I remember when I was young, when my hair wasn’t receding, when my bank account was plump and my only worry in the world was what’s gonna happen on the X-Files come Sunday night. This was the time of innocence and little stress, the time before the Rogue Buddha Gallery.
I get a lot of questions about the gallery’s history, where the name comes from, how long the gallery has been around, that sorta thing. Since I’ve relaunched the website, I thought sharing some of the history of the gallery would be a good way to introduce newcomers to the RBG as well as fill in some of the gaps for the regulars.
BABY BUDDHA
The first seeds of the RBG began in ‘98 when I moved into my first art studio on Washington Ave in the warehouse district. In the waning years of its industrial heyday, many of the buildings were vacant, or low rent, a perfect place to house artist studios.
My neighbor rented a space in a studio cooperative that held somewhere around 50 artists. She hardly used her space as she had a small child and asked if I would move in to help pay rent. I had recently taken a job at Penco Art Supply just down the block so it couldn’t have been more convenient.
It wasn’t long before I was inviting friends over to check out my work and offer their opinions on what I was working on. Over time they started bringing in their work and the informal gatherings became a great source for critiques and idea generation.
At some point a few of us made plans to have a holiday party in which we would display our work. I remember rigging a doorbell out the 5th floor window to the back door of the building. We had runners taking shifts to let people in when the doorbell rang. Not the best idea but it worked. My second not best idea was making hot buttered rum for the guests in a coffee urn. The smell of rum saturated the entire floor of the building for days after the event. Ultimately, it was the minor vandalism to studio mailboxes that got me in trouble. Neither the cooperative, nor the owner of my studio space was very pleased.
Although I was quick to make the necessary repairs to the damaged property the next morning, it wasn’t enough to stem the tide of the art commune and I found myself moving all of my art to the basement of my mothers house after being kicked out.
Despite loosing my workspace and having to relocate my studio, the event was a great success and well received. More than anything, I found that displaying artwork interested me. I had a great time showing my work and promoting my friends while seeing the reaction in those who came to look at it.
After about 6 months in the basement of my mom’s house, it was time to find a real studio again. I set out to find a new space by driving around the city on the look out for lease signs on old warehouse buildings. Then I came across a storefront on East Hennepin.
At this point I already knew that I needed a bigger space than my previous studio and that I wanted a place where I could more easily show artwork by my friends and myself. I had recently met a number of people that were involved in theater, dance and music and thought it would be great to have a place where all these genres of art could commingle.
A lot of the inspiration for mixing art disciplines came from the time that I spent at Gus Lucky’s Gallery on Lake Street in South Minneapolis. At the time there weren’t many alternative gallery spaces that showed fresh artwork by new artists, let alone hosted music and theater.
My own experience trying to get a gallery exhibit had proven to be dismal. The two major exhibits that I had had in local coffee shops did not tend to impress gallery owners and none of my friends seemed to know how to sell or market artwork. I figured if I was going to do an exhibit of my work in a gallery, it was going to be up to me to make it happen. Looking in the windows at the space on East Hennepin, chills went down my spine. I hadn’t thought about opening a real gallery before, but hey, why not?
The place was a dive. The hardwood floors had been covered with bad carpeting, a hanging ceiling cut the height of the room in half and the only lights in the place were a couple of bad fluorescent fixtures. It was perfect.
Perhaps the greatest feature was the restaurant directly next door, the Quarter Note Café. They had great breakfasts and I could already imagine myself sipping the hours away on coffee and conversation with other artists as we plotted the success of our careers. After all, how hard could it be? The movie Basquiat showed just how glamorous this life could be and that it would be only a matter of a couple of years until we were all rich and successful.
While the prospect of starting a business like this was exciting, in reality, the excitement was met with equal amounts of terror. Having no experience or contacts in the art world along with the daunting task of paying rent and utilities every month was terrifying. In a state of doubt and indecision, I met one of my best friends, Stephan Debbins, for lunch at the Quarter note. After giving him a tour of the space we sat down to hash it all out. Thanks to his support and belief in me, I left lunch pumped up and signed the lease later that night.
