Creative Chats With Ellen Wineberg (The Art of Curation)
As part of the Creative Chats live podcast event series, I sat down at the Mosesian Center for the Arts for a conversation with artist and gallery owner Ellen Wineberg. We discuss curation from many angles: choosing the artwork for shows, solving the puzzle of hanging the art in a way that the pieces are in conversation with each other, matchmaking pairings and groupings of artists, and learning to bring out the character in her unique space. We also get a glimpse into the community she's created with Storefront Art Projects and hear about her broader perspective on curation beyond the gallery walls.
Released October 15th, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
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Find out more about the shows Ellen has coming up at Storefront Art Projects at StorefrontArtProjects.com.
Listen to other Creative Chats episodes and check the events page to see when the next Creative Chats event is.
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Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at watertownbusinesscoalition.com.
Thanks to promotional partner Watertown News, a Watertown-focused online newspaper. Check them out at watertownmanews.com.
Thank you to Creative Chats series sponsor Arsenal Financial!
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt 0:02
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is one of the monthly Creative Chats that I do over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts on the first Friday. And Creative Chats are events that I do to gather creative people face to face, to mingle, hear a featured conversation on the topic of creativity and the creative life, and hopefully engage in the conversation themselves and leave a little more inspired and connected. I'm grateful for the Mosesian Center for the Arts for hosting these every month. And I want to give a thank you to Arsenal Financial, who is the series sponsor. Thank you, Doug Orifice and his team over at Arsenal Financial for sponsoring the series. For this Creative Chat, I sat down with Ellen Wineberg, who is an artist and gallery owner. She owns Storefront Art Projects over at 83 Spring Street here in Watertown. And our conversation was on the art of curation. So let's jump right in.
Matt 1:03
Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming out today. This is Creative Chats, which is a series I do for my podcast, Little Local Conversations, which focuses on Watertown. I am partial to the arts, so I have lots of series that focus on the arts. And this one I have a guest come in every month on the first Friday to talk about some topic that's on their mind right now in the creative world. I won't be, I won't be scary, I promise.
Ellen 1:27
You didn't introduce yourself.
Matt 1:29
I didn't introduce myself. Yeah. You know, as you probably do when people come into your studio, you know, you're the background, I'm the background today. So yeah, I'm Matt Hanna. For anyone who doesn't know me, sorry. Yes. I run the Creative Chats and the podcast. And today, though, my guest, why don't you introduce yourself? And how do you, you know, we put artists and gallery owner, but we have more space than on a marketing thing. So you can put all your slashes in here.
Ellen 1:52
Hi. I'm Ellen Wineberg. I run Storefront Art Projects on Spring Street in Watertown, 83 Spring Street. And my studio is in the back. I'm a painter and I run a gallery. And I don't show my own work in the gallery. I show other people's work in the gallery. And it has become my social life. And a lot of you are part of that. And I appreciate that you're here.
Matt 2:15
Great. So our conversation that we put today, the topic is the art of curation, which didn't want to put on as you being the world's expert on, just a topic for the conversation. You've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about it, interacting with it. So you do have some things to say.
Ellen 2:32
But here's what Wikipedia says curation is. Can you see this?
Matt 2:37
Do you want to read it for people who are listening later?
Ellen 2:39
I will read it. Art curation is the strategic and creative practice of selecting, organizing, and presenting cultural objects to tell a cohesive story for the public. Okay, we're done.
Matt 2:51
Yeah. We've done it. We've done it.
Ellen 2:54
There was a talk at the Watertown Library last night by big-time curators from The Rose and The Gardner and the PEM and Nick Capasso from Fitchburg. Their talk was about inclusivity in curation and what they're doing to spread the love, basically, and spread the accessibility of the public and of the artists to show to the public. But it was really interesting to sit and listen to these people who actually get paid to do it and are doing it in big time. I mean, to listen to somebody, you never have access to anybody who works at the Gardner. And to listen to a curator from the Gardner Museum talk about how she put a show together and how she thought about mostly the Yu-Wen Wu show, which was amazing with balls of tea and a prayer necklace form. And she did this thing with chrysanthemums to make a weird garden and a wall of flowers. And she talked about curating as pruning. Like if you were pruning a garden. And I had never thought of it that way.
Ellen 3:55
I think of curating more as matchmaking and puzzle solving. And for me, the matchmaking part is really fun. Like these two people are in the show right now. This is a painting. This is a painting by Rachel Folsom. It's a poster of a painting. And that's a photograph. These two people didn't know each other, don't know each other. There's only one other person in the world that actually knows both of them, only because this guy from Gloucester sent out a big mailing, and this other guy from Gloucester said, Rachel Folsom, did she go to Swarthmore? So he knows Paul and he knows Rachel. But I love to put together rare mixes that nobody else would think of or put together because nobody else knew these people.
