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This article appeared
in BrassRing Campus.
job alternative:
art gallery owners Iain Muirhead and Amavong Panya run a hip art gallery
by Sarah Jersild
Iain Muirhead and
Amavong "Ammo" Panya created the art gallery NFA Space in 1996, soon after
graduating from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. What started
out as a place to show their own work has become one of the rising galleries
in Chicago -- and Iain and Ammo are still just 26 and 25 years old. Iain
and Amavong talked to BrassRingCampus about how a couple of painting majors
with no business experience decided to take on the art world.
How did you start
up NFA Space? Did you just get together and say, "Hey, let's start a gallery"?
Iain: We saw a lot of great work that we thought others
should see, and we were more organized than anyone else, so we ended up
putting together the shows.
Ammo: But we never planned on opening a gallery. It just
happened that way. We never said, "This is our first step to becoming
gallery owners."
Did you face any
resistance when you were starting up?
Iain: Some people in the industry were very skeptical …
because of the age thing. A lot of people equate age with experience and
ability, so they were always waiting for us to fail. But that made us
underdogs -- not as much was expected of us at first, so we were continually
able to surprise people.
This started out
as sort of a side project for you. What made you start thinking about
running the gallery as a business?
Ammo: One of the first things that got us really moving
in that direction was when we moved to this space and had to get liability
insurance. That pushed us into becoming business owners.
Iain: It got to the point where our core interest and the
demands, both in terms of the administration side of things and our passions,
were at the gallery. It was just a question of how to make it work. ...We
had to supplement the gallery business with furniture restoration and
contractor work, but soon the art services jobs expanded.
How did you make
the jump from day job to working for yourselves?
Iain: It helped that first we had had decent pay at Gallery
37 [their original day job] -- we had enough money to cover the basics
and still pour money into this place. But there was a lot of personal
expense, too, and a lot of buying things on credit cards. There's not
much savings involved. We still pretty much live paycheck to paycheck.
Ammo: But I don't think living paycheck to paycheck
is that bad or unusual. Getting out of debt is everyone's problem.
How long do you
think it'll take before you're in the black?
Ammo:
Probably within two or three years.
Iain: Yeah, in essence it's about five or six years from
when we started.
Your name started
out as standing for "Not F*cking Around." Has that ever been a problem?
Iain: It became an issue when we filled out the lease agreement.
… I didn't want it to put us in the position where business people would
be judging us based only on what's on paper. Coming up with different
variations [it can stand for "New Fine Art"] gave us the option of not
being pre-judged.
Ammo: It's like me and my tattoos -- I want to be proud
of them, I want to show them off because they are a part of me. NFA, not
f*cking around, is a part of us. And that's still our attitude. But we
came up with alternatives to lessen the blow on people who had never met
us before. It's still in our mission statement, though.
Iain: Also, the definition of our name has changed as we've
changed -- it can also be "Necessary Few Alternatives," because we're
an alternative to the traditional space.
Ammo: It means several things, and it can change daily.
Why did you decide
to go the for-profit rather than not-for-profit route?
Iain: We believed very early that artists need to be self-sufficient
-- especially artists dealing with ideas not suitable for mass-consumption.
We think art is a viable career option, and that understanding the business
of art is part of the growth process.
Was "the business
of art" covered at all when you were in school?
Iain: I wish it had been. I think it's necessary
for any art student to get an idea of the business -- it's just irresponsible
not to get any idea of the business at school, especially when the school
is asking you to fork out $80,000 on an education that you're not going
to be able to pay back. We should have been shown how to write an artist's
statement, how to price our work, how to do our taxes … but none of that
is required or even taught. It's absurd -- if they taught some of this
stuff, everyone wouldn't have to go through the exact same trial and error
that everyone else has gone through.
What advice would
you give someone coming out of school with a fine arts degree?
Iain: I'd tell them that if they're a painter, paint --
just get used to making it is a part of your daily routine. Also, I'd
tell them to get a lot of books, or take a business class, because even
though a lot of it is common sense, even the most basic stuff was like
divine knowledge to us.
Ammo: I'd also tell them that nothing is instantaneous.
When you get a fine arts degree, whatever you do is going to take a while.
NFA Space is located
at 119 N. Peroria Street, Chicago, Ill.
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