Sustaining an Art Gallery

After a long year of Covid -19, I've had some time to reflect on my time as an art gallery owner. It's work, I felt as though I was jumping through many different sized hoops to keep 

the business and entertainment running in tandem. Staying active in the community. Also, keeping up with Artist relationships and their contracts. Making sure they were producing their best work. Attended merchant meetings at the Little Italy Redevelopment Corp. Planning events. The role I took on was designing the neighborhood posters for 

the art walks. Other collateral was produced off those designs. 

I enjoyed all of this. I felt like I was using all of the skills that I had acquired over a couple decades of being a professional designer. In my early twenties, when I graduated from college, I worked for several design firms starting in Cleveland and moving on to Chicago. Here I learned not only how to design graphics and illustrate commercially, but also edit content and work with other professionals. 

Managing an art gallery is a lot of different jobs under one roof. You have to be a creative person that is also a business person. A promoter and a manager. 

My husband Aaron. He has helped me with so much. I remember when I lost my  design job in Chicago. I was in my twenties, it was because the firm was relocating. I was ashamed and didn't want to tell anybody I had lost my job. Especially, a guy I was trying to impress! This is when I started to see his deep compassion for humans. He's a loving, kind sweet person who is an extremely brilliant and accomplished engineer. He believed in me. I picked myself up and started freelancing. Carol Freeman of Freeman Design in Evanston brought me on board, and I will forever be grateful. I learned a lot from her. She put my menu design skills to use. We started re-designing a lot of the trendy menus for restaurants in Evanston. One of them was LULU's Dim Sum. Aaron took me there on a date, I was all excited to show off the menu I designed, but instead I spilled tea all over the table, what a mess. We are going to be married twenty years in September.