Ellen 4:39
And I met this guy a year ago and saw his photography. Went to a studio and saw a piece that was sort of black and white. It was black and white photographed, twigs against a white background, which is exactly what my friend Rachel of 50 years had been drawing lately, twigs against a white background. And I thought, okay, that's a match. That's a show. So Rachel died in 2025, but I'd known her for 50 years. Her husband doesn't want to sell any of her work. Her family lives with the work. And paintings like this, which took her forever to do and drawing, she never wanted to split a commission. So she never wanted any of her work to be for sale. So her family house is full of the work. And her husband, who's also a dear friend, lent me the work to show with Paul's. And it's just, it's really cool how the show came together because I picked from him from his studio, I picked from her from her studio, just knowing this piece goes with this piece, this onion piece that's a watercolor is going to go with this onion piece that's a photograph. Oh, and then there's all these sprouted onion pieces that can work around. And there's some garlic and there's some scapes. And everything became a puzzle of pieces without a box.
Ellen 5:46
So when everything arrives at the gallery and I set it up along the wall, my first thought is usually, what have I done? Why am I doing this? This is crazy. And then the work sorts itself out. It sorts itself out because I had liked it in the first place and believed in it in the first place. It's good. It's good. It'll work. So it sorts itself out along the wall on the floor, and then it goes up on the wall. And what I love to do that's also different is make a rhythm or, each show that goes up, if you've ever been to yard art, there are a lot of yard art participants at these tables. I put together 10 people whose work has nothing to do with each other, except that it's all fun and it's all colorful. And to put a giant piece, a giant piece by Leslie Sills next to tiny paintings by Cat Bennett, and it worked. It worked great. There was orange, there was yellow, there was purple. It worked great. And people saw that. So it's like a dance or a choreography that you're putting together of things that you wouldn't find together out in the world. They're not sets, they're not matchy matchy, and they're not sets. But that's the fun. It's a puzzle, putting a puzzle together, and then the matchmaking is really fun.
Matt 6:58
Yeah. So when you were talking about when you brought in artworks and both of these, like how many do you start with and then how many do you prune down, prune down to? Are you looking at all their artwork or are you looking at certain collections? Like what's your starting point?
Ellen 7:12
I don't think about that. I walk into somebody's studio and I'm attracted to certain things. So I want everything that I'm attracted to. And I always say I'm gonna take more than I hang. But I rarely do. I rarely do have to edit because if I like everything, it's all strong and it all works together, and I don't have to take anything out. Sometimes there'll be one or two pieces, and I'll put them up in the back, or I'll hold on to them in the back so there's more that you can see.
Matt 7:40
Yeah. And then so, like for example, with this one. So you have all the pieces that you're attracted to from one artist and all from the other. Then how do you, like obviously the two onion ones made sense together, but beyond, ones that might have more hidden cross conversation between them, how do you then work out? Do you like pair things differently together, or how do you start to work out that puzzle?
Ellen 8:02
That's a good question. I'm a painter, and as I paint things in the painting, it's like making a salad. You put something in, you can't take anything out, you have to put something else in that goes with it. And that's how it is. It's like I'm making a composition out of these pieces that are all individual things, but I just keep adding and adding and adding. And what happens in the composition is the same thing that happens when I'm painting. I reach a place where it's like, oh, I didn't know this. I didn't know this one would talk to this one. Or I didn't know that that piece has exactly the same purple shape or blue shape or whatever as that one by somebody else. I think the intuitive process of picking the work out tells me things that I don't even know until I'm putting them on the wall. And I've had people come in that have seen synchronicities or similarities or just themes that I hadn't even noticed. But it just worked that way because I don't do it with thinking, I do it with seeing.
Matt 9:01
Do you have, beyond this show, do you have any favorite ones recently or in the past where it was a puzzle that you were really working on and then something clicked and it was one of your favorite puzzle solves?
Ellen 9:13
Usually, as soon as a show comes down and a new one is ready to go up, I can't remember what was on the wall before that. But I had a really interesting experience with Jo Ann Rothschild, who's a big shot. She's got work in the MFA. She was the first person to win the Maud Morgan Prize. You did the video of the talk with her. Who did she talk with? Jessica Roscio from The Danforth. She was suggested by Elizabeth Michelman, who's basically her curator and gallerist, but she's just a friend who's written about her and done catalogs of her and helped promote her work. So Elizabeth came with Jo Ann with all these pieces, many, many pieces of these big abstractions, big and small abstractions. And it took us all morning, the three of us, took us all morning to arrange. And what we arranged by was sort of sequence, like things that went together, and then the next things that went together. And we sat down and had lunch.
