Written by Sara Terrell
Photo by Sara Terrell
While The Butcher on 19 E. Bay St. is mostly known for its tattoo studio, the shop itself is located in the back and cannot be seen from the entrance. That space and the walls surrounding it are the gallery’s territory.
The gallery has been present since 2009, before Jimmy Butcher took ownership of the studio in January of 2011. Jenny Hawkes began working there in 2010 as a receptionist, but more importantly as the manager and curator of The Butcher Gallery. Butcher credits its success to her.
Like Butcher with tattooing, she never planned a career in the curating business, but feels no regrets.
“It’s fun. It’s weird. I love it,” Hawkes said. “If you’d asked me five years ago what I’d be doing in five years, I certainly wouldn’t have said this. I fell into it and just fell in love with it. I had no idea what I was doing when I first started and I learned everything from working with other curators and some artists too. It’s awesome. It’s a ton of fun. I’m amazed every day at what art can do.”
The gallery regularly displays fine art from many local artists in Savannah, including SCAD students, as well as artists out of state. The exhibitions range from photography to jewelry to painting and anything that comes in between. Because it is associated with the tattoo studio, the gallery has been misunderstood as an alternative gallery. Butcher feels strongly about the topic.
“One thing I really want people to understand about us is that the whole building is The Butcher, and we represent a style and an attitude and a feel in general,” he said. “But the gallery and the tattoo shop are separate entities. We’re not a tattoo shop with a gallery in it. We are a gallery and a custom tattoo shop. We are successfully being both, separately. They’re both The Butcher in terms of attitude and feel.”
The gallery’s success has been on a steady incline. They’ve sold paintings and other works in every show they’ve put on. The headcount for those who come to see the exhibitions has reached as high as nearly 300 people at a single reception. And while the space is smaller than some of the other local galleries, Hawkes said that whether or not they have room is not the challenge; the question is whether or not they have the time. The gallery is booked for the next full year, as well as spring and fall of 2015, and each show can run from three to nine weeks.
According to Hawkes, “If the walls are ever naked it’s because I’ve taken one show down and about to put on the next. I’m always busy.”
Rather than charge rental for the space, they work on a 50 percent commission for every work sold during a show. For that they provide the promotion and advertising and cater to the event. Hawkes also hangs and displays the work herself.
“I look at examples of people’s work, and then you work with an artist to put together an agreement that basically says they can bring whatever they want for me to hang. Usually I hang it all,” she said. “Sometimes I have to Tetris everything to where I like the way it looks, but they bring stuff in with the understanding that if I don’t want to hang it in the show or I don’t feel like it fits in, then it doesn’t go up. They know that going in so it’s not usually an issue.”
Pricing on each work varies from artist to artist. The larger challenge is location. Because Savannah is not on the same level or as prized as bigger cities in the world of fine arts, the work displayed is not given the same economic value.
“Pricing is tough because it is not necessarily universal,” said Hawkes. “You can charge an X amount of dollars for a painting if it’s in New York, but you can bring that same painting to Savannah and charge the same amount for it but no one’s going to buy it. Places like New York, L.A. and even Atlanta you can charge those sorts of prices.”
Otherwise, the appraising is left entirely up to the artist, some of whom are current students.
The Butcher puts on a senior show for SCAD students who need to place their work in a gallery before they graduate. They handpick the work submitted to them for exhibition in May.
“Every year, most SCAD seniors depending on their major have to do a senior show somewhere and we started working with them, probably even when it was One Nine,” Hawkes said. “Because they’re always looking for galleries like, ‘It’s May, and I need a gallery now!’ We just started doing some senior shows in May every year.”
This year’s senior show, titled “The Three Muses,” is all-female, featuring the art of Tremain Farrar, Stephanie Meyer and Michelle Willows. It will be up May 9 to June 8.
Butcher credits The Butcher as it is today to Hawkes’ effort, and she doesn’t appear to be giving up curating any time soon.
“I love it, I love everyone that works here,” she said. “I love the shop, it’s my baby. I love Savannah.”
