T-Gallery

A flyer is passed around the class, and left in our studios. One is posted on the bulletin board. One taped to the freight elevator door. "Submissions are being acceptted for exhibitions to be held at the new T-Gallery". Located in the hall of the MFA eighth floor studios at School of Visual Arts. The gallery is a shelf placed on the window ledge between the studios of Artists,Vivian Massry, and Saskia Jordá, it is their brain child, "born during casual conversation, and while having tea over the shelf that was being used temporarily as a support for our teacups One artist, get's to exhibit their work for one week. Saskia and Vivian hung the shelf passed out the flyer's and made an announcement. The shelf sat empty for a week, then two passed, the concept of the T-Gallery didn't quite catch on, there were no submissions. One night I was in the studios making preparations for the installation of "The Temporal Restore". I had taken the paint rolls out of the box where I had stored them after disassembling Studio Paint Rolls. I saw the empty shelf and thought I would see how the paint rolls would look displayed on it, I experimented with several arrangements until I was satisfied that the rolls made the most of the shelf, and the shelf complimented the rolls. I left for the night not knowing whether Vivian and Saskia would be happy with the gesture or angry that I didn't make a proper proposal.

The next day when I saw, I don't remember which oneof them or if it were both, but there was a warm reception at the installation and a cheerful thanks. We had an opening one afternoon and it was a hit, there were plenty of requests to exhibit at the T-Gallery to keep it running through the Fall and Spring semesters of the school year.
The School of Visual Arts Galleries accepted a proposal for a retrospective of the twenty participating T-Gallery Artists + 1 to be held during the Summer at their Westside Gallery. Vivian set up a website for the retrospective as an archive of the T-Gallery alumni and their exhibitions it is a quite electronic record that for twenty weeks, twenty artist were given an invitation to
"experiment with new ideas on a small scale without the academic or formal gallery setting pressure." Those twenty Artist of which I hold the honor of being the first, lent their Art and gave their all, each making their own statement, some small, some pushing the ever expanding boundary of the space around the shelf. all unique.
What has become of the shelf that lent itself to us so that we could expression or Art?
For the retrospective in the westside gallery I paid tribute to the shelf and built it a replica of the window. There it hung for the duration of the retrospective once again graciously providing a forum where I could display rolls of paint. After the exhibition I removed my Art disassembled the window and it was adopted by a classmate in Bed Stuy, there I reassembled the window and attached the T-Gallery shelf, there it resides to this day.

I want to Thank Saskia and Vivian for providing an opportunity for us all to use our Art to participate in something which made us feel like community.
also for providing some of the images for the use on this website