Ellen 10:09
And Elizabeth stood up and took everything we had arranged and rearranged it. And I thought, where are we going with this? It had taken hours. And Jo Ann and I had agreed on the arrangement that we got. It had taken hours to get there. And Elizabeth moved this one and moved that one. And I just sat back and I was like, this is going to be a really long day. And then when she was done, it was exciting. What we had done, what Jo Ann and I had done was basically grouping, you know, the red things with the red things or the yellow things with different sizes, but things that were similar. And what Elizabeth did was completely shake it up, large next to small, yellow next to brown, next to green, next to red. And the way she shook it up, conversations happened between the paintings from across the room and around the corner that wouldn't have happened before. It would have just been sections the other way. So it's a learning curve, too. And I was really happy that I could keep my mouth shut. That's not easy.
Matt 11:13
And when you say a conversation between pieces, what do you mean?
Ellen 11:16
Okay, like there's conversations between, somebody, whoever decided what went in this room curated what went in this room. Decisions have been made. This is a member show. It's one or two pieces by completely different people. And throughout the whole building, combinations are made. And you have to look and see why they put that next to this. Well, that's probably because of the yellow and the red next to the orange and the, you know, and the yellowish over there. And that one kind of speaks to that one. And these three are so completely different, but there's something about that day glow orange there that's carrying all the way over to the one on the left in the shape of the state house and through the sunset. So I don't know if I just see it everywhere or if it is everywhere, or I find it or make it, but these are choices. They're choices that are made. And there's good curation, there's bad curation.
Ellen 12:07
I walk into a place like Target, not anymore, but when I used to, there was something about the liveliness of the activity and the color and the lighting and the scale of things. It's not quite like this anymore, but you used to be able to see all the way through. And as a short person, it's really great to be able to see to the end of an aisle and not have a wall in between. But I walk into a Walmart and I immediately turn around and leave. The lighting is blue and makes noise. The air is bad. It just looks like we hate our customers. You know, that's what it says to me when we walk in. We hate you, but we want you to buy these things because they're cheap. You know, you're not going to spend a lot of money and you're not going to stay long, so we don't care. And that's just how it feels to walk in there. And I feel really bad for the people that have to work there.
Ellen 12:58
And I used to go in the Burlington Mall when, what's the fancy store? Nordstrom, upstairs. They had the upstairs, and there were like departments that you go into. And there was one place, if you were looking at something, you could hear the music from there and you could hear the music from there. And it was two different musics. And I thought, do they hate their customers or do they hate the people that work here? How can you stand that? That's curation or not curated. But I noticed that kind of stuff. And I think it's just something, I mean, I just assume everybody notices that sort of stuff. But when I talk about how architecture speaks, I find out that not everybody hears architecture speaking.
Matt 13:33
So how do you curate your space?
Ellen 13:34
How do I curate my space? What I'm really lucky with is a tiny space, just a little storefront space, but it's got high ceilings. And the walls, there's one independent freestanding wall that only goes up eight feet, and sort of the ridge line of the tin ceiling, the white tin ceiling, all the way around is eight feet. So I know the shape of it. I know where big stuff can go. And I know the side walls. It's a really old building, but it's a tacky old building. And it was made with cinder block and beadboard and paste or something. So the side walls, I know that you can't put nails in on the inside sidewalls because the walls eat them. You can't get the nail out. So you have to use screws there. And there's some place where you think, I'm gonna screw this in and it's, it's maybe an electrical box behind it, and I'm gonna be, because it resists. It resists the screwdriver. And you don't know what's back there, but so far, so good.
Ellen 14:30
But I know the walls really well. I know the shape. I've been there for 12 years. I know the shape really well. I know where big things can go. I know in the windows, big windows on the street, and I know what can go on the side windows because I know where the sun comes in. So, like, I'm not putting photography in one window, but I can put paintings in that window. So, you know, I have to worry about fading and stuff. But the shape of the place and the size of the walls and the height of the ceiling give me the freedom to just sort of play with different compositions every single time.
Matt 15:02
Yeah. Do you have a favorite show or an example that you can talk about where it wasn't just the artworks that you were creating, but you were using the space in a way that you really enjoyed?
