Common ground

Bay View’s Spackle Gallery opened its doors in March, with the owners determined to make it a meeting point between the high art and alternative galleries that dominate Milwaukee’s art scene. The gallery is the result of a lot of determination, imagination, and good old-fashioned elbow grease on the part of five young women, all recent graduates of UW-Milwaukee with degrees in painting. They might be longtime classmates, but they don’t necessarily share a defined set of aesthetics. Andrea Larson, Megan Vetting, Katie Perton, Tara Klamrowski, and Sarah Simpson have distinct styles as artists and, as such, bring diverse ideas to the table. They spoke with Decider about the gallery and what they plan to add to the city’s art community.

Decider: Why Bay View?
Tara Klamrowski: There are a lot of new entrepreneurial things happening here. The business community is really wonderful; everybody is really welcoming. So we felt right at home when we moved in.
Andrea Larson: I’ve noticed there are a lot of collectives down here, but it’s all pretty much clothing, so I thought it would be nice to have a different sort of collective come into the neighborhood.
D Did the fact that this building used to be a floral shop have any influence on how you wanted to design it as an art space?
TK: No! [Laughs.] We wanted to get the walls as white as possible.
Megan Vetting: But they were bright red and black and brown. There was this striped border. It was really elaborate.
TK: We put a lot of work into these walls, I mean we patched and sanded—
MV: Seven gallons of paint!
D: So Spackle makes a lot of sense.
TK: Oh my god, yeah. We lived and breathed Spackle.
D: Your first exhibit focused on two-dimensional art. Do you want to expand into other art forms?
TK: I think we all have a secret hankering to do installation.
MV: Once we become more established, we want to take advantage of the lower level of this building. We all have a two-dimensional background, so it’s kind of us needing to get familiar with the jargon concerning the three-dimensional world.
D: Where does Spackle fit in the gallery scene?
AL: I think the fact that we are young but we are taking it very seriously and professionally, and I think we’ve done our homework. We are a place where young people can feel comfortable coming and expressing higher ideas.
MV: We want to bridge the gap. We feel the art scene is kind of polarized here. You have the traditional gallery and the alternative gallery. We want to dissect that and have a traditional, professional venue but show edgier, more contemporary art. And develop a more keen eye to picking out work and looking at work that’s sophisticated and will speak well with the work that’s hanging on the walls.
D: Do you have a set process for selecting the artists that you’re going to show, or is that something you’re learning as you go along?
AL: Originally we said it would be a democracy sort a thing, a vote. But as we go along, we may do more where somebody takes control over one show versus another, like maybe they have an eye for that particular show.
Sarah Simpson: I think we are learning, definitely. It’s a continuing process. We are learning one show to the next how we can deal with the next show and picking out artists and how we want to deal with that process.
MV: We try to keep our eyes open to who’s making work in the city as well, not only asking people to seek us out. We’re open to seeking out artists who we feel are underrepresented as well.