For 15 years, the Avenue Gallery has been in the midst of Oak Bay Village, attracting passersby with striking art works by Blu Smith and Ron Parker in its show window. This week, I dropped by for a visit with owner Heather Wheeler to talk about the past, present and future of one of Victoria’s premier galleries.
Wheeler told me she grew up in a household where her mother was very creative, but Wheeler approached the world with a head for business. Beginning in the 1980s, she worked for Peter Dorazio, an entrepreneur who dominated the tourist shops on lower Government Street.
At first, she was retail manager for his art shops: the Art Bank, Art Underground and the Customs House Gallery. Eventually, she decided she’d outgrown the possibilities there and set out on her own, opening a gardening shop. But she missed the art world, and went to work at a gallery with another former Dorazio employee, Valerie Pusey, up the street at Northern Passage.
Wheeler was manager of Northern Passage for seven years, and sometimes wondered if she could get out and do it on her own. Then, with Maureen Flanagan, Northern Passage’s bookkeeper, she opened the Caswell-Lawrence Gallery on Broad Street late in the 1990s. It was a stimulating experience, but the two had different interests, so she left that gallery to Flanagan and took a year off.
She spent the year without work, building a house and imagining what it was she wanted to bring to Victoria.
“And here we are, 15 years later,” she said with a smile.
The richly colourful atmosphere of her Avenue Gallery hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been visiting. It’s full of the sort of things people want to take home and live with, things immediately and personally attractive.
“We are looking to offer something for every single person who walks in the door,” Wheeler told me, “something to fall in love with. Of course, art should stimulate, and be a cause for conversation … but within limits.”
The art she chooses is designed to create “a serene environment, rather than a too-challenging environment,” she said. The way things make you feel is more important to her than their investment value or the intellectual status of the artist.
“We want to be accessible,” Wheeler explained. “We want people to come in without fear of being judged. We want them to enjoy, to interact with the art and to learn.” She and her staff are experts at sharing knowledge about their artists’ backgrounds and techniques, and letting the beauty of the work sell itself.
Much of what is offered could be described as “decorative art.” Glassware, ceramics, jewelry and sculptures make brilliant accents to an “interior décor,” rather than act as complicated “artist’s statements.” Art that is decorative is not a lesser art, and she makes no apology.
Her clients come to her for the “wow factor,” and she knows how to supply it. And many of her customers want not just a single object, but the whole package.
“I just can’t pick one,” they sigh. “I need so many of them.”
Wheeler’s vision is strongly supported.
“We are having our best year we’ve ever had,” she glowed, and the gallery’s growth is no accident.
“We are plugged into every social media platform there is,” she told me. “A lot of the work goes on behind the scenes. We have hired experts to keep our gallery on the front page of Google, so a newcomer to Victoria looking for art sees our website first.” Operating a successful art gallery is not just about a passion for beautiful things. It’s a highly creative endeavour in itself.
The Avenue Gallery has always been devoted to Canadian art. And, now that its audience has grown, Wheeler is sourcing art from beyond Victoria. Submissions keep pouring in, at the rate of 20 or more every week.
“We don’t meet in person at first,” Wheeler explained, “but ask artists to submit email portfolios. We set aside a time each week to review each artist, and whether we take them or not, we always respond.”
A recent addition is Kimberly Kiel of Balgonie, Sask. Formerly a financial adviser in Calgary, Kiel has been painting for most of 15 years. She runs her art as a business, with representation at 10 galleries, but her lush canvases make you want to dive right in. She applies juicy oil paint with palette knives and huge brushes — or just flings it on with abandon.
“It takes enormous energy to create them,” Wheeler said, “and that energy resonates from the painting.” Kiel’s next exhibition opens at the Avenue Gallery on Sept. 21.
Steven Stairs is a different story. He’s a local Victoria carpenter with a passion for wood, whose large, abstract carvings were filling his condo.
“He won an award at this year’s Victoria Look Show and I contacted him,” Wheeler said. “You never know where you are going to find the next diamond in the rough. There is just as much talent in the people who are undiscovered. But, honestly, we don’t find many. In a three-month period we might find one new artist.” Yet there is hope.
By this point in the interview we were just roaming about the gallery. Wheeler swiftly introduced me to the work of the 15 jewellers and silversmiths she represents, a field not on my radar. And on my way out, I stopped again before the sublime painting of three eggs by Catherine Moffat. Really, there is so much to discover.
Avenue Gallery, 2184 Oak Bay Ave., theavenuegallery.com, 250-598-2184.