START YOUR ENGINES
It was October and I negotiated free rent for three months while I built out the space. It was only when I began to rip into the place that I realized two things, I needed help and the money would be tight from here on out. While I had saved quite a bit and was ready to invest in the business, repairs added up quickly.
Most galleries are lucky if they stay open 3-5 years before calling it quits. Even Gus Lucky’s, my role model, would close soon after the RBG opened. While a few other places would open in 2000 and 2001, they all would close within a year or so leaving the RBG to be one of the only alternative commercial galleries in town for some time.
While this would probably make smarter people than I (and those who want to drive cars newer than 20 years old) rethink opening a gallery, it only made me more determined. My experience selling shirts to Dayton’s and my business classes at the U of M had taught me that nothing was more important to starting a business than having a rock solid business plan.
I spent my days going to galleries to scope out what they did and sneaking into the business library at the U of M to use their Lexus Nexus program to research the industry. My nights were spent at the space, tearing down panels, ripping carpet, building walls and learning the hard way how not to install track lighting.
While a number of people pitched in to help with the renovation, one person in particular was instrumental to the gallery opening. I had met Heidi Jeub in an art class a few years earlier. She borrowed some black ink and proceeded to drop it on the floor, leaving a black blob for future art classes to admire. This was our first public art collaboration and the beginning of a friendship that has lasted ever since.
Even before signing the lease, I new I would need help paying rent and building out the gallery. I called Heidi and asked if she was in. We would build out a studio for her in the basement and she could exhibit whenever she wanted. Ironically, it was Heidi and her best friend who threw the party with me on Washington Ave, the one that got me kicked out and so it only seemed fitting that she be a part of the beginning of the new space and hopefully we would have better luck this time.
WHATS IN A NAME
Perhaps the hardest question for me to answer is where the name Rogue Buddha comes from. The inspiration for the individual words are easy. My favorite club in my late teens and early twenties was called The Rogue. It was located on Hennepin Ave in Downtown Minneapolis. I had a job at Gluek’s Bar and would walk past the Rogue on my way to the bus stop every Saturday morning and spend every Saturday night at the club. The word rogue resonated with me and when it came time to name the gallery, it was the first thing that came to mind. Luckily the club had closed a few years earlier (under bad circumstances unfortunately) so I didn’t feel weird or like a copycat for using the word in my name.
At the same time as I was thinking about opening a gallery, I had been heavily invested in researching Buddhism. I found the history as well as the philosophy intriguing and utterly mind bending. When coming up with a name for the gallery, I couldn’t help but think that there was a connection between the Buddha and being a rogue, setting out on your own path. While in that context, the word rogue could have a positive meaning, in it’s negative sense it could represent the opposite of Buddha nature. In that way the name could mean the entire spectrum of human experience, from the bad to the enlightened and to me that was what art was about, representing the spectrum of our human experience.
On yet another level, rogue was a reference to a rogue’s gallery, a term used for a police collection of photographs of criminals, suspects or shady characters for identification purposes. Often times artists have fit this bill in terms of flying against societies norms.
While I wish I could give a nice easy one-line answer to how the name came about or what it means, I really can’t other than to say it was a gut feeling based on a lot of various ideas.
Some of the other names that I considered were Boom (a restaurant opened under that name right before I opened the gallery), Dada Rogue, Blow Pop and Buddha Satellite. I’m glad I went with Rogue Buddha.
GUT of ART
The name for this website actually originated from a friend of mine, James Flemming. Back in the day James had an exhibit while we were still on East Hennepin. He came up with the name Gut of Art for his show and it’s stuck with me since. Personally I’m drawn to the connotation of art and digestion and art being the fuel that makes us all go. The gut is also the place of emotion and feeling. If you read my last article, , I think you’ll understand what I mean when I say art is about emotion and feeling rather than the mind and reason.
Cheers!
Check back soon for Memory Lane Part 2! |
