On one of my recent trips to Atlanta, I had a frank conversation with Kelly Teasley and Maggie White, the co-proprietors of (the charming, fantastic, fairy-dust magical) Young Blood Gallery and Boutique, as featured in the book and doc Handmade Nation. Highlights include how to be a good neighbor, how to found a punk gallery and the conflict that comes with transforming that space into a financially sustainable entity, the awkwardness of becoming a recruiting grounds for Urban Outfitters, and the true-life rags-to-riches story of Jolene, the three-legged-cat. 

The interview is kind of mammoth, but these ladies were so forthcoming and informative that I want to post it all. So I'm splitting it into three parts. Check back for the rest soon! 

Cheree: Wanna start by telling me how you met and how the whole gallery happened?

Kelly: Basically, Maggie and I met in high school, in Gainesville, GA, which is about an hour and a half north of here. After high school Maggie moved down here to go to college and I went to Ohio, and then I moved back down to Atlanta and was an art major and after doing the whole showing slides thing, got really discouraged by the lack of spaces for local art or emerging artists. There just wasn’t anything, so we decided, we were living in the West End and we lived in a house—tall ceilings, white walls—and we just started handing out flyers that said, anyone interested in having art in a house show? At the time we were really involved in music and house shows, and we were like, if you can do music in house shows, why can’t you do art shows?

Maggie: Yeah, we were really into the D.I.Y. scene, so we just did it for art shows.

K: So I didn’t really know what kind of response we were going to get, and we got a big response, so from ‘97-‘99 we started having group shows in the house about every three months, and in the beginning, there wasn’t a theme or anything, but as we started to meet new artists, we kind of paired people up and stuff like that. And then we got tired of moving our furniture into our garage, so we started looking for a permanent space and found an old TV repair shop in Grant Park. We renovated that space and first it was a gallery and we rented out the other side for artist studio space, and then in 2003 we opened the shop where we were renting out studio space. And we were there until 2008.

We just mostly got inspired by traveling around and seeing artists who had studios in the back and would sell their things up front, and we really liked the idea of having a boutique where we would still be in line with the gallery, having handmade things but just in a more retail environment. And even now, everything is still handmade, so we were able to keep that going.

And we moved here [their current location in The Highlands] two years ago, we were just looking for an area with more foot traffic and more businesses. Our old location was in the middle of a neighborhood, and there wasn’t much going on around there.

C: But even at that old location, did people actually come out?

K: Yeah, people came out during the openings, but it wasn’t people walking around. It was more like a destination.

M: It was fun. It was our heyday of shows, when hundreds of people would pour into this tiny building because they were so excited about a venue that hosted emerging art shows. and as the years have gone on, more alternative art spaces have opened, which we think is wonderful, but we realized if we want to make a living at this, which is our goal, then we needed to become more serious and business minded and follow the rules. Like, you know, location is important—all those rules we had ignored before. So we moved over here.

C: It’s amazing that you’ve kept this up all those years.

M: We’re stubborn. We’ve gone through several phases with it. At first we were doing it for fun in our house, there were no real expenses. Then when we moved into the TV repair shop, we started coming out of pocket for certain things. Didn’t like that of course. So that’s when we upped the ante on learning how a business is run. Then we opened the shop partly out of need to supplement sales.

K: And our new space was the first time we were able to quit our other jobs.

C: So what are y’all’s personal backgrounds? I know Kelly went to art school…

M: I’ve done social work.

K: I was a painting major and an artist, and that’s kind of how it all started—trying to create a space for me, and people like me.

C: And what were your day jobs before?

K: A lot of different things. Worked at art supply stores, worked at Web M.D., worked at a coffee shop, went back to school for design…

M: It’s been over ten years, so that’s a lot of jobs, but you know, I’ve waited tables, worked as a paralegal, worked for a consumer watchdog, a nonprofit…

C: For you especially, this was kind of a jump.

M: It was definitely a big risk that we decided to go forward.

C: Maggie, are you crafty at all?

M: In a perfect world I would be a lot more crafty if time allowed, but I think we’re hyper-focused right now on just trying to generate business and stay alive. But I used to make clothes and jewelry. I made this [the shirt she is wearing!]

C: I handsew and paint on tank tops and things, but I’m really sloppy. I try to claim it as an aesthetic, but I’m actually just lazy.

M: And it’s gotten a lot more competitive because there’s a lot more craft businesses these days. In the beginning, we would kind of just take anything, and it was a little sloppier, and now people have really had to tighten up. But in some ways I miss that. I miss hand-screened t-shirts, you know the old punk rock t-shirts people just made in their garage.

C: But it’s also huge chain stores, for example, Anthropologie, appropriating the handmade aesthetic.

K: We’re a few blocks from Urban Outfitters and it drives us nuts when we walk in there and see something, we’re like, ‘but we carry that, what are you doing?’ It’s hard to see that…

M: A lot of our artists end up at Urban Outfitters.

C: Actually designing stuff for Urban Outfitters?

M: Yeah, a lot of the designers that we have featured in the past end up getting picked up by Urban Outfitters, so it’s weird to walk in there and see them.

K: But it’ll be a strange version of them.

M: A made-in-China version.

K: It’ll say made-in-China, but it’s obvious they designed it.

C: It sounds like indie record labels in the 80’s and 90’s. They groomed the bands and then the big labels snatched them up.

K: That’s definitely how it happened. We never meant to represent anyone or hold onto them and say you can never show with anyone but us. The idea was to create this platform for them to be able to have one of their first shows or start doing things and getting out there and then move on. We were mostly teaching artists how to hang a show and be part of this whole process. A lot of the artists that we’ve had before, this is the first solo show they’ve ever had, so they’re figuring out how that works. So it’s just a tool for them, to help them feel more confident or move on to larger galleries.

M: Yeah, we were trying to fill a void and not make a buck in the beginning. But it is tricky, because Urban Outfitters, for example, in order to be profitable, they have those things made in China. Whereas, we’re not profiting yet because we don’t want to do that type of thing, but we’re going to have to find a middle ground if we want to continue to exist.

C: When your artists move on to Urban Outfitters, but how do you handle that?

K: I feel like they kind of get screwed a bit. It seems like they have it for a short period of time, and then something usually happens. It always comes back somehow, and we do have in our contract with our vendors, we don’t want to carry the same items. So if they’re going to create something for them, it has to be something different.

M: We can’t blame them for wanting to make money of their art, and actually we encourage that, but yes, we would want a different line than what is carried somewhere else.

K: Which usually happens anyway, because even if they have a version of something similar, it’s usually with a little cheaper material or it just doesn’t have the same sort of handmade feel.

Keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3 of this interview!

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