Gallery 24 +The Overcast = A Merge Made in Heaven

The Overcast has big plans this year, and it’s first new venture is our exciting partnership with Gallery 24, who said yes to a merge after Hillary closed the Gallery’s physical space on Casey Street last month. We’re both looking forward to Gallery 24’s new vision of expanding its horizons and operation online.

Who is Hillary Winter?

Hillary Winter is the founder of Gallery 24. Her involvement with arts education and advocacy led her to sit on the Board of Directors for Visual Artists of NL these last three years, serve on various exhibition, grant, and award juries, become a member of the NL Craft Council and the artist-run Eastern Edge Gallery, and serve as an Art Editor for Riddle Fence magazine.

Hillary holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Memorial University; after receiving her degree, she founded a not-forprofit artists’ collective called Pick-Me-Up, where she was President and chaired the Board of Directors. Pick-Me-Up was a 20+ member Artists’ Collective that boasted multiple group shows across the province, large-scale performance pieces, and the execution of multiple artist-run workshops

What is Gallery 24?

Gallery 24 exists to give vibrant local artists a way to make money off their work by offering them a wider audience. It also provides local art lovers with easy access to relatively affordable art.

Last year, thousands of locals voted at the polls for The Overcast’s “Best of St. John’s” issue. Gallery 24 took first place as “Best Thing to Happen in Visual Arts This Year.” An enthused demographic or two also rallied up enough votes to crown Gallery 24 as the “Best Art Gallery in Town.”

Over the course of the last year, Gallery 24 held more than 10 group and solo exhibitions in their former physical space on Casey Street. In addition, Hillary created a slick and easy to use website that allows people to buy prints of the originals from all her exhibits, as either a rolled-up print, or as a framed print. There are various framing options available.

With a few clicks of a button, you can have a rolled-up print or pre-framed piece of art ready for pickup, without the hassle of going to get it framed.

Here’s a link: http://www.gallery24.ca

Its Founding Vision Will Remain 20/20

Winter says she found she had been “meeting more and more artists whose work didn’t seem to have a place commercially in the city: the content was a little more non-traditional or they were emerging and were unsure of how to break into the market.”

“I also found a lot of new art buyers were looking to outfit their homes and collect some original and/or local work but couldn’t afford the price tags at the larger galleries.”

And so Gallery 24 was born. Winter’s first four artists were Jennah Turpin, Candace Fulford, Kathy Oke, and Benjamin Allain, followed swiftly by signing up Ashley Smallwood (creator of Snack Paintings), Noah Bender, Kyle Bustin, and Patrick Canning.

For an article in The Overcast, Craig Francis Power was quick to say that Hillary’s gap-filling vision is “vital to an emerging generation of the province’s visual artists.”

“It also goes to the heart of how visual culture has developed in Canada: independent artists and curators who begin making and/or exhibiting work either in their own homes or refurbished commercial spaces in a way that is nurturing and collaborative with the local visual art community. It’s the definition of grassroots.”

The merge simply means The Overcast will be helping to promote Gallery 24’s artists, including raising awareness of new work by these artists as it becomes available on Gallery 24, and The Overcast will also provide a physical space for pop-up sales in a variety of ways in the future.

Post-Merge Plans: An Unprecedented Way to Buy Local Art in All Its Forms Including … Clothes and Pillow Cases?

It’s 2016, and everything is online now: you socialize there, you shop there, you even look for love on there. For the time being, Gallery24 is following suit and has gone entirely online.

You can visit it directly via Gallery24.ca, or find it through TheOvercast.ca two ways: click the sidebar ad, or, the dropdown menu tab labelled, you got it, Gallery 24.

There will be some of Gallery 24’s previous artists on the website this month, and the roster will grow in time. The exciting part of this merge is we intend to make it a threeway by partnering with local screenprinting company Living Planet.

In addition to being able to by an original or a print you enjoy by a local artist, you may soon have the option to have that print on other mediums, like t-shirts, tote bags, pillow cases, stickers, etc. It’s much like Society 6 or Threadless, but using only images by local artists.

Gallery 24 artists will be free to decide if they want to have their prints available in these mediums or not. It is a sleek and simple website: every artist has their own tab. Click on an artist’s tab, and you’ll see the work they currently have available, and in what mediums it is available in.

What Artists Will Be Available on the New Website?
Maybe Yours … Apply Now!

Any local artist can apply to be included on the site. There will be a panel of adjudicators (Hillary and two other artists), and an evaluation process, to ensure new artists are in line with brand standards like quality and non-traditional work that is a good fit with other Gallery 24 artists.

Once approved, Gallery 24 will create a profile page for the new artist. Gallery 24 will take a small commission to keep the train running so its artists can earn money off their work in a hands-off manner through the website.

Future Physical Space And Pop-Ups?

Whether at a new Overcast HQ, or at an existing venue downtown like Rocket Room, we plan to launch a monthly Overcast Variety Show, the first week of every month, that has people from 3 different disciplines showing us their stuff: a researcher at MUN talking about their research for 15 minutes, a 15-minute musical set from a songwriter of note, a quick stand-up comedy set, a reading from a new local novel, a local chef showing us how to make a dish with rabbit (stick around for samples!), etc., etc.

It’ll be similar to the city’s existing, fabulous “Words in Edgewise” series, but will differ in that they’ll focus on people showcased recently in The Overcast: if the article piqued your interest, come see the subject in the real world.

We want to make local culture more visible and accessible to the paper’s readers who aren’t in bars after midnight, or attending lectures at MUN, and so on. Reading about something in the paper isn’t quite the same as hearing and seeing and connecting to it live and in the real world, tapping your toes or nodding your heads.

If/when this goes ahead, Gallery 24 will have pop-ups at these events, featuring works for sale from some of their artists.