What is Bear and Bird Boutique + Gallery?
Bear and Bird Boutique + Gallery is a venue for artists locally and around the world. The 700 square foot wood floored loft space is divided into a boutique and a gallery. The boutique features special items that I feel will entice the savvy shopper. Think of it as a 'museum store' of sorts, the contents of which will be curated by me. It will be an ecclectic mix of jewelry, books, clothing, toys, housewares, handmade items and more. Really, whatever strikes my fancy!
The gallery is nothing but walls without all the artists out there! We feature group and theme shows, as well as one-man shows; focusing on up-and-coming artists and illustrators, and hope to keep the prices in the range that people can't afford to pass up! The possibilities of teaming up with so many talented people is very exciting. Officially we going to specialize in "contemporary representational art".
Everything in the boutique & gallery will also be featured in an online store, which will be another new venture for us. I hope to bring our wares to a wider audience through the internet!
What is with the name? Why not just call it TATE'S Gallery?
We decided to create the upstairs gallery and boutique as a separate entity from TATE'S - besides, the name " TATE GALLERY " was already taken! ;-) I struggled with the name for quite some time. It had to be catchy and cute, but not TOO cute. It had to be available as a dot com and I wanted it to evoke some kind of visual element and emotions. I went crazy thinking about it all the time... Did you know that EVERY word I looked up in the dictionary is not available as a dot com?! Even multisyllabic, unspellable long words! We tried to work in the word Tate, but "Gallery DecapiTATE" just didn't evoke the feeling I wanted.
One morning the words "Bear and Bird" just popped into my head. I skipped over to my computer to check and see if the dot com was available. Amazingly it was! My parents have called each other "Bear" and "Bird" as long as I can remember. The reason behind THAT I do not know, I never questioned it. I called them "Mom" and "Dad" after all. But, it works! It is cute and catchy, it has familial history, alliteration and was available as a dot com! Bear and Bird Boutique + Gallery was born...
By the way, that is me with my parents in a photo booth in the 1970's.
I'd like to meet:
Artists and lovers of Art! People who can appreciate and enjoy interesting and unusual objects! Friendly dogs! Talking birds! Bruce Parry and Andre the Giant!
Heroes:
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