Interview with Art 101 Gallerist Ellen Rand

Gallerist Ellen Rand on Art 101 By Marley Magaziner

Ellen Rand in her gallery Art 101. In the foreground, skeleton of a vessel, part of the recent installation: “Tidal Decade” by Joanne Pagano and Janice Mauro.

In an uncertain economy, the idea of art for arts sake may seem unwise, even frivolous: an art gallery’s success has come to mean just staying open. But Ellen Rand, owner and art director of Williamsburg’s Art 101, has her own idea of success. “My idea was to show really good artists who had no place show. And in that respect I’m very successful.”

A painter, herself, Rand has resided in the building since 1982, and started the gallery in 2004. “I had kept my studio here always … then I just woke up one day—our address is 101 Grand Street, and I have a lot of artists in my background, and I’m an artist. And I thought, I’ll just have a gallery called Art 101. It was not a decision made with much forethought. “And I now know that most people who start galleries have a backer, or money themselves, or some form of financial stability. And they also usually have a list of contacts and collectors, or they’ve been to a very good art school and have a good network. Well, none of that applies to me.”

So how do you start a gallery without a traditional support system? First, says Rand, love art. “It was like an old sort of salon,” explains Rand. “For my first show, I called friends and I just invited the first 12 people I ran into. It was panels up against the front wall; it was practically just in the doorway.”

The gallery has grown in six years from one wall to four, and Rand has moved her own studio to the building’s basement. Outside of regular gallery hours, there are poetry readings and musical events. Says Rand, “It’s busy and it’s a source of great satisfaction. All of it.” The gallery is homey, with curtains on the windows and flower boxes outside. When the gallery isn’t open, Rand’s little black terrier Maggie likes to curl up in a chair and watch the action outside the front window.

On view when we visited was an installation called The Tidal Decade, which imagines a futuristic archaeological dig. Janice Mauro and Joanne Pagano Weber present sculptures, plaster panels, and videos telling the story of the great flood of 2040 to archaeologists in the year 9062. It’s not an easy concept; it’s perfect for Art 101.

The gallery used to be part of a row of four galleries on the same western block of Grand Street. The three others have closed or moved, and without the attraction of several galleries, walk-ins have decreased. Rand doesn’t know why other galleries have closed and she hasn’t. “Running a gallery is not a business with formulas. In the entire art world, success or failure of galleries is a question of luck and happenstance.” She was reluctant to attribute her success to her own taste in art. “All of the artists that I show, all of the shows that I have, are artists and works that I greatly admire and respect, and I want it to be known. And if the work doesn’t get the attention I feel it deserves, that’s disappointing, but it doesn’t mean that you stop working on behalf of that artist. “I don’t wish I’d known anything then that I know now. And I have no regrets. I find it completely rewarding, not necessarily financially, but in every other way. I lucked into it, I plunged into it without really knowing very much. All the rest I’ve had to learn. Some of it is excrutiatingly difficult. Just the whole ordeal of running it. I also started my catering business blind; everything I’ve ever done, painting, catering, the gallery, is all self-taught.”

This season, Rand has increased the duration of each show from four weeks to six, which gives artists more time to promote and sell their work. “Even if it’s not particularly successful financially, each show is an opportunity for the artist to put up his or her work and for people to see it. We have a wonderful spring planned with four new shows. I have enough artists to book the next two years.” Rand had her own catering business, which she gave up when the gallery opened. It was an easy decision. “Catering was just so grueling, I never charged enough for the food anyway. So I thought, well, I’ll just have this gallery and show all these people I know who are so good.” You might catch a sample of her cooking at the opening of a show or event at Art 101.

Ellen Rand was named for her grandmother, the successful American portrait artist Ellen Gertrude Emmet Rand, whose portrait of the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens is presently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ellen recently self-published a biography of her grandmother, entitled “Dear Females.” While her grandmother traveled to Paris to study art, Williamsburg’s Rand never attended art school. “I started in stage design and then I quit. And then I started to paint. I just locked myself up in my room for about two years. I was searching for a way to express something and it’s almost as though a little door opened and I found it and then, oh, that’s what I was looking for.”

Currently at Art 101: “Optic Nerve,” paintings by Dennis Tompkins, through November.www.art101brooklyn.com