We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Keith VanPelt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Keith below.

Alright, Keith thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Has Covid resulted in any major changes to your business model?

The pandemic has primarily taught my business partner and I to be as adaptable as possible. We found it challenging to keep our exhibition schedule on track as covid cases surged and plateaued at unexpected times. We endeavored to communicate with our artists on a regular basis to gauge when an optimal time to reschedule their shows might be.

While we scheduled less frequent in-person exhibitions throughout the pandemic, we amped up our online presence and redirected our attention to online sales.

All in-person gallery visits were by appointment only and we staggered visits so that we never had more than one pod of visitors at any given time. This led to our discovery that appointment-based exhibition visits meant more attention given to our guests and more attention that they could invest in the artwork on display. We have been able to engage in lengthy, in depth conversations with our audience that we previously didn’t have as much opportunity to do when the gallery was filled with visitors.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I am the founder and co-curator of Deep Space Gallery in Jersey City, NJ. I am an artist myself, primarily a painter, street artist and stained glass artist. I’ve always had a penchant for curating art shows — when I was in art school, I’d curate the residence halls with artwork by my peers and when I ran a live/work artist space in Philadelphia a handful of years later, I curated quarterly exhibitions featuring the work of fellow artists and those who I shared studio space with. Once I moved to Jersey City in 2008, I began guest curating at the city’s legendary 58 Gallery and hosted art shows at galleries in Manhattan and Raleigh, North Carolina. During this time, I worked as a carpenter to pay the bills and in my spare time I continued to work on my own art, developing my stained glass practice. I maintained a studio space and exhibited my work at galleries in Philadelphia, Manhattan and Jersey City in solo and group shows. It was when I was searching for a studio space closer to where I lived that I came upon the location where we founded Deep Space Gallery in 2016. The space itself was so interesting and dynamic and odd to me that it inspired me to figure out the best way to use it. Setting up the second floor as a visual art gallery was a natural move for me and using the additional space as a studio and project space allowed me to include my creative peers in the business. My partner and I are very committed to finding ways to pool the efforts of creatives to make a mark on the industry and show our communities what talents we have to offer. What began as a humble desire to promote the profound skills of people I care about became a viable business model, albeit not without a lot of hard work, sweat, dedication and problem solving.

As a gallery, we are committed to serving as a launchpad for emerging artists who don’t get the visibility their work merits. We have a solid online presence and are members of three international online art viewing/selling platforms that gives our local, national, and international artists a worldwide audience and shows their work alongside that of industry titans like Christie’s and Sotheby’s. We give our emerging artists experience working in the professional gallery world, sharing with them industry standards and helping them become accustomed to industry expectations and to know how to protect their own interests in what can be an exploitative arena.

We genuinely love the work of the artists we exhibit and we develop long term relationships with them as we serve as a touchstone in their overall career trajectory.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The number one reputation builder for us has been consistently curating high quality exhibitions. We do that by carefully selecting the artists we work with, thoughtfully setting our exhibition schedule with an appropriate sequence of shows, choosing artworks that sit well with one another in the same space, handling artworks and installation as we would in a top tier, blue chip gallery, and very intentionally laying out the works in our shows for maximum visual cohesion and impact. That’s just the nuts and bolts.

Locally, we have built our reputation among those who visit us, as a welcoming, unpretentious space where anyone and everyone can engage in the “art scene.” Authenticity is a word we hear often in describing the style of our establishment and how we do business. There’s no “putting on airs” here, no pretending we’re something we’re not. What you see is what you get, and our patrons know that what that is, is good art — art that feels fresh, speaks to the moment, says something unique, employs an interesting technique, and all around moves the viewer.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

We open a new exhibition every 4-6 weeks on average. With each show, we usually work with at least one new artist who we haven’t yet worked with or haven’t worked with much yet. Each artist comes with their own following and their own network of contacts in their personal and professional world. Every time someone new is made aware of our gallery through their connection to one of the artists we work with, we have an opportunity to bring them into the fold of art collecting, or at the very least, becoming an art aficionado, a Deep Space fan and a return visitor who may share their experience with others. So really, each new show is another opportunity to grow our clientele. We also do off-site programming, mostly locally, that puts our brand on the map for those not necessarily familiar with us or engaged in the art world. We have also found that participating in art fairs (essentially our industry’s version of trade shows) is a good way to network, meet others in our industry, make our style known, and generally put faces to names. We definitely find that showing up in our community and at industry events is critical to growing our client base.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.deepspacejc.com
• Instagram: @deepspacejc, @tfdutchman
• Facebook: @deepspacejc
• Other: ARTSY: https://www.artsy.net/partner/deep-space-gallery

Image Credits
Ryan-Bock-The-Golem photo credit Roman Dean @rophotoman, All other photos courtesy of Deep Space Gallery