So now that
we established that love of art is the first motivation for starting an art
gallery, the second step is to find a space.
Since this is
a small business, fully funded by our savings, to start with, we could not
afford an expensive lease.
So the
solution was our home basement and that didn’t sound very appealing really.
Basements are
dark places, covered with the dust of centuries, where things you don’t really
want, hide for the rest of the eternity.
All the opposite
you need for an art gallery.
Art needs
light. Naked light.
Basements are
also a cluttered, chaotic department of our psyche, where air is trapped,
ghosts dance and shadows remain.
Lots of
secrets live in these low worlds of our homes and our minds.
So all in
all, our basement was not exactly that welcoming and inviting.
However, it
had three saving graces: it was big, it had a nice curved set of stairs that
sail you down and, most important, we had nowhere else to put our pictures.
We persisted in
the fascinating adventure of recovering the sub-world.
The task of rebuilding
this underworld was beautiful. Subterranean spaces are also full of divine
knowledge, with clear water streams and treasures.
There is also
silence. Isabel Allende, Chilean writer, says that “life is a big noise between
two abysmal silences”. In general, we all live in this big chaotic noisy world.
In the
process of recovering the basement, we also achieved a certain kind of self-transformation.
When you clean your underground layers, changes start happening. Some state of peace suddenly covered our lives;
the rest was painting, plumbers and electricians
“Canvas white”
was the paint selection for the walls; ceiling lights were cleaned, inspected
and repaired; furniture was donated and sold; clutter was removed, not hidden somewhere
else, but put in the best place they could be: away.
Suddenly we
had a huge, beautiful, bright, quiet space, both in our house, and in our
lives.
A space of
serenity.
“Art has something to do with the achievement of
stillness in the midst of chaos”
American author Saul Bellow
Next Post: Chapter 3: Our Business Plan (a very
bizarre one)
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