Tracy Baylor of Clarke Art Consulting had the opportunity to talk with Shane Pomajambo, owner of Art Whino Gallery and curator of G40: The Art Summit, one of the most influential art exhibitions to hit the streets of Richmond, Virginia (RVA). The exhibition will add more credibility to RVA’s applaudable efforts to transform its Downtown into an art district by presenting works by well-know street artists from around the world.
Image courtesy of Art Whino Gallery
Image courtesy of Art Whino Gallery
TB: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the Art Whino Gallery?
SP: I grew up in Queens, New York and followed the break dance-graffiti scene there. I [left New York and] moved to Virginia to earn a Master of Architecture. While in school I discovered Doze Green, a break dancer from back in the day, had started selling his artwork in galleries in Los Angeles. This peaked my interest again to see how the break dance -graffiti scene had changed. That is when I found out about the new scene going on in California, it emerged from the skateboard scene. I would buy a lot of the art, or as much as I could afford. I eventually ended up on a lot of email databases for galleries in New York and California. [From the emails] It seemed like every weekend there were exhibit openings, and I became a little frustrated that the Low Brow Washington, DC art scene was still underground. So in 2007 I started Art Whino Gallery to fill a void. Five years later, 42,000 people signed up for Art Whino’s newsletter and 25,000 joined its social network outlets.
TB: What is the success behind the gallery?
SP: For Art Whino Gallery to be successful, I needed to be bring attention to Washington, DC. So I had do two things to set it apart from the galleries in New York and California to make it unique. The first thing was to work with over 1,500 artists worldwide, while most galleries work with a stable of 10 to 30 artists locally. The second thing was to do the event LARGE, which re-introduce unique large productions again [similar to those executed during the past break dance-graffiti scene in New York] because it draws a lot of attention. Continue reading →