Ellen 15:11
Adria Arch, I showed her sculptures, and they were giant freestanding things that you could walk around, and little kids, your grandchildren, Cat, walked under them and through them. And I have wonderful pictures of them peeking out from them in their pink parkas that went with the pink sculpture. That was really fun because it's not a place that I think of for sculpture. But the floor space, and these things were like something you'd see at a crazy carnival or a miniature golf or a circus. It was really bold and lively and moving, and you had to move around it. So the floor space is not much bigger than half of what's here. So you had to make enough room to walk around. But I also love using the windows because it's like a diorama. Each window I can build a world in. I can use the side wall, and there's like a stage, and I can put a pedestal and have things going on in the windows. And for her, every single inch of the space was in motion. That was a really good one.
Ellen 16:10
And then Martha Chason-Sokol had a show of her and Joe Caruso. That was another match made in heaven. They didn't know each other. She makes stuff with old hairdryers and kitchen pots and pans and tape and bubble wrap. And he was doing these sort of big, folky Mexican mask type things with black and white and bright colors and things that were freestanding and things that used pantyhose as an element, purple pantyhose. He had taken apart his aunt's apartment and he found a lot of art supplies in his old aunt's apartment. But that was really fun too because you had to walk around stuff. And in that show, an older woman, I think she was close to 90, but she had been a dancer and it was winter. She came in in this big camel hair coat with leg warmers, pink leg warmers, and this sort of dancer, skinny little body. And she saw this one sculpture that was pink tape, bubble wrapped, sitting in a chair, and it looked like a figure, but it was sort of ballerina-ish. And she just stood in front of it and she danced with it. And I got pictures of her. It's on there on Instagram someplace, but I got pictures of her dancing with. I never met her before, but Joe knew her. And she walked in and she said, Oh, look, and she just danced with the sculpture. Things happen I have absolutely no control over. And I just, I'm really lucky if my phone is there and I can get a picture at the right time.
Matt 17:30
Well, that's part of curating the space, the open environment to, you know, it's not maybe a more upscale downtown gallery where like you have to wear, like you couldn't go in wearing that and then be able to dance with it, right? So that's part of the curation of your space too, right?
Ellen 17:46
Yeah. Yeah.
Matt 17:49
How about let's talk more about the matchmaking between people, the matchmaking of combination shows, because that seems to be a key thing for you. So how do you develop those? Is it you're interested in one artist and you're like, well, I don't want to do just them. I need to think of something else. Or is it you see an artist and it reminds you of someone else? Like, how does the idea come about?
Ellen 18:09
Both, both those things. I started the place with a friend, Cathleen Daley, in 2014. And Cathy and I had hung shows together in studios and in different places and juried and that sort of thing. And we had both been in the art world since the 80s in Boston. So we knew a lot of different people from different sides of the art world in Boston. And we could put shows together drawing from people we knew or had taken classes with or had been juried into shows by. That's when it started. We realized that, like Ellen Wieske, who used to run Haystack and was a metal artist and did wonderful metal work, but she had these grid-based things that weren't jewelry and weren't sculpture, but they hung on a wall. And the shadow of the grid was part of the piece. But they were big. They were like 24 by 24 and they weighed a ton. And it was backed with wood, and she hung it. It was like hanging a 10-pound thing. And Cathy had been in a program at MassArt, a low residency master's program, and one of her advisors was Katherine Porter. So Katherine Porter is a big shot in New York and all over the country and in the world. There was a huge show of hers at Brandeis in the 80s, I think.
Ellen 19:20
So we got the two of them together and thought of it as grid-based work because Katherine's abstractions were grid-based. And the opening of that show, the people, the big shots who came for Katherine Porter and the jewelry makers and the craftspeople who came for Ellen Wieske came together in what was his name from this old house? Yeah, Norm. Norm was married to a friend of Ellen's who's a potter. So the Norm people came and then the George Nick people came who were friends of Katherine Porter. So we had the extreme wide, high-low element clash of all the guys in flannel shirts that were standing around Norm to talk to Norm. That was really funny. They didn't come in those flannel shirts knowing Norm was going to be there, but he found his people. And your son got a job from it. So the connections that were made.
Ellen 20:21
And that was, just to put things together, to come up with ideas of putting people together and artwork together, when I go to a gallery or a show or a classroom or wherever I'm seeing work, it's like I've got a file in my head. My memory stinks, but I got a file in my head of what I've seen and what goes with what. My sister's really good at that. Like my sister and my mother could match shoes to clothes without a sample. They could say, that's not the blue, that's the blue. I want shoes for this dress, that's the pink. I can't do that. I have to give myself it's blue with some green in it and maybe a little yellow. But they could just do that. I think there's just a visual, what goes with what. And it's like putting a garden together. When you put a garden together, you go high, medium, low, but you want the colors and you want, and if you know what you're doing, you get from nothing, from seeds and twigs, you get a thing that becomes a full thing. And it's the same with putting things together. It's just sort of I'm collecting, I'm always collecting imagery in my head. And now with the phone, it's just filling up my phone.
