Kat Parker
Installation View, Anemones
Marina Adams
Salon 94 Bowery
Gallery Information:
Salon 94 Bowery
Summer Hours:
Mo-Fr: 11AM - 6PM
It was one of those rare summer days when the sun slips behind the clouds and the wind decides to blow just enough so that one can actually enjoy sitting outside. Kat, a director for Salon 94 and a favorite new friend, had come to North Carolina to celebrate her father’s birthday, and I talked her into stealing away for a couple hours at the North Carolina Museum of Art for a visit and an interview. I would have spent the entire day on the patio of the West Building speaking with her about art, music, and the path life takes had she not had to leave for a flight back to New York.
Enter stage right as she begins to tell her story….
Kat Parker: Before my junior year of high school, my parents relocated to London for my father’s job, and I took my first art history class at the American School in London. I went to my first gallery show at Sadie Coles, which was a David Hockney flower painting exhibition and also frequently went to the Boundary Street Gallery, which was up the street from my house, where I saw Richard Wilson’s installation 20:50—with the engine oil, where you walk down this plank and you feel like you’re sort of sinking in an oil vat. I think there was also a Duane Hanson show on view then too. I did not really know about contemporary art very much; I was very into art history but didn’t have a good grasp on the contemporary component of it. That was really my first interest in that, but I had always made art as a child and was very much into photography and printmaking and screen printing. Seeing Tracey Emin’s Turner Prize installation My Bed was also a pivotal moment.
Elizabeth Mathis Cheatham: You’re a drummer, right?
KP: I am a drummer, yes. Or I became a drummer later, somehow. I was really into making art, being in this music scene, really wanted to work at record labels. I went to UNC-Chapel Hill and majored in graphic design and studio art and I had really phenomenal photography teachers, and one of them also owned a record label. She was very involved with the riot grrrl movement of the early ’90s, her and her partner ran a record label out of their home in Durham, the label more or less specialized LGBT musicians, women, women who have been musicians for a long time. They also distributed VHS tapes by amazing video artists and filmmakers like Sadie Benning. I interned for them for a few years and also worked at WXYC 89.3, UNC’s radio station. So I was very involved in music, my family has a big musical background, my brother is a very gifted mandolin player—but I never really played guitar or anything. I started to play the drums when I moved to Chicago and a friend had to store his kit with me.
EMC: Would you say at that time your passion was more with music than art?
KP: I would say it’s always been [more] with music than with art. I never really saw art as a—I always did art, made art. A huge component of what I was interested in doing was I would go to rock shows and take photographs. That was something I had always been interested in doing. It’s quite a huge thing in New York now; there’s a lot of people who do that. I went to Chicago to get my MA in Art Education at the Art Institute and wanted to work at a record label—that never happened, I didn’t know anyone. Instead, a good UNC friend of mine who was working for curator James Rondeau at the Art Institute, referred me to Rhona Hoffman, who has owned an amazing gallery in Chicago since the ’70s (originally Young Hoffman). Rhona had just lost an assistant and was looking to hire someone who knew graphic programs, and I needed a job but it ended up changing the course of my life.
It was such a fun, unusual, enjoyable, bizarre experience working with artists, putting on exhibitions, organizing shows, managing artists, managing commissions, selling artwork that I just stayed. Maybe I was naive or not serious or I did not understand how it was thriving as a real business at first. I was in grad school, trying to finish grad school, had a full-time job. Everybody I knew was trying to find a job after grad school and I was like, ‘I have this great job—I’m traveling, I have a great colleague—who I’m still very close with—a great boss, totally interesting and unusual day-to-day life of working with art.’ It was still also at the time when email was not a huge thing still. People did email, but things were still done in a more slow manner, with slides and printouts of photographs, so things were a bit more slow then. You could kind of really get into something and really enjoy working with art. Not like know where I see people just run around just trying to get it all done.
A little later, my then colleague, Katie Rashid [currently director of Peter Freeman Gallery] and I started a gallery out of her apartment because we wanted to do projects of our own. We knew a lot of young artists who were making great work, and we wanted to show them in this unusual domestic context. Our boss was extremely supportive.
Our first exhibitions at Duchess (what we called the DIY space) was by this female artist, Huong Ngo, the Vietnamese-American artist who I went to UNC with, who I would say was a huge influence on my perspective about women and art-making practices, contemporary artist women who were my age. She now teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is very politically involved—she is extremely outspoken in one of the most articulate manners. She makes exceptional artwork; she has an incredible eye.
