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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 20, 2002)
ptamùer 20.2002 • ART ▼ Disco party art house Creation Gallery and Design deposits queer art from around the country right on our doorstep—with glittery flair by Sunday, September 29 '02 G ary M orris Cedar Hills Recreation Center South of Hwy. 26 (exit 68) Korey Smith, Craig Fuller and Kevin Cox (from left) ensconced in gay art at Creation Gallery ortland is not generally mentioned, at media— oil paintings, watercolors, drawings least initially, in discussions of the centers and, from one gay artist, salvaged windows of American queer culture. That honor reborn as canvases. The subjects are equally ^ usually goes to San Francisco, New York diverse— netxrlassical themes, Van Gogh-style and Los Angeles, with passing nods to gay still lives, urhanscapes, Dali-esque phantas resorts like Provincetown, Mass.; Fire Island, magoria and shimmering images of embracing N.Y.; and Palm Springs, Calif. men and kissing women. But Portland’s queer-owned galleries are multiplying as we speak. Author V f and art aficionado Craig Fuller opened one of the most original this summer— complete with a disco dance party. Cre ation Gallery and Design, run by three gay men, offers a gallery and decorating service in Southeast Portland with an emphasis on queer art. Fuller’s collaborators are Kevin Cox, a buyer for an electronics company and part-time designer, and Korey Smith, an entrepreneur with a design and decorat ing background. Kerry Kurth, a Portland graphic artist and interior designer, will also work with the gallery on offshoot projects, such as “staging”— redecorating houses to make them more marketable. Creation is not your garden-variety gallery. For one thing, it’s located in a private home in Mount Scott, not in the Pearl District or a Beaverton strip mall. For another, one of its missions is to provide art with a price tag that won’t induce apoplexy. Everything is original and costs between $50 and $1,800— most is in the $200-$400 range. And Fuller and Company intend to focus some of the gallery’s attention on Something for the girls the community, with a fund-raiser planned for a different organization every *3 || t all started (a few] months ago after a trip month. The first was an Aug. 24 benefit soiree || to Hawaii,” says Fuller. “When I got home, for Swan House, an HIV/AIDS service center. S I got into this creative process that I Creation donated 40 percent of its art sale pro couldn’t shut off. I just wanted to create.” ceeds to the nonprofit. This impulse led, as such impulses often do, The gallery’s June kickoff was a combina to the Internet, where he began to research tion disco party (complete with lighted floor affordable art. “I started buying stuff, and pretty and heavy beats) and art show. This gave local soon I had this collection, so I created a small culture vultures, as well as aging disco queens, a gallery in the house." chance to shake their groove thangs while Before he knew it, he had acquired 200 viewing a wide range of pieces in & variety of pieces. “I couldn’t believe the prices,” Fuller f continues. “1 would spend literally six or seven hours a day on the Internet, studying the art, specifically on eBay and other auction sites. I was trying to figure out the catch. How are these people selling such wonderful art so cheap? ...Every time the mail would come I’d open it up and think, ‘This is absolutely beautiful.’ ” Like many avid art buyers, he began to develop relationships with the artists. “They can’t get into gal leries— too many artists and too few galleries— and a lot of them live in obscure parts of the country with no galleries at all.... Most of them said they love to create. If they make enough money to pay for their sup plies, they’re happy.” Still not sure what to do with both the art or the creative rush, Fuller learned that the house next door, owned by his sister, was being vacated. He convinced her to rent it to him and moved in his massive collection. Now expanded to 400 pieces, the collection includes a substantial por tion by gay artists or with gay themes. Fuller mentions one of his most cherished by a straight woman from the East Coast who excels at rendering abstract male nudes: “I love doing homoerotic art!” she told him. Andy Weissman of Illinois uses neoclassical motifs to telling effect. Another of Fuller’s favorites is Portland artist Dean Sitwell, who paints simple, striking images on reclaimed windows from sal vage yards. Most of the walls in the 3,000- square-foot home that houses the gallery, which is open by appointment only, are covered. Seeing paintings and drawings in such a setting, rather than in the insular zone of the typical cramped (or stark) gallery, has a surpris ing effect, allowing the viewer to experi ence the work more intimately. This ties in with Fuller’s idea of the transformative power of handmade art. “I believe that original art holds people’s energy; the energy of the artist stays in the art. And people respond to it differ ently than they would to a poster. I’m connecting the artist’s creations with other people— so, Creation Gallery.” The new gallery owner sees much larger possibilities. “A multitude of won derful things are going to happen in this place,” he says with infectious enthusiasm. S o far these include a hosted gallery space to let people “experience an art gallery in a private setting,” addi tional fund-raisers (Basic Rights Oregon and Cascade A ID S Project are two in the forefront o f the collaborators’ minds), a design and decorating service that would let people rent the art, a kind o f ongoing queer psychic fair in the house and, of course, a rentable disco den complete with twirling, silver glitter ball. J H C reation G allery and D esign is open by appointment only at 8 4 1 9 S .E . Clatsop Court. Call them at 503-788-7651. at Cedar Hills Blvd. & Park Way 11 A M * 3 PM (members only: 10-11) . 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