Matt 21:23
Yeah. And how long does it take you to put an idea together? Like what's the longest idea that's been developed in terms of putting together a show?
Ellen 21:32
It can be a year, it can be more than a year. There's a show coming up at the end of this year that I started collecting people to be in, that might be two years. It's a show called Graphic Communication. And it's going to be political and non-political with graphic novels and political signs and political cartoons and some paintings and posters. And I think there are 10 or 12 people that I've contacted. And every couple of months I send out another email saying, I'm still interested. We're still gonna do this. Here are the dates. And some of them get back to me, some don't get back to me. I hate being ghosted. I just hate being ghosted. And so I will bother people until they give me an answer. But yeah, I think two years, two years is probably the most.
Ellen 22:19
And I've been doing it on my own since 2020. And it was interesting doing it during COVID because I could put shows up, but I didn't know if anybody was going to come. Lynn, you came to all of them. But I would put it out on Instagram and I'd get a lot of reaction. Every now and then somebody would walk in. This was during the beginning of COVID when we didn't even know if we could breathe outside without dying, you know? And people would come in, we'd have a limit of six people at the most, masked. But people would come in and they would say, I'm too scared to go to the MFA, but I need to see art. And that was like, oh, you're comparing this to the MFA.
Ellen 22:56
But what I've learned over time is there is a point to making art, to showing art, to having art, to being around art, especially in times like this. We're so stuck in a world that's gone crazy and out of control, and we can't really do anything. You know, I know some people who talk to spirits, I know some people who pray, I know some people who have nothing to do with anything. But somehow or other, seeing art elevates the human spirit. And people recognize that more now than ever in my life. I mean, people use those words. And to be able to do that, it gives me purpose and meaning and feels like I'm not wasting my time and just playing and, you know. But what I've done to make the hard things fun in the gallery, like making the posters, writing the paragraphs, writing the statements, contacting people. I've decided everything is an art project, and I like art projects. So it's all fun.
Matt 23:55
Yeah. How about kind of pulling that together, how about theming across shows? Do you think of a whole year of shows, or do you think each show is individual? Do they interact and have a conversation? Do you think about that?
Ellen 24:08
That's a good question, Matt. I don't think of all the shows. People propose shows to me too. And we work together. Sometimes people come up with a whole curated group that they've been looking for a place to show, and it just happens that I can fit them in or there's a slot to do this. This show came together in a year, but it's a short show because I had already planned for the fall. I'm booked into 2028 now. I'm not gonna say how old I'm gonna be in 2028, but it's really old and not gonna quit. I'm not gonna quit. I'm just gonna keep doing it and have that be the thing that stays in my life because it's really important to me.
Matt 24:45
Yeah. Was there anything else on this topic of curation broadly that I haven't asked about that you wanted to get out there before we open to questions from them?
Ellen 24:54
I think when you told me you wanted me to talk about curation, what's really interesting is this is one of three talks on curation within five days that's happening within what, five square miles? So the one at the library last night, and then there's one at the Harvard Museum on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. And I'm thinking, why? Why all of a sudden is this an issue? And why are people thinking about this? You tell me. I don't know.
Matt 25:22
Yeah, well, for me, I mean, I wasn't thinking about how I was fitting into the grander scheme of conversations, but I mean, I think I said it to you in my email back. I think curation is, with an overwhelm and oversaturation of just everything in the world, that curation is becoming more important with everything and just in terms of making sense of things. So what you're doing is making sense and giving them meaning and purpose in your place. So yeah.
Ellen 25:45
I think of everything in terms of curation, even when I'm doing the dishes and I'm putting the dishwasher together, it's like low, medium, high. When I put my bowls on the shelf, it's like a landscape in my shelves. You know, it has to be just right. Nobody's looking in. I live alone. Nobody's looking at this, but it's important to me. And, you know, the tall glasses can't be in front of the short glasses. Everything has to line up in there. And that's curation. Even the laundry. When you have a pile of laundry and you see, hey, wait a minute, I never thought of putting that with that. I can wear that together. And it takes laundry to figure that out.
