Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Valerie Mann. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Valerie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, let’s take a stroll on memory lane, back to when you were an apprentice or intern. What’s a memorable story from that time that you can share with us?

I went to college in the mid 1980s. Women professors were few and far between, compared with today. I had a female painting instructor who really invested in the female students, encouraging us to elevate our game by example. The summer before my senior year, she offered a dual apprenticeship/internship to me and a fellow painting student/one of my best friends. We spent part of the day being apprentices to her and her fellow studio-mates. (Several artists shared a warehouse floor in Chicago as their studio.) The other part of the day, we were interns for a well-known gallery in the River North area. This experience gave me perspective and set the tone for reaching a hand out to fellow artists/students. I have carried this with me in my career as an artist, college professor and gallery owner. At the time it didn’t seem like it would have the large impact on my life that it has.

Valerie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been a working artist for over 30 years. About 15 years ago, I was teaching part time at Adrian College – at the same I had been coordinating an artist lecture series at Saline District Library for about 8 years. I had scheduled several members from WSG Gallery to be a part of the lecture series and knew them just from crossing paths in the artist community in the Ann Arbor area. The gallery asked me to become a member and I was honored to be among this group of heavy-hitters. Becoming a member of the gallery meant that I had jobs associated with making the business successful and selling not only my work, but the work of 12-15 other artists. I am a business co-owner with these artists. We work to help collectors build their collections, to help new art buyers find pieces to start a collection and to help corporate collectors and small businesses purchase art that makes their workplaces an interesting environment.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Our gallery has been around for coming up on 25 years. Not a lot of galleries can say that. Because we are artist-run, we have 14 people who split up the workload. This helps tremendously, as we have a website we build, social media, graphic design, ePublicity, reception planning, shows to install, schedules to manage and more. Galleries usually only have a few employees, and that laundry list of jobs can be daunting, when you’re also doing sales and being interrupted.

When the pandemic hit, we had just installed a new exhibit. We never opened it to the public. Instead, we had to close our storefront, move all of our equipment (including uninstalling track lighting) and store it in one of our members’ studios. We didn’t know what was going to come of our gallery, but we were dedicated to meeting weekly via Zoom and training up on Squarespace for a more robust website and to really do eCommerce (which we were only half-heartedly doing before).

I think because we had a common goal, which was to keep our gallery together and find a new space to open, pandemic permitting, we came out stronger on the other side. We found a better gallery space that was more affordable and put us in a position to not be chasing rent every month, but to do some long-range thinking and planning.

We all learned so much! I had 85 year-old gallery members learning how to build their Squarespace page – talk about resilience!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

This answer builds a bit off of the answer to the question of resilience. We have always conducted our business with honesty and with the goal of maintaining dignity for artists/collectors and just patrons visiting the gallery who are looking and not buying. We show artists who are serious and professional, but also sometimes artists who are serious and just starting out and dedicated to their artistic practice at the highest level.

Keeping a stable of artists who are at their highest game and deeply involved in building their practice and the quality of their work helps us continue to build our reputation as one of the best galleries in Southeast Michigan.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wsg-art.com/
• Instagram: @wsggallery
• Facebook: WSG Gallery

Image Credits
photos courtesy: Valerie Mann, Michelle Hegyi, Takeshi Takahara, Cathryn Amidei, Monica Wilson,