The Gallery Date: Episode 7 - Now Representing the Ghost of Beatrix Potter 👀
Welcome to The Gallery Date, a weekly date with Jenn Singer to chat about art and life and perhaps the art of life, all in bite sized, not-at-all fancy, but definitely savory episode nuggets!
On this week's Gallery Date, from the room where Beatrix Potter wrote The Tailor of Gloucester, Jenn answers viewer questions and sets the mood for October with...
A ghost story! Hello? Beatrix?
Cringy art critiques
Crazy Art World News
Be sure to catch the video podcast to see a little bit of hilarious October-inspired magic on TheGalleryDate.com.
Links to everything mentioned:
Book: The Tailor of Gloucester
Crazy Art World News:
Six-Figure Artworks, by a Fifth Grader
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You can email your questions for Jenn to gallerydate@jennsingergallery.com.
Instagram/Facebook: @jennsingergallery
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Twitter: @jennsingernyc
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to The Gallery Date. I'm Jenn Singer, founder of Jenn Singer Gallery. Thanks for joining me for our weekly date to chat about art and life and perhaps the art of life all in bite-sized not at all fancy, but definitely savory episode nuggets. Let's mingle my friends!
Don't forget to press record Jenn.
Hey there! Thanks so much for joining me today for our Gallery Date. We're diving straight in today. We have some great listener and viewer questions to share and it wouldn't be the art world without a little crazy art world news. AND I get to tell a ghost story, so let's get started.
Okay. So our first viewer question comes from John. Thank you so much for sending this question in John, it's a great one. He asks, what makes you cringe when you hear people talk about art. Okay, I have spent a lot of time working in gallery spaces, very quiet gallery spaces, hearing people walk around discussing the artworks on view and the favorite cringiest and most common "assessment" of the
artwork, or critique, that I've heard more than a few times is "oh I can do that" or "my kid could totally do that". I've even had gallery visitors come right up to me and say, as a total boast, that they could paint, draw or something like that. I've even had unnamed family members declare this to me in my own gallery. Nice. Anyway, whenever this comes up and this I could do that declaration comes my way. This is always my thought:
Okay, first off have you even tried have you actually tried to source, purchase and set up the materials in like a home office studio space? Have you worked for hours, for years, for decades to mix materials to get the right colors, to figure out what the technique is, to get those perfect textures or finishes and I mean, have you even ever tried to create something? No, no, you have not. That's the answer.
And even if the artwork looks as basic as a banana taped to the wall for sale for over like a hundred thousand dollars or whatever, you looked at it and you probably said "I could do that". But did you?
I mean sure anyone can tape a banana to the wall. But did you think of it? Like you never thought of doing it. Because you're not the artist who created it with a specific intention or inspiration or commentary in mind. You can't recreate the artwork in full because it's come from somewhere deeper in the artist that created it that you've probably never tried to tap into or couldn't tap into so you actually have it created anything...you've copied something.
So that's the difference and that's why that question always gets me. So that's my take on that. Okay next!
Okay, next up is rapid fire question time. Pichoo-pichoo!
This is a great selection of questions I can, or should be able to, answer quickly that have come in from viewers and listeners and I want to thank everyone who sent these in please keep them coming and please if you do have a question for me DM your questions to me @jennsingergallery on Instagram or Facebook.
Okay. Now for some rapid fire. Question number one, Alice asks: What do you most regret?
Oh, no, I don't do regrets. I honestly try my best not to look back into the past with regret and this is in business or in life. I really believe everything is a learning experience. And if something doesn't go quite right or as planned or if it just completely goes tits up as they say, well that's just part of it. We build and we develop and we grow; we trip, we stumble, we fall. It's all gonna happen. It's all gonna happen at some point. And I think my dance training comes in here. As a dancer I learned that you're gonna fall once in a while. It's going to happen, but it's all about the recovery. It's how you fall and the grace in how you get back up, dust yourself off and return to the dance. You only look back to figure out what caused the fall. How can you make corrections? How can you do something different or better so that it doesn't happen again? So I personally think that life is too short to dwell on regrets of the past. I mean, I'd rather be dancing. So there you go.
Okay number two of rapid fire. Mike asks: Who is your favorite sibling?
Okay. Now, how did we sneak this one in, Mike? How did we sneak this one in, again? I'm still not going there, but I'm also pretty sure that you know exactly who it is. Love you.
So someone sent in this random nugget of a question, which I kind of love, it's so random, but I love it and it's also perfect timing because it's October and I love Halloween even though I don't like scary things. But also, it's October and I had a weird like kind of encounter this weekend or like felt like it was weird encounter this weekend. So the question was: Do you believe in ghosts?
So I try not to believe in ghosts because it really freaks me out if I think about it too much. And I like can't watch scary movies. I can't watch Haunted House shows and even like Stranger Things was a little too scary for me, but I got through it's fine. I'm fine. But anyway, so this weekend my son wasn't feeling so great. He had lots of congestion, couldn't sleep poor thing and I was up all night one night with him, and at some point I needed like a change of scenery. Like I needed to leave his bedroom, soothing and whatever, and I was just like let's just go downstairs and go into the sitting room, you know, it's warm there from the wood burner that's still you know, warm from the fire. We're gonna sit down stairs and you know, try to get you to go to sleep. And so we're, I'm holding him taking him downstairs and he's turned around toward the direction we're heading looking out towards the corridor. And he looks out and he kind of pauses and he goes "Mummy, who's dat"? And I suddenly remembered - I got goosebumps all over - and I suddenly remembered a story that my husband had told me that morning about the terrible night of sleep he'd had the night before...which was:
he got up, couldn't sleep, wasn't feeling well, went to the kitchen, made himself up hot cocoa and some toast, and he's sitting there enjoying his cocoa and toast and he sees persongo by and he's like, oh, "Jenn?", but it's not me. I'm in bed asleep and he looks around. It's no one, but he definitely saw someone just go past. And so as he as that person went past the baby started crying on the monitor like he could hear the baby on the monitor. So he's like, alright, I'm gonna check downstairs really quickly and make sure the doors are locked, make sure it's not intruder and then go upstairs check the baby.
