Art Is Not Eternal: Two Vaults = One Burial Crypt

Two Vaults: from $1,000 a night to $10 a night. Courtesy of Two Vaults Gallery.

On June 1, Two Vaults Gallery died. “There’s lots of people coming in,” mourns owner Paula Tutmarc-Johnson, “it’s just that people aren’t buying. It used to be we’d have a thousand-dollar Friday, a thousand-dollar Saturday. Now we’ll have the same amount of people, but we’ll sell two or three art cards. They still want to see the art, but they won’t buy. I haven’t sold a thousand dollars in four months. For the past year I’ve been going back and forth: Oh, if you stop now, you’ll feel like a loser, a quitter. No, you’re saving yourself from financial ruin.”

“It’s really a bummer,” says Angela Jossy, whose Art Bus stops at Two Vaults on the monthly Artwalk. Jossy also runs the shoestring Speakeasy Arts Cooperative, which just got a second lease on life (through October) and hopes to start a handcrafts street market on Farmers Market days. “Maybe they should start a co-op like ours,” says Jossy.

“We tried that,” says Tutmarc-Johnson. Only six artists agreed to try a co-op, and twenty-five were needed. “They said, Paula, if it’s not selling with you sitting there, why would it sell with us sitting there?

At the other end of the financial spectrum, William Traver, whose glass-art collectors include Elton John, confirms that local art is facing hard times. “We’re closing Mondays and Tuesdays, and we cut the staff from two to one. If it weren’t for the Internet, we’d be in dire straits.” He thinks of Traver Gallery as “a stage, a theatre for the artist.” The drama is promoted and documented on the Web, which attracts collectors from all over. “If we had to depend on Seattle and Tacoma collectors,” says Traver, “we wouldn’t be here.”

Tutmarc-Johnson is determined to keep a hand in Tacoma art. “I definitely want somehow to be in the art scene. We’ll see what the universe brings.” •