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I love the name of the gallery. How is YES a feeling? How is YES feeling?

Oh thank you! Hmmm how did I come up with that ...

I wanted something that felt good saying, over and over. As a person who was socialized female, learning how to say no was an important part of creating boundaries for myself. At 35 I wanted to reclaim the act of saying yes on my terms. And the outcome has been immediate. People ask, “hey can we have a Plateau Artist event here”, I get to say yes. It’s felt really amazing to get to do that. It had really put into physical practice how vital a space is. It’s the first step.

Especially for me as a native person who is white-seeming, it felt like a magic trick to sign a lease in a downtown area. An area my Salish relatives are still living in and have been since the beginning of our time, to “own”, to have access to this area again. It felt powerful.

Like fully knowing that part of my white seeming privilege is I’m sure part of why the process was so easy. Spokane is an extremely racialized city. My relatives still get derogatory terms yelled at them, black friends the same. It can be hostile. So for me I felt like if I have the privilege to get this lease, it’s my responsibility to share this space with my community, and a subversive act.

How is doing an artist-run gallery in Spokane different than doing it elsewhere?

People always walk in smiling. Like, even the electrician who installed our track lighting. He happened to be a painter and makes electronic music. People haven’t really seen a raw art space like ours before. They’ve seen commercial galleries, they’ve seen museums, but they haven’t seen a space that had work in progress, and work on the wall. Although my aim is to always give exhibiting artists as close to museum quality conditions. White walls, clean good lighting, artist statements, regular hours.

There are only a few of us non-commercial spaces. Saranac Art Projects. Kolva Sullivan is another one I can think of off the top of my head. And Object Space.

Especially as someone who grew up here, doing this project here feels vital. I didn’t step into a gallery until I was 18 years old.

If you dream forward ten years what does YES look like?

Oh good question! Systems. So for me, a disabled artist, systems help me best plan for the work that the space is asking of me. Ideally I’d like to stay here at the Steam Plant. Ideally, in ten years, we’re not making work in the space and the whole space is dedicated to the gallery and we have a space nearby as our art studio. We have systems set up for membership, created by the community of artists and patrons who come in our doors, a system for people to propose a show. Funding for every artist who shows to get paid for their show and the ability to be showing artists from all over the world. And a sustainable financing so that we aren’t relying solely on grants for that money. A museum-style gift shop that helps us be able to pay for shipping costs, etc.

I want to put Spokane on the map for contemporary art. I want to think big. I want to write Spokane year-in-reviews, we have to make our own media. ‘Cuz moving from NYC, I really learned why NYC has the reputation it does. It’s a self-sustaining machine. It generates its own original content and writes and publishes about itself. It’s an engine. We can replicate that here but do it our way. And I really also want to look at other rural artist-run projects to see how they’ve adapted to the unique parameters of projects like these.

Brass tacks, I built this space not only for outsider artists in Spokane to show their work to themselves but for Spokane to get the opportunity to see work from all around the world.

What’s coming up this month we can look forward to?

So we got a Spokane Arts SAGA Grant this year and a fellow grantee, a Spokane Tribal relative of mine Diane Covington got a grant to run a year long workshop to increase the visibility of local Plateau artists here. Similar to how you see Coastal Salish and Haida work everyone on the Westside, she said, why don’t we have that here? So the workshops are happening at YES and the first exhibition of works made at these gatherings will be … “Eleven Gatherings” is the project name and the first show will be pop-up style on March 21st.

Also we’ll still have Cody Schroeder’s “untitled lights” installation up that opened last Friday. As much as I can I’m trying to hang work for two months so it’s less turnaround time and physical labor + logistics for me.

Yeah even a two-month turn around is A LOT of work.

It is, it’s one large wall but yes it is.

Haha.

Is there anything else you want to add about YES that we didn’t cover?

It’s an artist’s art gallery. We have a first Friday event here and we started a new thing, “Late Nights” 7–10pm. As working artists we felt it was important to give ourselves the opportunity to go see the work out in the community, and then we open our doors. What we’re noticing is it’s the die-hards—artists, art enthusiasts, and patrons, local professors, art students—all coming to one space and the focus of conversation is staying on the art. It’s becoming an incubator.

And although we could pour wine, we don’t. Seems like when wine is poured the conversation turns to how was your day, but without it the conversation stays on the art. I love it.

So it’s really become a space for more critical arts engagement.

Ha - that’s funny about the wine!

It really is lol.

Maybe everyone serves wine at openings because they DON’T want people to talk about the art.

Hahahahahaa