Fast forward to the next day. I'm carrying the baby down the stairs. He's not feeling well. He says
"Mummy, who's dat?" in the darkness. And I'm like, okay, let's go to the sitting room really quick now and I sit down with him and we're trying to relax, trying to make him cozy and he's sitting up so he doesn't have to lay down and you know cough and and he keeps on going, "Mummy, what's that? Mummy? Who's that? I'm like, okay. This is too creepy. I can't take it. So I'm like, you know kid, you never sleep in our bed. Tonight's your big night. You get to sleep in our bed. So I took him upstairs and I laid him on my chest and he started relaxing and falling asleep. So he finally falls asleep. I take him to his bed and he's out. So I come back to the bedroom and I'm like sort of freaked out but like I closed my eyes. I'm gonna go to sleep. I start falling asleep and he starts crying again. So I have to get up again. Go get the baby. Bring him back to my bed. He's like "Mummy. Who's that?" And I'm like oh gawd, please stop. And so then I'm like just you know, no talking, just you know, try to close your eyes go to sleep. And he does. He falls asleep. I put him back in his bed. But as I'm putting him back in his bed, he wakes up and he goes, "Mummy who dat in the kitchen?" and
I'm like, oh god. Okay, so I was like sweetheart, there's no one in the kitchen. Daddy, you just saw him in bed. I'm right here. There's no one in the kitchen and he's like "Mummy someone in the kitchen" and I'm like, okay, I can't take this. I'm like, okay go to sleep. Finally get him to sleep and I have to go back to try to go back to sleep with all that.
So all I could think of when I was trying to go back to sleep was that it was be a Beatrix Potter. It must be Beatrix Potter visiting her old family home, because this house used to be a house that she would visit so when Beatrix Potter was young, she would come here and visit her cousins who lived here. And this is where, in fact, my office, this very room is where Beatrix Potter would stay. So she actually wrote The Tailor of Gloucester here. Her book, The Tailor of Gloucester, was written In this very room and she got inspiration from this property for her Peter Rabbit books. So I was like I just hope it's Beatrix. It just seems like it would be more friendly ghost. So, you know, maybe Beatrix Potter is coming and seeing the old house and giving us some artistic inspiration. That's
what I have to think in my brain... my crazy brain.
Wait a second. Did you hear that?
You hear that?
Beatrix?
I mean if you're here and you're gonna hang around, can you like give me some, like, inspiration...
artistic inspiration? Can I represent you? Do you need a new agent? Is this where we start negotiating? All right, so if you send me some art...maybe some drawings... cute little bunnies, I don't know...maybe you want to go in a different direction. I mean if you're gonna haunt me, at least make me some money. It's only fair. She's into it. October is freaking me out.
Now it's time for some Crazy Art World News.
Okay, so we're gonna circle back to that story from the beginning of the show about how somebody's kid could do that. "Oh, my kid could totally do that." Well, I bring you a story that's been circulating in all the big news outlets like the New York Times and Forbes and Artnet as well, of a
10 year old boy who can definitely do that. So basically, this 10 year old named Andres Valencia with help and encouragement of his parent's friend, Bernie Chase, who owns a gallery in New York - and also with the help of major New York City publicists - he is now selling his paintings for six figures. So he just had his first solo exhibition in New York City at Chase Contemporary where you
know his parent's friend's gallery where all 35 works sold for between 50,000 and 125,000 dollars each. And so I guess the backstory is that before all of this, Andres started doodling from like age four and he started selling watercolors to family friends for about $20 each. And so this is where Chase, the gallery owner, comes into the story. Whenever he would visit the family at their home in California, he would offer the boy a hundred dollars for his artwork. And then one trip he went out there and visited and he offered him a thousand dollars. So this little boy then raised his price on
Chase and said it was $5,000 the next time he wanted to buy a piece and the art dealer, Chase, he agreed to pay that $5,000. And I guess he realized he needed this now pretty substantial investment
in a 10 year old boy to pay off, so Chase calls his friend up who happened to be the director of Art Miami Art Fair and he got him to agree to debut this young painter in a debut show, and that kicked off this kiddo's professional art career with celebrities collecting his work, he's in the news, he's been on TV. Like it's all blown up. Um, he got I think 300 something thousand and an auction for one of his works. So it's going crazy. And you know, with completely, probably unintended irony, after getting all of these grown-ups to invest and collect his work for six figures. The kids says to the New York Times and I quote "if you see a kid doing sketches on paper with a marker, a lot
of people think that those drawings should not be put in a gallery. Sometimes older people just don't get it" he says. They sure don't kid, in so many ways, they don't.
Anyway in a pretty cool move by Andres' mother, he is required to donate a portion of his sales to learn how to give back. So more than $300,000 has been donated to the AIDS charity at amfar and to the children's charity Box of Hope. Amazing and good for you kid. I wonder if his number one supporter and art dealer Bernie Chase is matching those donations? Hmm. Discuss...
Okay. That's a wrap! Thank you so much for tuning in to The Gallery Date. Join me for our date every Wednesday for a bite-sized episode on thegallerydate.com.
Please subscribe, follow, rate and review The Gallery Date on YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you soon.
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