This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
07/10/2018 03:15 PMMaple & Main Gallery of Fine Art in Chester has closed. Organized as a co-op to promote local art, the gallery was run by a board whose members are looking back at the eight-year run with a mix of pride and more than a little astonishment.
“It was kind of sad. I haven’t really absorbed it all, and I don’t think a lot of us have, but it had a good run and it was miraculously a success for eight years,” said Claudia Van Nes, the gallery’s membership chair. “That’s a long time with the model we were using.”
The model they had used, Van Nes joked, was one where there was very little money. From the start, she said, everyone involved understood that the intention wasn’t to make money but to have enough money to pay the expenses give artists the opportunity to share their work.
Because profit wasn’t the priority, close friendships and relationships were formed, though ultimately the lack of money is what led the three-member board to close shop long after they should have, Van Nes said.
The board consisted of Van Nes, Peter Barrett, and Janine Robertson, all of whom are artists as well.
“My plan did not include having or running a business, but this just happened, it snowballed,” Van Nes said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing very much, it just went along.”
In the early days before the gallery was established, an artists’ group met in the building, but Van Nes said at the time a gallery wasn’t on the radar. The meetings were full of artists and chaos, said Van Nes, but it kept moving forwardin many ways thanks to one man in particular.
That man was Barrett.
“He sat in the background and thought he wasn’t active, but really he kind of became the CEO of this co-op, which had a lot of enthusiasm, but was heading to disaster after just a year,” said Van Nes.
Everyone learned a lot along the way, said Van Nes, who claimed she hadn’t done as much as touch a cash register when the gallery first opened.
“A lot of artists were instrumental in moving it along, especially Peter [Barrett],” said Van Nes. With their help, “we bumbled along and we made enough money to keep going and built a reputation.”
However, after eight years of bumbling along, the inevitable was in front of them.
“Last winter the sales and the number of artists wanting to pay that money to be there, all that started to slip a little, and all it had to do was slip a little to slip under,” said Van Nes.
The board wanted to be able to pay everything off and go out with grace. Van Nes said they wanted to finish out the June show, which paid off: They were able to make enough sales that no one felt short changed and everyone was paid what they were owed.
“People have been really, really nice about it and very sad. That surprised me, that they had such a feeling for the place, and they did, and that speaks well for art and speaks well for the building,” said Van Nes.
In the wake of the gallery closing, Van Nes said there are a few next steps in the works. One consideration is a studio tour of artists in Chester, Essex, and Deep River. Another consideration is to keep a loose group of artists from Maple & Main who would then have art shows in various spaces.
“We had a lot of faithful artists and we helped each other. It was a good group of people who kept it going,” said Van Nes.
There was a gathering of all the artists at Van Nes’s house that she said, “was good for a lot of us, it was very satisfying.”
Van Nes also has an idea of what she would like to take the place of Maple & Main.
“Chester is small town and needs every space down there to be a destination people want to come to. A lot of people came to the gallery from far away very regularly,” said Van Nes who thinks it is in Chester’s best interest to have Maple & Main turned into a boutique inn.
“What I think, because I live in Chester and I love the building, is we don’t have an inn, we don’t have a hotel…I think that [a boutique inn] would be the best use for Chester,” said Van Nes. “I would be disappointed if it became offices.”