What had seemed an arresting piece of abstract art immediately came alive in the black light's glow. The painting seemed to exist in wholly different planes, as if you could walk right into it with only the anticipation of what might be on the other side to keep you going.
This painting - 6 feet in diameter - wouldn't have fit in the Bridgette Mayer Gallery a scant year ago, before the gallery closed for a 10-month transformation. Major renovations knocked down barriers, taking out the one-bedroom apartment that awkwardly cut into the gallery's space. Mayer had opened her gallery at this location 10 years ago, then bought the Washington Square building five years later when she was 31. The recent renovation was a very expensive, time-consuming 10th-anniversary present to herself.
"It's an investment in the [Philadelphia] art scene in a way," Libby Rosof, co-founder of the locally based Art Blog, said of the gallery, which reopened in November. "It's an investment in the city."
Some might say that merely surviving a decade dealing abstract art in Philadelphia, selling pieces from $1,000 to $100,000, forever in the shadow of art capital New York, was success enough. Not for Mayer. She wants her gallery to be part of the international art conversation. She wants other galleries here to be must-stops for artists like McGinness. And she wants Philadelphians - us - to respond to this art. To appreciate it. Understand it. Welcome it. And buy it.
Dig deeper, and Mayer reveals details of her past that hint at why she's so driven: She was born into poverty in Jersey City, N.J., to an alcoholic mother who would sometimes leave Mayer and her two sisters alone for days with little to eat. The girls were in and out of foster homes but eventually adopted by a family that had only sons and wanted some daughters.
