Leigh Medeiros admits her timing could have been better. In early 2008, after years of helping to run art galleries for other people, Medeiros decided to go it alone and open her own place.
She knew it wouldn’t by easy – the survival rate for galleries is not exactly high – but Medeiros figured her experience would provide a nice kick-start.
It was April last year when the doors opened at YES Gallery and Studio in the historic neighborhood on Warren’s Water Street. Unbeknownst to Medeiros, it was also the dawn of an economic downturn that has since left many shuttered businesses – new and old – in its wake.
“It was right when everything was falling apart,” said Medeiros, 36, recalling those early days of business.
But about 18 months later, YES Gallery remains open and Medeiros has even expanded to Block Island, where she has been operating a gallery inside a gift shop during the tourist season.
It hasn’t been easy. The sagging economy has forced her to develop a keen marketing sense, organizing frequent special events at the gallery and collaborating with local nonprofits to use their mailing lists.
Economic recovery appears to be on the horizon, but Medeiros says the squeeze continues. As a result, she cut the hours of the Warren gallery to the most profitable, allowing her to commute to Block Island weekly to tend to that gallery.
Medeiros is confident her venture will endure.
“Sales aren’t where they could be if the economy was where it should be,” she said recently. “It’s been really tough, but I’m a positive person.”
The foray into gallery ownership was a long time in coming.
Medeiros, who has degrees in experimental studio art and English from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, has had a stint as a volunteer working with inner-city students in Boston.
She also has had some success in film production and as a screenwriter, spending time in Los Angeles as an assistant to a well-known writer to learn the craft. She has since won a fellowship in screenwriting through the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.
But throughout her wide-ranging career, Medeiros has returned to the gallery and studio business.
While in Boston, she worked with the public arts organization Revolving Museum, writing grants and organizing shows. When she became an administrative assistant, she was overseeing the group’s studio, collecting rent from artists.
Then after a three-month, cross-country trip in the late 1990s, Medeiros connected with a businesswoman – Elizabeth Eisenhauer – who was launching a gallery on Block Island.
As gallery manager and then director, Medeiros absorbed the business lessons.
“We had a lot of trial and error,” she recalled. “But I learned everything from marketing, to dealing with clients [and] making sales.”
After a few years, she left to try her hand in screenwriting and film production. “I felt like I was losing touch with my creativity,” she said.
Despite a successful period as a freelancer, she now has returned to the gallery business. “That’s really what I cut my teeth on,” she said. “That’s what I really know what to do.”
She hasn’t done it alone.
Medeiros obtained a low-interest loan from a family member to get this started, and had her boyfriend – a carpenter by trade – help her remodel the storefront gallery. Her mother, a bookkeeper, has assisted in tracking dollars and cents.
And she has found the business community in Warren, and even another gallery in town, supportive. “If Rhode Island and, in particular, Warren is seen as a great place to buy art, it benefits all of us,” Medeiros said.
In fact, it was the gallery’s location – in an 1852 building that was reportedly famed illustrator David Macauley’s old studio and part of a tax-free arts district – which convinced Medeiros to push forward with opening the business in April 2008.
YES Gallery and Studio held special events every two weeks, offering free hors d’oeuvres and drinks along with fresh artwork. While working with Eisenhauer years earlier, Medeiros learned the importance of the details – hiring a bartender and using real wine glasses, for instance — in drumming up business.
Medeiros figures about 80 percent of her sales are related to those events.
In an effort to develop an immediate mailing list, Medeiros also worked out an agreement with several nonprofits. The groups would send out notices about upcoming YES gallery events, and Medeiros would donate a certain percentage of the sales to that nonprofit.
“It becomes a community event,” she said.
Helping sales in a tough economy, Medeiros said, are the gallery’s prices, which are far from high-end. Most of the contemporary artwork from regional artists sells at between $100 and $600.
Looking to capitalize on the holidays in a different way, Medeiros will rent some of her gallery space to half a dozen or so artists in November and December, forgoing the usual commission business model.
And Medeiros has got other promotional plans, including allowing customers to try out the artwork at home before paying for it.
But the future for the YES Gallery and Studio is still uncertain, especially in the down economy, Medeiros acknowledged.
“That being said, if you ask me if the business is successful, I will say absolutely yes,” she said. “In a short period of time, we’ve supported a lot of artists, built a large following and donated money to almost a dozen local nonprofits. … And I think of myself as a community member before a business owner.” •