We did this gallery for a little over a year and then Katie moved to New York. I got married, move to New York, worked for one gallery, left that gallery, started working for Petzel Gallery in 2011. I started as an artist liaison, kind of was given a group of artists—I loved the program and still do; Friedrich and the partners and other directors were and are still important components of how I interact with art.
Installation View, PAINT, PORCELAIN AND PULP: AMY BESSONE, FRANCESCA DIMATTIO AND NATALIE FRANK
Salon 94 Bowery
EMC: That is one of my favorite things about doing Matrons and Mistresses, that I get to talk to people and learn about artists that I’m unfamiliar with! Like this artist, Huong Ngo, who had such a huge impact on you, whose story I don’t know, and now I get to learn!
KP: I would say at that gallery, the apartment gallery, it was a very even approach. We tended to work with the artists who were our age who had no representation. There were few apartment galleries around at the time— Roots & Culture had just started and [is] still going strong. There were a few young dealers in Chicago like Western Exhibitions and 65 Grand, but not as many as there are now, and I know personally I was just largely interested in exposing a particular group of artists who did not have official representation in the world who would be fun to show. All of the exhibitions were kind of great fun.
EMC: That’s something I have conversation about with a lot of my North Carolina-based friends who are just exceptional artists who don’t have representation. Having had a career working within galleries, do you have any suggestions to them?
KP: I actually don’t. I barely know what to do myself sometimes and maybe I chose not be a professional artist to avoid this! I guess my suggestion—it’s so hard because it’s easy for me to say since I’m not a practicing artist. I mean, I feel like, yes, I am an artist in many ways, and I rely on artists to make a living in a way and they must make a living in order for me to make a living and I understand and respect that reciprocal relationship. I would say that it’s easy for me to say, don’t get too concerned about representation and exposure, but I know that’s not a realistic approach that many people can take. Recognize that everything changes so quickly now and we are a very oversaturated and stimulated society. I would say, maybe be open to other forms of representation that aren’t necessarily gallery based. I know successful artists who have a patron for instance or—
EMC: Or a matron!
Installation View, Salon 94 Bowery
Works by: Natalie Frank
KP: Or a matron! Exactly. Yes, thank you! …Or a company or an advisory firm, web platform? Instagram? Or any element, I think, is something to not shy—I don’t necessarily think that the gallery model is for everybody or long lasting. Especially not now when there are so many other platforms that exist online and just in the world and all sorts of industries. But I wish I had concrete advice with regards to how to access those things, but I kind of don’t. I say just connect yourself with people that really support you—friends, family, whatever that network is. People who embrace what you do. . .
EMC: Who are passionate about the work you’re doing.
KP: People who are supportive of you as a person who will then ultimately be supportive of your practice. That’s how I feel with friends of mine who are fashion designers or musicians or whatever—that’s how I feel where we all remain connected and continue moving and evolving in a way. I would say, maybe my advice would be not to worry about the things that you’re not getting or that are not being brought or presented to you. I don’t know if that sounds…
EMC: No, I think that makes a lot of sense. This openness to having things look another way.
How do you define success for an exhibit, either an exhibit that y’all have at Salon 94 or when you’re looking at an exhibit?
KP: It’s hard to detach oneself with regards to the galleries where I work because I feel like successful exhibits were predicated on if the artist was happy with it and felt like it was a defining moment of their career where they created a body of work that they feel would be remembered and positioned in a historical way with regards to their own personal careers. That’s maybe one thing. Sales, obviously, you can’t pretend that these things don’t matter. That is a defining point of success. Press, another thing you can pretend doesn’t matter but it really does. Exposure is huge for an artist. Some press, good or bad, can mean a lot of things for an artist who may be experiencing a slight slump and hadn’t had a show for a while. But then also, of course, there’s this personal experience you have with a show.
I think the one thing that people shy away from talking about is the money involved. This is an industry like any other industry.
EMC: It’s a business.
KP: It’s a business and I think it’s kind of the most interesting of businesses because it may not move as rapidly as something like the fashion industry or the commercial or TV or film industry, but it moves fast in a way that we’re allowed to place this cultural significance to it. But then maybe that masks the real thing, which is that a lot of what drives certain things is money.
EMC: We first met at an art fair. In just 2019, Salon 94 has shown in five fairs…Frieze LA, Armory, Basel, Frieze New York, and ADAA. It seems like art fairs are becoming so—
KP: I think they’ve always been crucial.
EMC: Do you feel like more are cropping up?
