By JASON BOOTH
Staff Reporter
There is nothing like a near-death experience to offer some perspective on what’s important in life.
When Patricia Correia was diagnosed in 1990 as having muscular sclerosis, a degenerative nerve disease, she swore if given a second chance she would fulfill her dream of owning a fine-art gallery.
She got that chance when it was discovered that she was not suffering from MS after all, but chronic fatigue syndrome, a treatable sleeping disorder.
The following year, Patricia Correia Gallery opened on Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice.
The gallery, which has since moved to the Bergamot Station Art Center in Santa Monica, represents 20 artists all locally based.
Prices for the artwork average from $3,000 to $7,000, she said, placing her in the mid to low range among L.A.-area galleries.
“Because we show younger artists, we are more affordable and can work with younger collectors, people in their 30s,” she said.
Her customers range from individuals who fall in love with a particular piece of art, to wealthy art lovers looking to decorate their homes, to serious collectors looking to develop a portfolio of local talent.
Correia says show-biz executives and talent are among her best customers. Dustin Hoffman and Michelle Pfeiffer are among those who have bought pieces, she said. Her corporate clients have included securities firm Smith Barney and design firm Gensler & Associates Architects.
After a rough start, the gallery has seen business pick up in recent years in line with the recovery of the local economy. Revenues rose to around $350,000 in 1997, up from about $300,000 in 1996.
Correia is projecting revenues of around $400,000 this year. “Technically speaking, last year was the first time we made money,” she said.
The improvement in gallery sales parallels an upturn in the local art market brought on by the the growing perception that Los Angeles is a breeding ground for cutting-edge fine-art talent.
Correia typically displays two artists at a time, with exhibits lasting for a month. Eight shows are held per year. The work of more-established artists is displayed in the main gallery, while that of lesser-known artists is displayed in a smaller room.
The gallery retains 30 percent to 50 percent of sales, with the artist getting the rest. Besides paying rent for the city-owned Bergamot Station space, Correia incurs the expense of employing two people to help arrange shows, answer phones and do paperwork.
While the local art scene is healthier today than a few years ago, Correia does not expect prices to spiral out of control as they did a decade ago.
“I think people now have a different sensibility. They are more cautious. Anyone who was in the market back then will now think twice before buying,” she said.
Correia has an advantage over many gallery owners in that she has a strong business background.
In 1974, she and her brother Steven V. Correia founded Correia Art Glass, a Santa Monica company specializing in hand-blown glass art. By the mid-1980s, Correia Art Glass works had been planced in the permanent collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
Correia said the majority of gallery owners in L.A. have a second income, often from working for a museum, or scouting art for the collections for corporate customers. In some cases they are independently wealthy.
Running a gallery as a sole source of income can be tough.
“It’s exceedingly difficult,” Rutberg said. “The best way to run a successful business is to be as pedestrian as possible. But that is the antithesis to how you run a gallery. You have to have a cultural conviction.”
Not only is business tied to the ebb and flow of the economy, but the irregular nature of securing works from artists and the fluctuating tastes of buyers.
“The erratic nature of purchases makes for poor cash flow,” Correia said. “Galleries go bankrupt right and left.”
Correia is not surprised that Los Angeles is finally being taken seriously as an art center. The sheer number of top-flight art schools such as Otis Art Center, Pasadena Art Center of Design, California Institute for the Arts and UCLA create a breeding ground for artists.
“We have the best art schools in the nation. We’re churning out a lot of artists,” she said. The recent opening of Getty Center also has attracted the interest of international art dealers.
Still, Correia estimated that less that 1 percent of artists ever make a full-time living in the trade. She pointed to a cardboard box in her office full of portfolios of artists hoping to be discovered.
“I’m not accepting any portfolios, but I seem to get them anyway,” she said. “Artists wait until the receptionist goes into the back room and then sneak in and leave their portfolios at the front desk.”