Ellen 26:19
There was somebody, I think he was Dutch, online the other day that was a guy who organizes everything. Have you seen this guy? There were videos. There were leaves that had fallen off a tree, and he was separating leaf by leaf, it wasn't Andy Goldsworthy, it was some other guy, and he was dressed in a suit, the pink leaves, the red leaves, the gold leaves, and he made these perfect with his feet, you know, just knocking him into a line on a lawn under all the trees, perfect rows. And then part of the video is this guy coming by with a leaf blower and then blowing them all away. But he also photoshopped or something. He took people at the beach, picture of people at the beach, and he separated all the blue umbrellas and all the people in red and all the people in the water. And he just made these things. He took Japanese writing and divided it up into rectangles. So there were this many this way, this many this way, this many. And it was so satisfying to me that I finally realized, yeah, it's OCD. It's got to be OCD.
Matt 27:14
Yeah, but clearly you're finding a lot of joy in this looking at the world in this curatorial way. I don't know, is there anything that you think the average person should do more of in terms of having that curation mindset?
Ellen 27:26
I think just noticing, you know, just noticing and not letting things happen like LED lights everywhere. We have to have some opinion about these things. And we have to realize that they're affecting us. The mall up in Burlington, the outside one that has music playing outside, who's that for? You know? Yeah. And that's the other thing. When you're affected by things in the landscape, oh, you got me going. When you walk by a house that's doing a wash and the smell of detergent or fabric softener is coming out to the sidewalk, to me, that's the same as somebody smoking in front of you. It's like, why do I have to breathe that? You know, why do I have to breathe their choice of smells? So that's curation.
Matt 28:08
Well, any last thoughts before I open up to questions? I'm sure there'll be some questions here.
Ellen 28:13
I have no thoughts.
Matt 28:14
Okay, great. Well, does anyone have a question for Ellen about what we've been talking about? All right, I will come back. Here you go.
Speaker 28:25
Ellen, I could listen to you talk forever. I absolutely love your stories and I love how you talk about curation. And I hate myself for asking this question, but I'm going to ask it. Because as a business owner, longtime business owner, how do you factor the business piece into it?
Ellen 28:41
The rent is cheap.
Speaker 28:43
Bravo, my friend.
Ellen 28:46
And we do sell things. It's always a surprise. I've got a little charge machine. I have to remember to charge it up, that little square. I have to charge it up. Oh, we might make sales. The show that we have up now, his work is for sale, the photographs. They're photogravures, they're engravings, they're etchings. They're going for $1,700 and $1,900, but he's also selling books. So he sold a couple of books. But yeah, no, the rent is cheap, is the answer.
Speaker 29:12
So you are not factoring that into the shows you're bringing in or the artists you're bringing in.
Ellen 29:17
I forget to factor that into.
Speaker 29:19
Well, again, bravo.
Ellen 29:22
I started this business when I was 65. So I had finished with the work and the money stuff.
Speaker 29:29
I was curious just about before 65. What came before the gallery? I have all these questions.
Ellen 29:36
My first degree was in painting from BU Fine Arts. I graduated in 1970, and my first job was washing dishes at the Blue Parrot in Harvard Square. And I thought, well, maybe I should get something more. So I went with a friend from Boston to Seattle, and I went to the University of Washington and got a degree in art teaching and teaching certification. They had a special year and a half program. There were only five or six of us in the program, and they had practicums all around Seattle for practice teaching. It was part of the university. It's very, it's very commingled there, which is great. I had to take elective courses. I had to take crafts and elective art courses and science courses at the university to get the degree. I worked with people whose books I had read with Ramona Solberg and Patti Warashina. And it's like, whoa, I knew who they were. I was from Boston. I knew who they were. And I got to work with them in small classes. So that was great.
Ellen 30:30
So I came out with a teaching degree from K to 12. And I'd been in Seattle for two years. And at that year, 73 or 74, they decided to cut all the art programs from all the schools. So I moved back here to the town I grew up in out in Western Mass and got an apartment down the hill from where my parents were still living because I couldn't live with them now. I couldn't do that. But I got immediately five jobs needed an art teacher. And I was the go-to person to teach the art after-school programs, night programs, at the Jewish Community Center, in the Hebrew school on Sunday morning, and substitute teaching in all the schools around. And then I got a permanent sub-job for a few months in the school where I had gone for junior high, in the art room that I spent most of my time. So I taught there for a while and then I moved back here and I had teaching jobs, also sort of part-time teaching jobs in a lot of different places.
