A new way for the Hughes Gallery to live on
Over two decades ago when my late husband, Jack, told me he’d shook hands on a lease for a downtown space in Terry Seitz’s new post and beam building, I almost killed him. After deciding to sell our home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where we’d raised our son, I was looking forward to home schooling him and helping out in a friend’s gallery. I didn’t expect to reenter the stressful world of retail sales. But, I’d grown up in central Indiana, where keeping our word meant something, even if it was a handshake and even if, on second thought, maybe we weren’t so sure of committing to what that handshake represented.
Jack and our son began refitting the space to accommodate a gallery. We hadn’t a clue how to start. My life with Jack was often marked by instantaneously changing plans: when you make the decision to become an artist you learn to segue.
In retrospect, I guess I’ve been doing that, for years. I graduated from college with double majors in Political Science/Sociology and a minor in International Law, and with my eye on studying at The Hague. On a whim (really, more of a challenge from a friend), I took an interview with McGraw Hill College Publishers, accepted a job with them the next day and ended up many years later with Scientific American and W.H. Freeman, considered among the finest science publishers at the time. With that initial decision, my plans changed abruptly and forever, and I never looked back.
I’d been coming to Boca Grande for several years (since the mid 90’s) and selling the fine jewelry Jack and I hand fabricated, so I knew a lot of folks. I loved the people, and I loved the place, but I wasn’t so sure about running a gallery – it’s a huge commitment. Here I sit, over two decades later, writing about it. I love what I do.
I wish I had the space to share all of the stories of the amazing, unlikely and wonderful moments, which took place in Hughes Gallery through those twenty-two years, because there were such moments of joy, such moving and intimately wonderful moments of listening, learning and sharing that it made my journey through those days laced with wonder.
And the journey of Hughes Gallery continues. After over two decades in the same space, we lost our lease last year and were devastated. But, during the previous couple of years as Covid worries spread, Hughes Gallery had embraced just about anything we could, to carry on. One of the things we did was to let our clients know that if they saw a painting, or paintings in the gallery or on our website and they wondered how they might look in their home, we would happily bring them over, hang them or walk them around their house and even leave them for a night, so the client could live with them and decide to buy, or not. It worked and it helped us to keep going through extremely difficult times.
It was a propitious idea, initiated a couple years previous to Covid by our good friend, Sally. We thought it made great sense before Covid and it makes even more sense now that we’ve seen the chaos such a tiny virus can make in all our lives.
Here’s how it works: visit our new website: hughesgalleryinc.com and look through the fine artists we represent. You’ll have fun, I promise! Call or text us at one of these two numbers:
(941) 662-9970 or (971) 808-8815 or email us at hughesgalleryinc@gmail.com and tell us what you like and would like to see. Peter and I will bring those paintings to your home.
We “white glove” hand deliver the paintings and if you want us to hang them we are happy to do that or if you want us to “walk them around” we can do that, as well. Need more time? No worries, we’ll return for your decision. If you decide to purchase any of them, we prepare the invoice. If none work, we pick them up. Check our website often, because we literally receive new works daily, this time of year.
We’ve never been a gallery, which depended on tourists: 95 percent of our business has always been island homeowners and we genuinely love you, the artists we represent and this island. So, please don’t hesitate to contact us. This new version of our business depends on you calling, texting or emailing us.
Hughes Gallery represents some of America’s finest Fine Artists. From our humble beginnings, we attracted the likes of Lois Griffel, the first woman Director of a major American art school (The Cape Cod School of Art) and is considered one of America’s premier Impressionist painters; Del-Bourree Bach, who was a well-known opera singer (bass) with the New York City Opera and has since become one of the best known and most highly awarded hyper-realists in America. Rosebee was America’s premier folk artist (now deceased) and whom I had known for decades, before opening Hughes Gallery, committed to the gallery sight unseen. Neal Hughes, who is an elected Fellow at the American Society of Marine Painters came to Hughes Gallery as did Daniel Ambrose, one of the founders of The American Tonalist Society. Each of the artists we represent has a great reputation, and resume, in a nation where there are literally tens of millions of people who call themselves “artists”.
We’re so much more than sellers of “pretty pictures”. The artists we represent have worked at their chosen vocation all, or most, of their lives. They have put their reputations on the line and entered the most competitive US and World competitions – and they’ve won many of them. Several are in museums: an honor often only garnered after an artist dies. We’re grateful and humbled to make those investment quality paintings available to you, our Boca Grande clients, through our gallery.
If you’d like to see our paintings on your walls, just let us know (call/text/email). Until we find a space in the village which will work for us, we’re committed to keeping Hughes Gallery alive: we need your help to do it. If you’d like to stop by and see some works on our walls, just call us!
Peter and I can’t thank all of you enough, for blessing us with knowing you and for all of your Love and support through the decades we’ve been in the village. And, until we can get back, we intend to keep going; let us hear from you and we will help you find the perfect paintings for your beautiful Boca Grande home.
Visit hughesgalleryinc.com.
Call or text us at: (941) 662-9970 or (971) 808-8815. You can email hughesgalleryinc@gmail.com.
“A house without art, is like a home without a heart … Hughes Gallery has the art!”