KP: It feels largely the same and it feels like it’s still following a pattern where some are more attended and more popular some years than others. I remember—and I love Jeanne’s [Greenberg Rohatyn, founder of Salon 94] approach to doing art fairs. She has such an open approach and does what she feels is right for the gallery. Every year— people are like, ‘Oh, Art Basel Hong Kong! Everybody attended Art Basel Hong Kong!’ But how do you predict what fair is going to be the hot fair? Read every paper, every magazine, follow every cultural and political trend maybe…And every gallery has a different approach. I think some galleries it’s crucial; it’s maybe the only time they see a particular collector or the only time an artist gets a certain amount of exposure. I think it’s really an amazing opportunity for artists because it gives them exposure to different parts of the world: maybe they would never show there otherwise. Even if it’s in a booth context, I still think maybe it can change the course of their career.
Installation View, Salon 94 Bowery
Works by: Natalie Frank & Amy Bessone
EMC: Absolutely. I think about that with some of the last fairs that I went to. Some of the work that I was really drawn to was from an artist from Brazil or from England, that I maybe wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.
KP: Same with people, too. I would have never met you. There’s countless collectors who I’m close to and people who I would not have known had it not been for a fair so I really value those connections. I mean, the money that’s involved, again, isn’t any different from any trade show or another type of convention but I think that they do have a lot of value… But there’s so many of them. But I feel like there’s always been a lot of them.
EMC: How do y’all decide which artists to show?
KP: That’s largely—well, since I’m still fairly new at Salon 94, it’s a combination of Jeanne and her interests and what she is seeing out in the world because she’s looking at art all the time, looking at art and design constantly. But she’s extremely open to her staff making suggestions. She never shies away from an idea that anyone may have. So I think there’s a slight collaboration to it, but it’s really Jeanne and Alissa [Friedman], the partner, constantly looking at work and at artists and traveling, talking to a lot of people, seeing a lot of artwork in homes and museums out, everywhere in the world. What I like about Jeanne is her eclectic taste; she’s not only into minimalism or only into conceptual or only into decorative— She’s into fashion, she’s into design, she loves music—she is open to so many different types of artists and practices that I think it makes for a really rich and exciting and very successful gallery program.
EMC: When we first met at Frieze, you had recently started at Salon 94. As you’ve been there for about 6 months now, what have been the really lovely, pleasant surprises, and have there been some main lessons that you’ve learned— or I like to call them “opportunities for growth”?
Installation View, Salon 94 Bowery
Works by: Natalie Frank
KP: I like to think of myself as a person who ideally does not know anything and always understands that the way things are done is going to evolve constantly, and I can’t rely on old habits and old systems, to a point. I would say my most—personally, my growing things which are occurring at this new job is—because it does feel fairly new—is I’m learning a lot about mediums that I was typically not as invested in before, only because I just wasn’t getting the exposure. People like Takuro Kuwata, who makes otherworldly ceramic sculptures… Francesca DiMattio, who’s this ceramicist, this brilliant ceramicist! I knew of her work but never spent time with it.
EMC: Who was recently in the show Paint, Pulp and Ceramics…?
KP: Paint, Porcelain and Pulp, with Amy Bessone, Natalie Frank, and Francesca DiMattio. I would say learning about—diving into someone who I already knew about even years ago but never really took the time to educate myself about their practice I think is where I’m seeing amazing opportunity. Similar to what we were talking about before, this idea of the fact that there’s so many things out there that we don’t know about is always helping me grow in a way.
EMC: Seeing this as exciting opportunities.
KP: I also really enjoy working with someone like Natalie [Frank] and watching kind of a career— have these budding moments of really breaking into a stride and into places—She’s going to have her first survey exhibition at the Madison Museum of Art in 2021 and those are moments where I feel like I have so much to learn about how to make that happen or how to help with that. I like working with artists who are not so hugely well known so the possibilities seem more fresh.
EMC: It’s interesting what you said about really enjoying learning about the ceramics and the different mediums. I don’t know if you maybe having been an artist yourself and having more exposure to it than I—but I realized a couple years ago that in my mind, or maybe I had been taught, that there was this hierarchy of art, that paint was at the top—
KP: Oh, completely!
EMC: And then maybe sculpture…
KP: And then maybe photography.
EMC: And then maybe other works on paper, textiles etc. What was so interesting was when I started to realize that those places that I had ranked lower were often times where a lot of women were actually working and had been encouraged to work in the past. I’m so glad I took the time to learn about those mediums because they’re so amazing and fascinating.