Ellen 31:26
But I was also painting and I was also showing. And I had a gallery that I showed with on Newbury Street for about 12 years and I sold a lot. That was an income stream. But it was mostly teaching that I was doing here. And some, when I would get into shows in different places, I was showing in a place in Vermont. I was showing in a place in Maine. I was showing in a place on the Cape. So I was meeting a lot of other people and finding other connections. But teaching was fun. And in the past few years in my studio, I've had adult students and children students together, working at the same time together. Just people who have come in and badgered me to teach. I said, No, I don't do that anymore. No, I don't want to do that. Come on, come on, come on. So yeah.
Speaker 32:08
Where does your work show now?
Ellen 32:10
That's a good question, Barbara. Thank you. I'm in a lot of public collections: Hebrew Home, Hebrew Senior Life, New Bridge on the Charles, Dana Farber. Fidelity has about 20 of my pieces. I've got a big show coming up next year at the St. Botolph Club. I'll have about 30 pieces there, I think. They have a sweeping staircase that they can put a lot of work on. And the St. Botolph Club is a fancy Boston Arts and Letters Club that's been in existence probably for 500 years. And they just let women in in 1988. But my professors at BU used to talk about it. They used to go to lectures and they had shows there. So I feel like there's this full circle thing. One of my professors is still alive. Maybe he'll come to the show. But it's like this full circle of now I know what they were talking about. So that'll be the next one. And then I'm going to have all this work that better not all come back to the studio because it's going to really be a mess.
Speaker 33:06
You say you have a poor memory, but your whole talk has just been this rich telling us about all of your connections and your memory of connections. So it's really exciting to hear you remember all these things.
Ellen 33:24
Thank you, Lynn.
Speaker 33:25
So I just wanted to say thank you.
Ellen 33:27
Thank you. Uh no, my short term is what's. Long term, yeah, I'm good at that.
Matt 33:33
If it's art-related, you remember it?
Ellen 33:34
If it's art-related, I sometimes remember it. Yeah. Visually, I can remember. It's really hard to remember the names of artists. I can remember an image that I've seen. And if I'm really lucky, I'll meet the person who did it. And I won't remember their name, but I'll say, I really love that pink thing you did that was like this. And they, you know, they're happy with that. It's okay.
Matt 33:54
They'll accept that.
Ellen 33:55
They'll accept that. Yeah.
Speaker 33:57
As you know, I'm a frequent visitor and also have collected a lot of wonderful things from your shop. One of the shows that I liked very much was people's sketchbooks that was curated jointly with Annette Winters. Did she approach you about that or?
Ellen 34:12
Yeah, Antoinette Winters, I've known her for a million years. And she had this idea. I mean, we had work there from people I had never heard of or never met before, but she was willing to do the curation for that show. And it was actual sketchbooks, Boriana who's here. Boreana was in that show. It was actual sketchbooks, large, small, and in between. And her husband, who was a model maker at Hasbro, made shelves for each book that was going to go on the wall. So the shelves came off the wall like this. We had white gloves so you could look through the sketchbooks. I don't think we sold a thing from that show, but it wasn't about that. Oh, yes, we did. We sold two sketchbooks by people from Gateway.
Ellen 34:56
So, and they were fabulous. I think, yeah, we sold two of those, which was great for them and great for us because they were disabled and they were the people that weren't the professional artists who had been doing sketchbooks all their life. So that was really cool. And it was such a range of work. There was really fine, extremely realistic stuff. And then there was this wide open, abstract stuff. John Guthrie from Gallery VERY had a graph paper sketchbook that was huge. That he did what looked like mechanical drawings for his sculptures in them. And there was somebody else who did tiny little things. That was a really great show, Sally. Yeah. And you've been a wonderful visitor. So have you, Lynn. So has, all of you have.
Speaker 35:39
What's coming up in the near term?
Ellen 35:41
Oh, okay. The next show, which is October, right until before Thanksgiving, is two artists who used to be Boston artists. They're married. They moved to Florence, John Anderson from the Sculptor's Gallery, and Laura Chasman, who showed with, I don't know where she was, but she does wonderful, wonderful work. And Laura was a painter who's now doing sculpture. And John is a sculptor who's now doing painting. So they've never shown together before. And the show is called Switch. And that's the next one. And then the Graphic Communication is the one after that. And then next year, there's a couple of duos coming in the spring.
Ellen 36:20
And in June, this is interesting. He approached me for this June, and I laughed. He approached me in January for June. And I said, Are you kidding me? I've been booked for June since last June. Todd Danforth, who's a young man whose family was one of the people that founded the Danforth Museum. And I've introduced him to the curator, and now they're a match, an art match. Anyway, he's been going around the country taking these large-scale photographs of gay couples who were the generation that was the first gay people able to be out. And he's calling it Gay Elders. So I know some people that won't let him take their picture because they don't want to be called elders.
