Dreams Come True
Nathan hadn’t accepted work from an artist who walked in off the street for so long she can’t remember another time it happened, though she says she’s sure there have been others. If artists, even “outsider” artists, want to get in the door, they send a resume with slides or a CD and a cover letter.
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Crump didn’t crack the selective River North scene entirely without a plan. She’d phoned a gallery there and spoken to a woman who advised her to visit the area and see which places displayed work similar to hers. Crump loaded up her black portfolio and, because she doesn’t drive, asked her sister Camille to take her down to the city from her home in North Chicago.
But while living in hiding Crump came to believe it was wrong for her to hide her work away. “It felt kind of selfish,” she says. “I’m not saying that everyone’s going to enjoy my work, but to whoever does, it’s not fair for me to just have a big stack of pictures and keep ’em. For what? I mean, we’re not here forever.” The possibility of making a living from art was also appealing. “That’s one of the big parts,” she says, laughing.
Crump wasn’t the featured artist at her first gallery show in September 2002, but her work sold well. Since then she’s sold ten pieces at prices ranging from $300 to $1,500. (Through Nathan, she also exhibited at an Intuit show of outsider art in 2003, where she had no luck.) “Ann Nathan said you can’t really start too high when you’re not known. I was fine with that,” she says. “Before, I was just holding on to it for myself and not getting anywhere.” Still, after the gallery takes its 50 percent, and figuring in the cost of supplies, Crump says she isn’t making much. She makes ends meet by looking after two families’ children.
On a related note: Next Thursday, February 5, local gallery directors Susan Aurinko, Ann Boyd, and Byron Roche will hold a panel discussion on “successful strategies and realistic expectations” for visual artists interested in showing at galleries. “Pssst…The Secrets of Commercial Representation” starts at 6 PM at the Chicago Cultural Center.
