I went to the SOFA exhibition today at the Armory in NYC. It was extremely interesting and introduced me to more amazing jewelry artists. It didn’t have as many jewelry galleries as I expected, but the ones that were there had great work.
After having a great time getting inspired with such amazing work, I started to talk to a gallery owner. I “dared” to mentioned what I do with my blog, and she told me websites like mine are what are putting the galleries out of business. It took me so aback that the only thing that I could say was that I give exposures to galleries as well as artist and then for some reason, I apologized.
Well, I’m going to have to retract my apology with this post. This blog is not doing anything wrong. The artists are allowed to have their own pages and get their work out there. Galleries need to keep up with the 21st Century and create new business plans. Just because I present the work of amazing artists on my website, doesn’t mean that I’m taking the business of a gallery. I don’t make any money from this website, nor I get any type of goodies or compensations when I post an artist. Some of them probably don’t even know what I post and it’s very nice to occasionally receive an email that says “thank you”. I’ve actually made some good friendships with artists and other bloggers and this is more than rewarding.
I do this because I’m passionate about jewelry, because I do so much research that I want to share my findings with whoever sees it, and for that, I appreciate it. I don’t think that I’ve taken anything from galleries, on the contrary, if a gallery wants me to post a show, exhibition or new artist, I’ll be more than happy to talk about it.