery owner? Tell us about those early days.
I think first of all, I was having to shake off and unlearn things I'd learned previously. So that first year or so, I had this place very minimally hung. It was very serious, and I would regularly have people lean in the door and go, can I come in here? Is this a museum? And it was so outside of what the Quarter wanted or was used to or whatever. So, I couldn't really figure out why people weren't coming in. As my taste started to evolve, I realized how cold the space felt. There was not really a lot of joy in here. It was cool. I mean, it looked nice, but it was a very dry space. Now, I would say that I can be a little dry in my humor, but in general, I'm a pretty open person. So I started reaching out to artists that I knew, and you know, you get one artist, then they know other artists and you build from there.
Who were the early artists?
One of my artists I've been with since almost the beginning is a person named Joshua Chambers. He's from northern Louisiana. I was working with a photographer from the same region, who had a very small gallery. I'd been carrying her work. We'd sold a few pieces, and having a great working relationship, she sent me a mass email with a picture of her gallery. Now, when you think about how long ago this was, it was kind of novel to get a picture on your phone and be able to expand it. I mean, probably not a high quality image, but an image more or less. And I'm like, what is that? And so I stretch it out and I get this little fuzzy image of a Josh Chambers’ work. I immediately called her to ask about him, and Josh was fresh out of college. He was really just starting, and I kind of gave him his first major solo show. I think within that first three months I sold every painting he had sent me. As a matter of fact, within six months he was like, I can't do it anymore. I'm just…out of ideas. He’d sold 'em all, which was kind of fun. So when you have somebody like that, we are deeply invested in each other's career. And Josh has continued to build his career. He's doing cool stuff, and he's still here. Right now we're working on a six or seven foot-long commission for a client in Houston.
So your artists’ roster just kind of expanded from there?
So first it's friends and friends of friends. But, I did learn quickly that carrying friends art is a very fraught thing. When you're working with an artist, it's very personal. It's very intense. I may talk to some of these people every day. When you start to have that kind of bleed through and you don't know where business starts and friendship ends...it gets a little weird. So I think I very quickly started to move away from that. I carried a few local artists early on, but I think the role of a gallerist is to not only be open and receptive internally, but to be externally open and receptive.
So artists can come from anywhere? I mean, you’re constantly open to ideas?
Absolutely. Anytime I'm traveling, I make sure to make time. I was in Mexico and I spent a whole day going out, trying to investigate the art scene, trying to meet artists, trying to make connections, trying to see what was going on. Every time I'm out anywhere in the world, I'm constantly looking to see what's out there. And again, I think it's not just about finding things that I think already fit in here. It's about finding new things that take the gallery in a new direction. I moved very much into figurative work in the last decade, but before that, we had a lot of abstraction in here.
This is a layman's observation, but I feel like your basic tourist is looking for street scenes of New Orleans with a sense of place, maybe some people are a bit snobby about it, but that's not what you were or are doing at all. So do you feel, were you out of place when you first got here?
100%. There was nothing happening at this end in the Quarter. There had been a great gallery next door called Ammo. She was doing some really interesting stuff. It was really kind of pushing what could happen in a gallery in the Quarter. But she closed shortly after I moved in, and then David Harouni, who's a French Quarter legend, moved in across the street from me. This was a big deal. Within a year, Antieau Gallery and Red Truck Gallery opened up. But yes, when I first came in, I made a very, very loud point of no crooked houses, no jazz players, no martini glasses. And you know what, the only reason I'm here is because those people started it.
You don’t feel hidebound to represent New Orleanian artists?
I want to offer people something new, and I think that while most of my artists are not locals, I am offering people that same New Orleanian sense of play, that sense of intrigue. I don't know if you remember those first few months you were in New Orleans, with that sense of intrigue and excitement and discovery. I try to bring that into here. I'm a maximalist in the sense that I like a lot of art on the walls, but I want to be really distilled. I think that can be a reflection of what the city gives you. You know, you hear a jazz song being played somewhere in the city and that's been being played for a hundred years. It's distilled down. It already has this magic built into it. And I want to try to give that to people.
How has the city’s art scene evolved since you opened, would you say?
I think with Julia Street being the ‘Arts District’ of New Orleans, their program has remained pretty static. Galleries don't come and go that much. They're very much working on the model of working with their collectors' list. They're not really worried about how many people walk through their door except at events. They have a party, people come, they buy, they go home. In the Quarter we see a little bit more. I see 150 people a day and I'm here for that as much as I am for my collectors' list. The St Claude corridor really, really gained prominence, and I love that. I think initially I thought it was almost like an incubator space for the city’s broader art scene. It's now so much more than that, and I think it's exciting to see.
What have been some of the highlights of the 15 years? Any big moments?
Well, my daughter's now 19, so she was in this gallery from when she was barely beyond being a toddler. She spends part of her time with her mother in my hometown, but you know, about three years ago she was in here and she was talking on a cell phone with a friend of hers back home and was like, “Oh, I'm at my dad's work.” And then there's a pause and she says, “I mean, yeah, it's an art gallery in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I guess that's kind of cool. It's weird crazy art.” And I'm watching her in real time realize that her dad might be kind of cool [laughs]. And then she gets off the phone and it gets very quiet and she mumbles, “ Do you think I can come here for Mardi Gras?” I say, “Absolutely.” [laughs]. So that…that was a big victory for me. I'm fortunate or stubborn enough that I haven't needed that much external validation. As far as other victories go, I would say remaining a constant with artists like Josh Chambers has been something immensely gratifying and special. I think the personal relationships that are built around this, and I've always had to be very careful that this didn't just become a temple to my good taste. I need other people to come in and engage with it, so that I can see it through their eyes.
And some challenges, I’m sure?
Well, I tend to get water kicked into my door during a rainstorm. That's why I keep sandbags by the front door. In the early days, it would be this kind of traumatic event, and I tried all these different solutions and you know, it came down to being just something as easy as keeping six sandbags by the door. If I look outside and it's looking serious, I can now sandbag that door in under 30 seconds. Difficulties mean less over time.
So, fifteen years this year. Any big celebrations?
I've always kind of scheduled around Dirty Linen night. My opening night was a Dirty Linen night. My anniversary is whenever Dirty Linen is, I guess the date floats like Mardi Gras. As far as big things, there's not a lot. That night is so crazy and so much fun in and of itself. I'm bringing in some new work from some very established artists I've worked with for a long time. But then I've also brought in a couple of brand new people that I'm really excited to unveil. And you know, it's kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, there is something really exciting about saying, yeah, we got new Ramona (artist Ramona Nordal) work. She puts butts in seats, but it's exciting to be able to put something like that in the context of a giant party where 200 people are stomping through here over the course of night. Maybe at 20 years I'll strip off all my clothes and dance on the sidewalk [laughs]. Don't hold me to that.
Can you give some advice to the Taylor opening the door on that first Dirty Linen night fifteen years ago? What would you tell him if you could?
Take it a little more seriously! Seeming casual while stressing out on the inside doesn't do anyone any favors. I would say follow your muse sooner. And to anybody who's thinking about opening a gallery, I think the thing you want to do almost immediately is make sure you have a network of not just artists, but friends who can sympathize, friends who can come sit at your desk for you and when you're desperate, because however good it gets, you will want time off.
Visit Graphite Gallery at 936 Royal Street - they'll be open for Dirty Linen Night this weekend (Saturday 10th).