Denver-based lawyer and part-time artist Joanna Hogrefe found a unique way to combine her career and her passion while viewing some of the finest art in Italy.
“Relatively recently, I had an epiphany that art hasn’t progressed much as an industry in last 100-150 years. It has not kept pace with other industries, other art-based industries,” she said.
Hogrefe decided to create Tempestuous, an online art gallery that launched in March, to give artists a chance to showcase and sell their work online and participate in some pop-up gallery events across the country. But what makes the venture unique is the legal counseling Hogrefe is committed to provide to artists along with selling and showing the art.
Hogrefe noted that a lot of artists don’t have the legal or economic background necessary to pursue issues such as copyright infringement, but she will be able assist an artist who might have had an image used without permission or even just go over contracts.
The online gallery will have a new featured artist each quarter, and artists will have no sign-on fees to get their art on the website. This quarter’s featured artist is Jay Johansen, a successful contemporary artist specializing in graffiti-like portraits of women. He was also recently featured in Artexpo New York in April.
“Tempestuous represents an emerging channel, and the emergence of this channel has been facilitated by technology, specifically social media and the whole virtual scene in the art world,” Johansen said. “I think any artist would be remiss in not exploring her concept.”
Hogrefe acknowledges she’s still figuring things out when it comes to algorithms she’s come up with for promoting work to different markets, but has promised to give feedback to artists on why she believes pieces may not be selling. Original work at the gallery goes for between $3,000-$10,000 on average and artists keep 70 percent. Tempestuous will keep 80 percent of the profits of any print of a piece sold online.
Shoppers can also join the League of Tempestuous, a monthly membership that gives customers a chance to earn credits toward buying a piece of art at a pop-up event or from the gallery. The membership runs $39 per month.
“I want to be a trusted brand in art and people to know they are getting high-quality art,” Hogrefe said.
While the concept of online art galleries has been around for more than 15 years and many successful brick and mortar art galleries have websites and will sell online, the idea of a fully online gallery is still not popular with many in the art world.
Metropolitan State University of Denver assistant professor of integrated media Matt Jenkins has seen some of this shift toward online art galleries and thinks that the legal side of things is a good idea and useful to many artists, but noted that many who run brick-and-mortar galleries don’t like the online galleries.
“Creativity has definitely been awkward in terms of copyright laws. I can see how that would be attractive to artists,” Jenkins said. “The internet is still a relatively affordable space, it can reach a broad audience.”
Johansen, who has three galleries, said that some gallery owners are fearful of the conflict between the in-person and digital worlds, but he also believes that brick and mortar galleries are here to stay.
“What Joanna is doing, what she is setting up and putting into motion, is a very successful business model,” Johansen said. “She is passionate, she loves it, it’s from the heart, but it’s also a business. The concepts are sound.”