The NYSea Gallery is bringing Seattle art to the Big Apple. An interview with co-founder Bryson Chin.

Image created by Antonio Delarosa as a t-shirt design for the new gallery.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to open an art gallery filled with artists you know and admire? Yeah, me too. As luck would have it, I heard about NYSea Gallery through a random tweet from another online art site. NYSea gallery is going to be bringing Seattle art to the east coast, initially via a series of pop-up shows and hopefully through its own dedicated space in the near future. I managed to catch up with one of the co-founders for a sit-down before he hit the road on his move to the Big Apple. We continued our conversation after his cross-country road trip to kick this whole thing off.

The following is an in-flight sneak peek into how a gallery goes from idea to reality.

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Hi Bryson, thanks for taking time out to talk to me about your vision of the NYSea Gallery.

Of course! It was a generous offer for you to take time to meet with me and help us to get the word out about our exciting concept and plans for the gallery. Your other features were very well done, I hope to be able to provide the same level of absorbing, informative content to your readers.

Aw shucks, thanks. So why don’t you start out by talking about just what NYSea is and what your next several months look like. How are you locating artists that you’ll be representing through this gallery?

The vision for NYSea Gallery is complex, yet simple. To instill some of Seattle’s arts scene into the New York market through creative branding of retail product lines and the infusion of locally known artists into a broader market such as New York. Essentially facilitating entry for newer, less established names into the rigid, closed environment of the NY gallery scene. I lived in NY for 4 years and longed for something that reminded me of home, eventually bringing me back here. I believe that innate desire for “home” exists within all of us. Our niche will be catering to native Seattleites living in NYC as well as introducing native New Yorkers to what our city and the NW is all about.

NYSea Pop-Up show at Black Ink Gallery. Art pictured is Jesse Edwards and Bill Dunlap. Photo by William Smith.

We just launched a skeleton of our site last month with a party and pop-up event in Harlem at a venue called Black Ink Gallery, which is a sizeable space incorporating both tattoo shop & art gallery. I have been hard at work establishing inventory for the eventual physical location as well as for the website. That means t-shirts, limited edition Giclee prints, pendants featuring the work of local artists – by way of Joey & Luke at Desolette.com – and a solid foundation of original works both for display and purchase. We intend to have a pop-up show once a month going forward to promote the brand and the artists we are working with. The events will be designed to be transposed to the site as well, essentially creating an online version of the environment we hope to have established by July.

So who are the artists that you’re working with so far and what’s the response been like so far?

We have worked with a variety of talents thus far in a wide capacity of methods. We’ve worked with relatively unknown artists like Antonio Delarosa who I met through a mutual graffiti friend and designed our first t-shirt, Forte who I found via Flickr who is 15 out of Atlanta, GA. We’ve worked with people like Ouch, of the duo known as OucHops, and Seedr on ‘NYSea’ pieces to be used in an upcoming video campaign similar to the “Seventh Day” project by Known Gallery out of LA. I essentially contact graffiti artists to paint pieces that spell out the gallery name and film the artists as they paint, edit the video, dub over speech with music and upload to Vimeo or Youtube. Simple, effective, entertaining.

Jesse Edwards's piece at the NYSea pop-up. Photo by Bryson Chin.

Jesse Edwards has been monumentally supportive and helpful, he’s someone I look up to and respect enormously, not to mention talented and unique in the art world at large. Bill Dunlap is probably the most “well-known” artist we’ve worked with thus far, his expertise and skill transcend ours and I anticipate learning more from him as time goes on. I think it’s important to note here that while the concept of bringing Seattle artists to NYC is the main objective, it’s not the only one. It would be foolish to limit ourselves completely to artists that fit this very specific criteria and I won’t allow us to do so. Our life expectancy as a gallery would be greatly diminished and our pool of artists rapidly shrunken. I’d also like to mention The Chicken Kid who is both a street artist and phenomenal photographer. He is currently attending art school for Photography in NYC but grew up in the Seattle area, his photos are incredible and regularly featured in Gothamist NY, The Stranger, and various other online and print publications. The prints we made of his shots came out amazing! I have a laundry list of artists we plan to work with in the future, have not yet contacted, have contacted and haven’t worked with, etc. My intention is to keep the list long enough that I will never reach the end, in this case I firmly believe the phrase, “The more the merrier”, to be a fitting credo.

William Smith in front. Most images by The Chicken Kid. Bottom right image Shawn McClung. Photo by Bryson Chin.

How has your own artistic work informed this project?

I have never considered myself to be an artist. I doubt I will ever be comfortable with that label, I would go as far as saying I have artistic tendencies or sometimes produce art, but to say that I have any “artistic work” is a bit of a stretch. Let’s be honest, I’m a little manic, crazy, creative, and enjoy making new friends. Some of the best friends I’ve made are very talented artists and this more than anything has informed how I shape the project. I have been involved with the graffiti community on varying levels since I was 13 years old. That makes over 15 years! Through that community I have encountered many “writers” with severe “traditional art” tendencies and aspirations. This project has allowed me to enable the legitimate side of their creativity and help them along in the quest for a career in the art business. The more time I spend on the project the more it seems it is constructed and formulated around business principles than driven by the artists I work with. If we cannot survive as a business we cannot help anyone.

Scanned copy of 2001 drawing by Bryson, shortly after September 11th. This is on the back of a photocopied page of Milton's Paradise Lost and was stained brown by a roommate's renegade coke spill.

What’s up with the umbrellas?

Approximately 7 years ago I came up with an idea someone will most certainly steal and manipulate into a successful business proposition. That was, to open an umbrella-centric store in downtown Seattle that featured only umbrellas & their accessories; customizable umbrellas and limited-edition artist designed umbrellas, umbrella stands, etc. I conducted a fair amount of research at the time and eventually concluded it was not an endeavor I could afford or reasonably undertake. One of my best friends, Kelli Phillips, asked me (or I forced upon her, I forget) for a life plan maybe 6 months ago now. I had been toying with the umbrella idea for some time and was inspired by the success of my friends at Flatcolor Gallery in Seattle to suggest the possibility of joining the two types of business – an art gallery and an umbrella store. I knew of Kelli’s love for the arts and desire to do something slightly unconventional, perhaps in this area, and she went for it. The idea speaks for itself and should we find ourselves with doors open in July I think will give people an interesting retail/art concept that they will find appealing. So far I have received a lot of fantastic umbrella designs from well known “street artists” around the country, I am also reaching out to more traditional canvas-based artists for umbrella designs and ideas. So far I have more designs than I can feasibly produce and am finalizing a budget for their production as well as negotiating with manufacturers to obtain a fair deal.

I know it’s early on, but what has surprised you the most since announcing you intention to open this gallery?

The most surprising part of this process has been the amount of support we have received from complete strangers. I have been able to find artists via Facebook or Flickr or simply by comparing similarly-focused galleries and contacted them directly. For the most part the idea has been well received. Whether it be for works to display at our pop-up event, or for an umbrella design, or gallery owners answering our research questionaire; people seem to want to help which both fascinates me and inspires me to continue working on the project with little in the way of personal stability. I quit my job to drove 3000 miles across country in 54 hours, had 8 job interviews in 2 days, looked at 6 apartments, invested a significant portion of my income in “an idea”, stayed in a crappy hotel by the Newark Airport for 4 nights, that has all surprised me as well. I think too few people are willing to put their lives on the line like that in pursuit of a dream, it may sound corny, but this is really what NYSea is all about to me, embracing the unconventional and repackaging it in a format that is easy to digest. Worst-case scenario: I can say that I gave EVERYTHING I had to this project because I believed in it and still do.

Graffiti provided courtesy of Ouch One. Ouch did an incredible job freestyling this piece under pressure. Photo by Bryson Chin.

Well I hope that your gambit pays off. It’s been a pleasure getting to meet you and find out about your project. Keep me informed of how it all goes! I hope the next time I’m in NYC I get a chance to see NYSea.

Bryson: To me it feels like I over-compensated for my lack of experience in the gallery world and always had an exit strategy. I no longer have an exit strategy, just a strategy to make this work. I hope to be showing you around our space very soon! We look forward to opening in the month of July, perhaps August at the absolute latest. Right now it looks like we’ll end up in the eastern part of Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

I plan to have at least the first umbrella design out in time for the rainy, windy fall months and will have as my primary goal a famous person, to be determined, photographed with one of the umbrellas. The opening showcase will be a group show featuring works of fine art created by artists that I know have been active in the world of street art in some capacity and further strengthen the NYSea concept. It’s important to me for us to focus on what we know, and graffiti, graffiti photography, wheatpastes, stickers, stencils, these are the tools of a trade I have known and loved for years. This will both allow me to curate from a specific perspective and to maintain a high level of quality amongst the works I select. I think the transient population will be enthralled by the level of skill these hooligans can flex in a contemporary gallery setting, if not, they should be. Thanks again Eric for your time and interest, I hope that I have satisfied your curiosity and not bored your readers into sleep-crying.

No problem, Bryson. Best of luck.

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Tagged as: Antonio Delarosa, Bill Dunlap, Bryson Chin, Flatcolor, gallery, Jesse Edwards, NYC, NYSea, Ouch, The Chicken Kid