Filling in the Spaces
Swimming in the deep end of the gallery world.
By Cat McCarrey
No one expects a shark to be five foot ten, with the curves of Mae West and the gams to match. And a shark shouldn’t have a perky red pixie cut and blue eyes with a touch of the devil. But Judith Rinehart, 33, fits that description. At least in the tumultuous waters of the art world, an ocean where taste and beauty and greed typhoon, but which Rinehart slices through with grace.
Pots and pans bang in the background while I’m talking to Rinehart over the phone. She tells me she’s preparing for her annual murder mystery dinner, cooking and setting up tables in her studio apartment. “I’ve always had fun creating but not really doing anything serious with it,” she says.
Rinehart’s artistic touch funnels into events, parties, her home. Her innate appreciation for artistic creation goes into her work as manager/gallery director for Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle.
In college Rinehart floundered, a self described “dabbler.” “I did a lot of sketching. I took art classes. I did craft classes,” she says, rapidly ticking through her artistic history. “I dabbled in clay, I dabbled in pottery, I dabbled in stained glass, and drawing, figure drawing, skull art drawing, I dabbled in watercolor.”
Rinehart appreciates art, loves the process, but knows what this world is about. She’s the woman born with steel through her spine, the lover of beauty and patron saint of the practical. Rinehart worked all through school to support herself. Performing in a variety of phone and retail jobs, her shark-ish tendencies became apparent.
“I have this skill where I can sell anything, I’m actually a really good salesperson,” she says. She has convinced the most pragmatic person to fall hopelessly in love with landscapes carved out of book pages. She’s part snake-oil salesman and part call girl. She bats those baby blues and shimmies up to people, clad in her impressive array of vintage A-line dresses, and next thing you know there’s a bump in the gallery bank account.
Basically, Mad Men’s Joan has nothing on the sweet savviness of Rinehart.
“The glass acts a bit like honey,
where it will just drip and fall…”
—Judith Rinehart
Rinehart’s uncanny sales ability is partially rooted in her language. There’s poetry when she describes the gallery’s art, and an effortless in-the-know attitude when she describes the process of connecting with the artists. It’s a perfect storm, an amalgamation of unbridled innocence of motive (making the art appear more pure) and savvy insider (minus the snobbery).
When Rinehart elaborates on the gallery’s two current exhibitions, her voice picks up a manic excitement. It’s intoxicating. Listen to her long enough, and artistic process becomes the most fascinating thing in the world.
Listen to her describe “The Art of Drawing,” a collection by Seattle local Etsuko Ichikawa:
Suddenly, there is nothing more lovely or graceful than Ichikawa’s art. I want one with all my bones.
Contemporary art is a difficult sell in this world. It lacks immediate visual appeal, it lack concrete style. It can be freedom, it can be beautiful, but often only on intense examination.
“Art is the narrative of any given culture,” says Rinehart, describing why modern art is so arresting. “What we’ve noticed in the past twenty years is that art has become about the individual, who made it and who they are. So that really reflects our culture of the most important thing is the individual. Be that good or bad, it is a reflection, and it shows that in art.”
Art is not just marks on paper, it’s not just a block of color on canvas. It’s showing us the concerns of society.
Or so sells Rinehart.
“He had done those in bronze years ago,
but they just look so much better in glass”
—Judith Rinehart
Rinehart’s power stems not just from her personal interest, but from an intrinsic bloodlust when it comes to sales.
“Art is a commodity, people buy it, people sell it. People forget that,” she says. And as the one pulling all the strings, Rinehart is well-equipped to illuminate the mechanics of the complicated art world.
With Ichikawa, Rinehart had known and admired her art for years before pouncing. Ichikawa joined Winston Wächter’s stable of artists after her regular gallery shut down. In Rinehart’s presentation to the gallery owners, she took into account the growing amount of shows Ichikawa had scheduled, the amount of sales resulting from those, and the pure name growth over the years.
With Winston Wächter’s second exhibit, “Narratives in Glass,” Rinehart used her insight to bag two art stars. There’s Dustin Yellin, whose mixed-media figure collages serve as half the exhibit, who’s the kind of Brooklyn artist who dates actresses. Eric Fischl’s paintings “sell for millions,” according to Rinehart, but she decided to spotlight his work with different mediums, focusing on his three-dimensionally layered scenes and glass mock-ups of earlier statues. “The glass figures are just gorgeous,” says Rinehart, “He had done those in bronze years ago, but they just look so much better in glass.”
Whenever Rinehart crafts exhibits, or press releases, or curates art for a customer, she keeps the bleeding heart of humanity in the business. “The artwork I’m collecting and investing in is work that I’ve met the artist, I care about the artist” says Rinehart. That attitude keeps her from becoming the ultimate cynical art-slinger. “I see them doing something important.”
So Rinehart forged her own art pool. Ever the tenacious hybrid, she embodies the beauty of creativity. She’s the canvas, made up of bits and pieces—the unbridled aestheticist, the cutthroat salesmen, the enthralled artiste.