Ellen 37:06
But he's got famous artists that you've heard of from Santa Fe, people from California, people from all over the country. And Rick Berlin here, I was able to hook him up with him because Rick's an old friend. But he's gone all over taking these portraits. And for Pride Month, he wanted to have his show in the gallery. And I thought it was a great idea. We'll work on that together. We'll figure out what size. I don't know if they're all going to be the same size. We'll have to figure out how we're going to hang them, how many to put up. We'll be thinking about that in a few months. And after that, I don't remember what's a year from now in the fall, but I'm booked. It's all on paper.
Matt 37:40
Just we didn't talk about it earlier, but you kind of mentioned some of these shows that might have these activist themes to them. How did that come up for you as something that you wanted to have in your gallery?
Ellen 37:51
I get solicited by people to do demonstration posters and to take part in things. And unfortunately, my hours are Thursday and Saturday, one to four. So during every demonstration, I'm at the gallery. I mean, the ones that happen in Watertown, I'm able to be there in the morning, but I'm working at the gallery. So but I want to participate and I want to speak out and I want to have a way of communicating the thoughts we all have. So it's just been something that how do you fit this in and how do you work it? I mean, I'm not afraid to show my partisanship. And if you don't agree with me, you don't have to come over, and it's fine.
Matt 38:29
Any other questions?
Ellen 38:31
That's Leslie. She always has a question.
Speaker 38:35
I don't really have a question, but I have a comment. I've known Ellen since she, almost since she started the gallery. And I'm from New York and I'm very New York oriented. And when I go to look at art, I usually go to New York to look at art. And I have a bias that, oh, that's real art. But then when I got to know Ellen's gallery, I don't know. I was like, at first I was a little taken aback as to how good is this? And now I'm so enamored. She is so smart. And she picks work, a lot of work that I never had seen, I didn't know, you know, was in Boston. I mean, it used to be that you went to Newbury Street to see art and that's gone. And SoWa doesn't have a big variety either. And I think Ellen is like the cream of the crop here. And I'm just so grateful that you've persisted and continued to look for new people and put them together in such a meaningful way.
Ellen 39:34
That's Leslie. She's a wonderful painter. And I knew her artwork before I knew her.
Speaker 39:40
You did?
Ellen 39:41
Yeah.
Speaker 39:42
Oh, I didn't know that. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 39:46
Thank you, Leslie.
Speaker 39:47
I think we all agree about that.
Ellen 39:49
Thanks, Diane.
Matt 39:55
Great. Well, maybe we'll end it on the praise here, though.
Ellen 39:58
I thought this is good.
Matt 40:00
So well, do you want to tell people where they can find out more about you and your artwork and also the shows that you have in your gallery?
Ellen 40:08
You don't need to find out more about me. Come on over to Storefront Art Projects, 83 Spring Street in Watertown, Thursday and Saturday, one to four, and get on our mailing list and get on our Instagram page, and you'll see things that are happening over there. Thank you.
Matt 40:24
Well, thank you for sitting down to chat and thank you all for being here as well. And thank you, Mosesian Center. Thank you, Doug and Arsenal Financial. Thank you, everybody.
Ellen 40:32
One more thing. Matt, this is the third time I think I've done a podcast with you. He's a kid, he's a guy, he listens. He doesn't have a list of questions. He's in conversation and he follows up on things. Congratulations.
Matt 40:52
Thank you. Alright, we did it.
Ellen 40:55
Thank you everybody.
Matt 40:57
So that's it for my conversation with Ellen. You can find out more about her gallery at StorefrontArtProjects.com. And if you'd like to hear more podcast episodes, including all the previous Creative Chats, you can head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. There you can find all the episodes, upcoming events. You can sign up for my weekly email newsletter if that's your type of thing. And if you'd like to help support the podcast, keep these conversations going, there's a support local conversation button in the menu where you can sign up as a Little Local Friend at any amount that's comfortable for you. Alright, I want to thank again the Mosesian Center for the Arts for hosting the Creative Chats series. I also want to give a thank you to Arsenal Financial, the series sponsor for Creative Chats. Doug Orifice, that's his financial planning business here in town. And he's a very involved community member. I’ve talked about him many times on this show, about how involved he is and how great he is. So if you need help with financial planning, reach out to Doug and his team at ArsenalFinancial.com.
Matt 41:55
Alright, I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. I want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at WatertownCulturalCouncil.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition. Their motto is Community is Our Business. Find out more about them and their events at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused on my newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
