May 2023
** A Tearful Goodbye**
After 17 years of being on the main street we have moved back to our original gallery.
It has been on the Gage agenda for years, so it was no surprise to us. JP held off as long as he could.
At first I was a little upset about it, but in retrospect, it has given Marci and I the opportunity to freshen up and make our original gallery on the south side of the tracks viable again. I have been using the front half for a shooting space, and the back half for coating my prints.
I still need to use the back for print coating till I can make a new spot to do it. So our showroom is a bit smaller.
Marci too has had to create a new office space. She operated the Marathon Foundation, M2M, and her personal work from that space. She remodeled a structure on French Company property, so she will be there.
We removed the chicken head house, painted the building inside and out, put in new glass and had my name painted on the front. We still need to do some landscaping, and Marci has designed a sculpture to put on the west side.
Evans Gallery is the oldest established art gallery in the area. I opened it as Lovegene’s in 1990, and then changed it to Evans Gallery in 1996.
I have never run the storefront in a conventional manner. I’ve tried having employees over the years, but most of the time it didn’t work out.
I always had a sign on the door to text or call me and I would come right over.
I liked doing it this way because it filtered out browsers or people that want to know more about real estate or what it is like living in Marathon, than was interested in my work, the pottery or desert critter wear.
So, that being said, now my friends and customers will come to my work space and gallery.
I am going to try real hard to be neater. (My biggest challenge.)
I will not have as much on the walls, but I have hundreds of photographs in stock, and can spend quality time finding just the right image.
Still, I will have a door bell that rings me in my shop.
It is all exciting. I think we both needed it.
When we rented the building on main street, Marci literally turned it in to this beautiful gallery overnight. She painted the back wall this undefinable maroonish color, got furniture and a Nelson light, then later added a baby grand piano. The space was very classy, and raised the bar for people to view my photographs. I was very proud of the gallery.
After we scraped our names off the doors and windows Marci and I tearfully laid on the floor of the gallery and reminisced all the good times we had there. M2M registrations, several piano concerts, our wedding reception party.
We said goodbye to that sweet space and walked across the street to our new sweet space.
Come see us.