In this webinar Gail Severn shares from her thirty-nine years of experience running an international gallery based in Sun Valley, Idaho. Severn discusses the transition from making to selling art, the myriad ways in which galleries should actively promote their artists, and the the usefulness of collaborative business practices.
“I always tell my artists when we get started that from my point of view the relationship is a lot like a marriage, that everybody has to bring something to the table, everybody has to work hard to make it work, and that we have to have communication. The biggest issue I see, when a gallery partnership doesn’t work with an artist, is when one of the two, or both, aren’t communicating regularly and openly.”
Gail Severn is a fifth generation Idahoan and the owner and director of Gail Severn Gallery, a space located in the international resort destination of Sun Valley, Idaho. After graduating from the University of Idaho with a BA and the Rhode Island School of Design with an MFA in the early ’70s, she returned to Idaho to teach at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts. She eventually began to run the center’s gallery and in 1974 opened her own space, Gail Severn Gallery. The gallery occupies nearly 12,000 square feet, contains four individual exhibition spaces, and represents approximately sixty artists from across the world. Severn and her staff also show at approximately four major international art fairs per year.