Artist Laura Mark- Finberg and husband Barry Finberg are celebrating the grand opening of their Mark- Finberg Gallery during today's ArtWalk. Photo Courtesy Lancaster Newspapers David suggested - a bit whimsically - that since people have been traveling less with the high cost of airfares and gasoline, perhaps they've been spending some of the money they've saved on art.
"I think people need color and light to change their minds a little bit" from worrying about the economy, she said.
Out of the wilderness
Although the Finbergs are new to the gallery business, they are not new to the business of art. She's been a professional artist since the 1980s, and sales of her work have been supporting the two of them for the past 18 years.
She does the painting. He produces the limited edition prints of her work and manages the business.
Her studio is on the second floor of their home in Martic Township, but they've traveled extensively around the country and in Canada to exhibit her art, and they conduct a brisk business over the Internet.
"We saw [the stock market] crash in '87. We saw it go down after 9/11. In 1991, just after I quit my job we went into a recession," Finberg said. "We've been through this before."
"We've always come through," Mark-Finberg added.
In fact, Finberg said, the faltering economy was one of the reasons they decided to open the gallery.
"We've experienced a slowdown for the last year and a half," he explained. "We were paying more in gas to get someplace, and on hotels and the entry fees to get into art shows. ... The feeling was, OK, maybe we need to add another layer to the business plan."
That layer is the new gallery.
"We don't have to make a lot of sales to pay our bills," he said. And "we have the luxury of Internet sales while we build the business."
So far, it's been working out.
"At this point, we're actually making money at the gallery," Finberg said.
Topping the pizzeria
Amato also has other resources to fall back on to keep her Obra d'Edo Gallery going while she builds a clientele.
"I don't make my living from art, per se," she said.
Amato has a day job fixing up the interiors of other people's homes, which can range from something as simple as painting the bathroom walls to as elaborate as creating art right on the home's walls.
Besides, the space she rents for her gallery also doubles as her apartment and studio.
"I don't think I would have taken this on," if that had not been the case, she said. "The kind of painting and plasterwork I do, it took about six months" to get the gallery ready to open.
In addition to displaying her own work, Amato has plans for collaborative exhibits with other artists who also have day jobs, with everyone helping out in the gallery so it can be open more often.
Amato's landlord, Dominick Sabella, who runs La Casa Bella Ristorante on the building's first floor, is proud of his tenant's enterprise.
Sabella said it is just what he had in mind when - taking the lead of Dennis Cox, who owns five buildings with galleries up the street - he put out a sign several months ago advertising the space as a potential gallery instead of just an apartment.
"I want everything nice," he said.
A growing scene
Elizabeth Todd Lambert, president and chief executive of LancasterARTS, which promotes the city's First Fridays and ArtWalk celebrations, said she thinks the number of galleries in the city may have as much as doubled in just the 2½ years she's been here.
About 40 of the 80 participants in this weekend's ArtWalk are art galleries, she said, and another 20 or so are artisan studios.
Some of the newer ones, Lambert said, include Galerie Michelle, which shares space with Spiziri Insurance Associates at 226 W. Chestnut St.; Infantree Gallery, on the fourth floor above the Prince Street Cafe, 17 N. Prince St.; Dreams Collide, a combination tattoo parlor and art gallery, 7 S. Prince St.; and Annex 24, at 24 W. Walnut St.
"Every month has been better than the last," said Vanessa Reisig, co-owner of Annex 24, which opened in March. She exhibits her photographs there alongside the paintings of co-owner Kenny Kidd and other artists.
Reisig said she was prepared for business to be slow starting out.
"People don't need art. They need to eat," she said. "We're just trying to convince people they need art as much as food."
Despite the extent to which some of the newcomers are struggling, even more galleries are bound to open.
Cox, who coined the term Gallery Row, said he's in negotiations with a couple of parties right now who want to rent the last gallery space he has available, on the second floor at 106 W. Chestnut St.
The galleries run by the Finbergs, Madrigale, David and Hess are in buildings owned by Cox.
"I could rent six more galleries," he said, adding that he has no plans to buy more buildings to do so. "But I hope some other people would," he said.
Cox is optimistic that the momentum Lancaster has built - not only with the growth of its galleries but also with what College Row, the Pennsylvania Academy of Music and the Lancaster County Convention Center are bringing - will isolate it somewhat from the national economy by making it "a destination that appeals to folks who do recreational shopping."
Lambert also talks about the sum of the parts building to a critical mass.
"People know when there are a lot of galleries, there's more chance they'll find something they like," she said. "When visitors see there are so many, that's what is going to make them come here."
Word has already spread, Madrigale said, noting that it's become much easier recently to persuade well-known artists to exhibit at Metropolis. They no longer ask, "Lancaster, where?" she said, and she's already booking for the 2010 season.
"Lancaster has become an art destination," Mark-Finberg said. "We talk to people at art shows all over. When we tell them we're opening a gallery in Lancaster, they say, 'Oh yeah, I know where that is.' "
But Madrigale has one caveat about wanting to see more galleries spring up.
