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By David Gordon

Bird Dog Arts opened. I would like to say, “finally”, but the time went by so fast that “finally” was not a word I would use to describe my feelings on July 1, 2021, when 150 people arrived. The work that went into our first night of business was so constant, that I never sat around pining away for opening night. I did not have time to wish it here. In fact, I would have welcomed another week. “Finally” was more frightening than relief. It came at us like a runaway train. It was going to happen, and it did with more love, support, surprise and enthusiasm than I could have ever imagined.

Bird Dog Arts opened. “Now what?” went through my mind, goes through my mind, is my mind. We have a mission. It was the driving force that got us to opening day. Before July 1, it was implemented through construction, agreements, and artist recruitment. Now the mission must be carried out through public awareness, branding, posts and sales. That requires time. Time is something I like to control and with the build-it phase, I had a great deal of control. With this new type of time, I do not, and it is not something that is to be controlled or tamed. 

Bird Dog Arts is open, a concept that will stay constant unlike the past tense of opened. There is a huge difference between the two.  Open means, accessible, passage, ready, welcome. It means Bird Dog Arts welcomes guests to share in our creative bounty. We hunted work. We have made that hunt available through the opening of doors and the commitment of keeping them open for as long as it takes for consumers, especially those that have never been invited or had an opportunity to take part in the art of collecting.  With that, it takes artists who have never been invited to be collected. It required Bird Dog Arts to be open to new artists, new works, new definitions of art and those that create it.

Bird Dog Arts is open. Open to actions and reactions, open to an entire world of visitors who have their own ideas of what it means to be creative, to be an artist, an art appreciator, an art consumer. We will meet them with open minds, open ears, and open hearts. Bird Dog Arts opened, but now we are open.

Realizing, I had miles of internet to scour to find artists who would be at all interested in collaborating with a guy from Bakersfield with the crazy idea to open a gallery in an outlet mall. It helped that I declared this was not a scam! I must admit, it did take a while before I began getting responses. With the responses came their stories. Each time I hung up the phone or closed the video screen, I sat with each artist’s journey, success story, even heartbreak that followed their expression of appreciation for being considered for Bird Dog Arts (BDA).

We would set up a call or FaceTime and once I finished my honest BDA’s sales pitch, artists opened up about their lives. They shared about being gay in college, growing up in a small town, length of marriages, sometimes length of their multiple marriages. I heard about how terminal illness required art to deal with pain and loss. I spoke with an animated painter who built a factory that made her pins to raise money to battle homelessness. I met a beautiful lady, who while painting outside during covid, set up live video streaming music for folks walking by to view and tip the musicians.
I am not saying that artists are the only people that feel or have a story. Everyone has a story to tell, however, not everyone finds how to tell it.

What I am deducting from this experience is, those that hear what we at Bird Dog Arts are doing agree it is brave, exciting, risky, and frightening. BDA is putting itself out there in the middle of all sorts of dangers and unknowns. The artists that have come onboard, I believe, have overcome the same very thing along their journeys. They tell me what those experiences have been and still are and how, they too, made success out of risk, out of fear. The artists want to join our gallery club and it seems that the initiation is a tale of self, of their journey thus far to Bird Dog Arts. With this being the first step in our relationships, I welcome the future with honest open arms.

Well, that depends. On what? The simple answer is everything. It depends on everything at different times, at different intersections, depends on different effort levels, but mostly depends on those who believe in the “it” itself, which I do. No choice now since I left my job as the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Kern back in January, a job I was secure doing.

When I was first introduced to the idea of opening a fine arts gallery in the Central Valley, twenty-five miles south of my hometown of Bakersfield, in the Outlets at Tejon, I lit up with ideas. There was nothing weird about it to me. The arts always made everything prosper. Coming from the nonprofit art world, I never turned down an opportunity that might, in the slightest, benefit artists. This was a whale of an opportunity. In fact, this whale had beached itself at my feet begging to be pushed back in as a solution to the outlet market. I thought, what a fantastic idea, so did Tejon Ranch as did my two new partners. With the shaking of hands, pre-covid by months, I left nonprofits and jumped into the deep end of the for-profit art world.

Will it work though? Will people stop to buy art? Will they accept the concept of buying art at an outlet mall? I found comfort that it was backed by Tejon Ranch, which in and of itself is larger than life. My two partners have experience with fine art in shopping malls with one in Vermont which was doing ok despite the Covid disaster. The leap from Vermont to California did not intimidate them, so why should it me?  I trusted them.

The idea was green lit fast with the consensus that one retail space was not big enough. It had to be huge, 11,000 square feet huge.  I was assistant director of an art museum that was only 17,000 square feet. One space was not going to cut, this creative venture needed room to stretch out, so it was decided to join three retail spaces and make one whale of a gallery. Perhaps bigger than anyone had done before in California and do so during a pandemic. Is it going to work? Well, we are working on it like it is. The drop ceiling came down yesterday so too late now. Everyone I have told seems to think so, at least that is what they are telling me. I believe in it, with the “it” being art.  Art has been my entire life. It has always worked for me so why would this time be any different? Will it work? Yes, it will work.