Curated by Seth Pala of Alone Time.
The gallery was full of people from the beginning. When it came time to close, at 8:00 p.m., the gallery was still full, so we let the reception continue. Many of the 27 artists were there and they had invited their friends. That made for a full gallery, upstairs and down.
More often than not, opening receptions at the Chris White Gallery coincide with Art Loop, the first-Friday-of-the-month blitz of receptions sponsored by CityFest, a program sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of the City of Wilmington. That gets people into the gallery but they do not stay long because there are so many other exhibits to see in just a few hours.
Because the Awakening exhibit opened mid-month, on September 20, 2024, the artists and their friends arrived and had no temptation to immediately run off to see more art elsewhere. Most stayed for hours. They stayed because there were so much to see, so much to talk about, and so many other artists to meet for the first time. Also, refreshments were plentiful, though there was little left by the end.
In all, there were 141 pieces of art on display, a record for the number of items shown at one exhibit at the Chris White Gallery in recent years, if ever. With so many pieces to go on the walls, our preparator, Andy Vible, met the challenge by arranging the smaller works in groups of as many as 24 in tight but pleasing configurations. Some artists had as many as eleven works on display but, rather than group each artist’s works together in a single display, the curator, Seth Pala of Alone Time, scattered each artist’s work around the exhibit. That invited comparisons of style and subject. With 27 artists, there was a lot of variety!
Thirteen pieces of art were sold that first night, as displayed below, easily a record for this gallery. Previously the Extranjera/o exhibit celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month in 2023 held the record for sales, six in all from the show, three of which went to Nemours Children’s Health. At the moment, that exhibit, curated by Cony Madariaga, still holds the Chris White Gallery’s dollar record, $3,490 in sales from a single exhibit. This exhibit, with three receptions to go, may break that dollar record. This exhibit sold over twice as many pieces of art as that previous show in part because it had so many small pieces at reasonable prices. It is especially significant that artists bought the work of other artists. As an artist, it is a thrill to have your art go into the home of another artist. It is a validation. Again, check out the display below to see which works were selected.
Click here to learn more about the Awakening exhibit and its three upcoming receptions.
Click here to see the work by Jani Duerr and Seth Pala still available for purchase as of October 2.
The Sold Art
Click on any image to see it larger in a slide show. Once in the slide show, you can use the arrow keys to move left and right. Click the “X” in the top right corner or tap your “ESC” key to return here.
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