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Talking Business: Artist hopes to carve downtown gallery niche
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FarkRapid City artist James Van Nuys has a varied career. He is a painter, sculptor, printmaker, writer and musician. But he's never been involved in the retail side of the art business.
"I didn't have any desire to be a gallery owner per se," he said.
Until now -- or very soon from now.
Van Nuys has rented space at 524 Seventh St., in the Buell Building, and he plans to open James Van Nuys Gallery there next month. He will sell his own paintings, prints and sculpture work.
The storefront space will also serve as his studio. And it will be an informal music venue for Van Nuys and other musicians.
In addition, it's the new home of Faces Magazine, published by sisters Beth Palmer and Ann Henrichsen. They moved their office out of Palmer's house and into the mezzanine of the downtown store.
Van Nuys, also a Faces contributor, said it was a feature story Palmer wrote about him last fall that got their business relationship started.
He agreed to do a painting for her home; she agreed to help him with marketing and management -- "something I've needed all my life," he said with a chuckle.
She suggested that he open a studio and gallery where the public can watch him work and buy his art. Back when she interviewed him for the Faces story, Palmer said, "I was impressed by the way he could talk to people and work at the same time."
The Buell Building space, with large windows and lots of light, is proving to be a good place to both make and show art.
People have already shown a lot of interest in watching him work. That was especially true recently when Van Nuys was working on his full-size clay model of President Franklin Pierce in front of the window. People began streaming in -- even a National Guard delegation from Suriname.
The Pierce piece, by the way, is Van Nuys' second contribution to the City of Presidents sculpture project. His first sculpture, a bronze of President Millard Fillmore, is on display in the gallery window until Saturday. Then, it will be moved to its permanent location on St. Joseph Street.
Van Nuys joined the four-sculptor, 40-sculpture project last year when artist Edward Hlavka dropped out.
Flooring store headed for Tuscany
Black Hills Interiors will soon be moving into Tuscany Square, the home-improvement mall taking shape in the former Dan's Supermarket building on Omaha Street.
"We'll be moving in (this) week; I don't know if we'll have a sidewalk," manager Dennis Drolc said. He hopes to be open to the public by early July.
The building is undergoing major remodeling, and crews are adding a new retail strip center in part of the former Dan's parking lot.
Black Hills Interiors sells carpeting, tile, hardwood flooring, laminate flooring, area rugs and window coverings such as blinds, shades and valances.
It's been in business three years, with a 2,500-square-foot showroom on Samco Road. It primarily sold to contractors.
Now, with 15,000 square feet on one of Rapid City's busiest streets, Black Hills Interiors hopes to also be a home-improvement retailer.
It will share the building with B.E.S. Lighting, which will help bring in more traffic, Drolc said.
Each shop in the former Dan's building will have a separate outside entrance. The front will be covered by a 10-foot, tile-covered canopy.
Hours at Black Hills Interiors will be 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.
For more information, call 341-2614.
New tattoo shop under construction
A couple of readers asked me to find out what is being built behind Taco John's on Haines Avenue.
The sign in front of the building project, at 331 Knollwood Drive, says it is the future home of Wild Idea Tattoo & Piercing.
I checked the building permits. The project belongs to a limited liability company named Blue Harvest. And Matt Thrash of Thrash's Living Art Studio on West Main Street is the registered agent for Blue Harvest.
That's all I know at this point. I'll keep poking around to see if I can get some details.
Talking Business appears Thursdays in the Journal. Contact Dan Daly by telephone at 394-8421, by fax at 394-8463 or by e-mail, dan.daly@rapidcityjournal.com.
For now, artist James Van Nuys has his bronze sculpture of President Millard Fillmore to keep him company in his new downtown studio and gallery. The piece is Van Nuys' first contribution to the City of Presidents sculpture project. The sculpture will be moved to its place on St. Joseph Street on Saturday. (Dan Daly, Journal staff)
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