Free Agent: Is it time to open your own gallery?

An interview with artist and educator Lisa Rybovich Crallé about her decision to open a new gallery called Personal Space in Vallejo, CA

This week I talk with Bay Area artist and educator, Lisa Rybovich Crallé. Lisa is opening a new artist-run space in Vallejo, CA called Personal Space, so I thought this would be a great time to hear from her.

Some of the themes we go over include carving out a fair, or more fair, division of labor for artists in the context of a gallery or institution, the strength that comes with being self-funded as an artist (hey, day job), and what it means to see a problem and solve it with a new artist-run space.

One of the things that has stood out for me as long as I’ve known Lisa is that she is independent as an artist and a thinker. Her projects are often multi-disciplinary and self-contained, despite their large scale, like her ongoing Manners collaboration with dancer Sophia Wang, and the multi-faceted, social practice project Heavy Breathing that she oversees.

Below she talks about why she decided to focus her art career on educating rather than following a traditional commercial gallery path: