Why This Gallery Zigs When Others Sag

Top local galleries are slashing hours and staff, or even closing forever. But not Bellevue’s Hallway Gallery. Six months after the gallery’s owners moved from the basement of the E. E. Robbins building on Northeast 2nd to 10500 Northeast 8th, sales shot up 282 percent. How did it happen? Owner Erik Hall (right, with partner Amy Spassov) gave five reasons.

1 Hallway spent the second, better half of the year in the new place. Why does nothing sell in the first half? “Holiday shopping fallout, tax season looming and vacations.”

2 The basement space was “tough to find, had no sign and no street presence.” The new spot, near Bellevue Square, brings more foot traffic.

3 “Gretchen Gammell, our best-selling artist, had her most successful show in three years and came close to selling out.”

4 Hall discovered a new artist, James Key, “in a most odd way,” he says. “He bought a chair I was selling on Craigslist. He came to my work studio, and after a brief discussion about art he disclosed that he too was an artist.”

5 The crisis effect. “In September of 2001, I had one of the best shows of my career. Markets took a nosedive and amidst the chaos I had a near-sellout show. I asked the late Terry Miller of Kimzey Miller Gallery why. He said clients were buying my work to keep their staff from staring out the window all day waiting for a plane to fly into them. In times of crisis, people need art more than ever.” So maybe Hallway sales didn’t rise 282 percent in spite of hard times, but because of them. •

Photograph by Gabriel Choy for City Arts.