KP: And they’re also just historically the mediums that people like Michelangelo were working in and it’s kind of crazy. People that built the pyramids—These are the historic—the mediums that shaped everything else. Painting is only possible in a way because of those things.
EMC: What a good point!
KP: That’s an amazing observation, that yes, these sort of crafty things that you’re talking about, if that makes sense—I’m finding that there are very special things to be found. Historically, especially, the richness of how, I don’t know, that “craft” has come about.
EMC: Another thing I’ve learned being involved with museums is works on paper, fabrics, textiles, etc. due to conservation are on view 6 months and then they’re in the dark 18 months. I think about this idea a lot because if these are mediums that women are often working in, just for conservation, they’re shown so much less.
KP: So fascinating! What a crazy metaphor!
EMC: I can go down a rabbit hole on that one for, like, ever!
KP: You just need to write about that. That’s completely something I never thought about. That tends to be the same with something like porcelain or something that’s a very delicate medium that by nature, people are afraid to expose it because of its delicacy. Oh my God! That’s so crazy!
EMC: So much to learn.
KP: Hmm. What do we even think about that though? Is that just how—Oh my God. That’s something that would never even cross my mind.
EMC: I find that so often, I get some information that really resonates with me and then I like, think about it and think about it, and I realize I’m so much better at coming up with questions than answers. Some of it, I think, is just that you at least see that that exists.
KP: Everything is a question really, and there are no real, concrete answers in a way, with these kind of things. But that is something I had not thought about, even. I will say one of the most difficult aspects of working with art and contemporary art and living artists sometimes resides within conservation issues. It is this never-ending, looming potential problem with all artwork in that it can be extremely upsetting and stressful when you have to deal with it. Because it’s a notion or an idea that something is not completely indestructible, that it’s not going to live forever; that in itself is hard for people to accept when they spend a lot of money on something. It’s also sort of like every artist has a different thought or approach to it, so it can be very personal and emotional for them. It’s very tricky. But that—just to think about something like textiles and works on papers, that really is such a fascinating thing that I’ve never thought about before.
Installation View, Salon 94 Bowery
Works by: Francesca Dimattio, Amy Bessone & Natalie Frank
EMC: It is in some ways the vulnerability of the medium that I am now drawn to. You have the conservation level, and yet there is this life to it…
KP: The fact that it’s not this infallible thing maybe is appealing to you, I don’t know. Solid structure—That’s fascinating too, to consider. I think also as women we tend to have a bit more—we’re more maybe gutsy in our ability to understand that… But I don’t know, I’ve also seen incredible male collectors appreciate the nuances of an artwork being by a woman wherein part of the artwork’s context or aspect was about femininity.
I would completely credit Friedrich Petzel as someone who has influenced my awareness of the importance of elevating female artists on a market level to their male counterparts. I saw countless times how he would work to ensure that the female artists on his roster got the exposure they had worked for and deserved and would openly talk and recognize their undervalue—I think that’s also a big influence is when you have a male boss or a male leader talking openly about these things and working and having his entire staff work towards that same goal. I think that that’s also been—largely has influenced my perception of women in the contemporary art market.
That’s how people like Joyce Pensato, for instance, had this incredible surge in her career after so many years of working, working working all of the time —in her sixties and seventies finally had a lot of exposure and momentum and people paying attention to her. In part because she was such an extraordinary woman and extraordinary champion of herself and the type of person who no matter what happened to her in life, she just kept going with what she wanted and needed to do. But also, she had people who believed in her, including males in positions of power. It’s a weird cycle, I guess. I don’t know.
Installation View, Salon 94 Bowery
Works by: Natalie Frank
EMC: That’s one thing I’ve loved is when I founded Matrons of the Arts and then started Matrons & Mistresses, some of the biggest supporters or people who cheered it on were men.
KP: I think they crave to know more.
EMC: A lot of my guy friends would call and say, ‘I found this artist! Do you know about her?’ They know that this is not anti-male, it’s just that gosh, everything is so much richer when you have more of the story! When you have more voices shared.
KP: Absolutely. There’s not even a full story unless you have more.
EMC: You spoke of making your own art and of your music and of drumming. As you work a full-time job and are so entrenched in the art world, do you find that you are able to make time for your art? Do you miss that now or does it come in seasons?
KP: I think it comes in seasons. Somewhere along the line, I felt like it was a kind of cathartic exercise for me where I felt like if I didn’t do it, it would be like not exercising or not reading for other people... That I wouldn’t be the person that I’m supposed to be. It’s more like something I have to do—I mean I want to do it, obviously, but I definitely have to create room in my life to do it.