New Directions 2022…

by Denise Marts

Dear Friends,

It’s that time of year at MARTS MODERN when we’re reflecting on events of 2021 and starting to look ahead to some new and exciting projects for 2022. This year featured the opening of the first MARTS MODERN gallery of contemporary fine art in La Conner, Washington. It’s been great, great fun and way more work than we bargained for punctuated by a 1.25 hour commute each way! Incredibly, it didn’t whip us, so onward!

We’ve met so many new people from all over the country who come to visit the growing art destination of La Conner. We’re excited and honored to be part of what we see as the beginning of a second wave of a developing art movement in La Conner that was seeded in the first half of the last century by the Pacific Northwest mystic school of painters that included world renown artists such Mark Tobey, Morris Graves and Guy Anderson.

La Conner reminds me of Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico in so many ways. Though different geographically from the desert southwest, La Conner shares common modern art roots with Taos and Santa Fe that are grounded in an ineffable spiritual connection to Native American culture. In fact this connection is what first drew me to La Conner after two decades of traveling to New Mexico. Indigenous art and culture from around the world played a central role in the development of modern art in both Europe and the United States. Similarly, it has been key to my own development as an artist. I hope to share more about this part of my process in the coming year and beyond through gallery shows and events.

While on the one hand artists strive to create artwork with substance, we must also constantly remind ourselves that when art takes itself too seriously it becomes dogmatic and loses its power to entertain, inform and uplift. My eye toward gallery projects for 2022 therefore insists that they have a light hearted element of fun as well as artistic substance. In the interest of not taking ourselves too seriously, we are excited to announce a soft launch of a new MARTS MODERN brand in 2022 that will include a line of playful but sophisticated furniture, home decor items, textiles, clothing and jewelry. With the exception of jewelry, MM brand items will feature exclusive works of contemporary art applied to unique substrates beyond traditional canvas and paper. In keeping with the fine art focus of the gallery, brand items will be bespoke, made to order pieces issued in signed and numbered limited editions of no more than 25. At our discretion special editions may be less than 25. Our goal is to adhere to a “produce only what we sell” model in keeping with a desire to implement a sincere and effective sustainability policy that emphasizes creative innovation, originality and quality rather than quantity. In keeping with environmental sensitivity is something we consider of equal importance. That is a human centered mandate. A human centered mandate strives to keep structures and operations scaled to a reasonable human size, fosters a creative work/play ethos and sources materials and labor from artisans and human sized organizations and communities. To us, a two pronged approach of limited production with a human centered mandate is a post pandemic necessity and welcome return to sanity.