This is the final installation of my (incredibly frank--thanks ladies!) interview with Young Blood owners Maggie White and Kelly Teasley. Parts 1 and 2 are here and here. In part 3, we learn about Young Blood's community events, how the gallery navigates corporate sponsorship and finally, the long-awaited True Hollywood Story of Jolene-the-three-legged cat!

Cheree: So what about Jolene? What’s Jolene’s story?

Kelly: I’m a big animal person and I’m involved in rescue, and we all ganged up on Maggie and convinced her that we needed a shop cat. We went to the county shelter here, and we actually wanted to get a kitten but they didn’t have any, so we picked a black cat because there was like seven black cats there, and she only had three legs, so we decided she needed a break.

Maggie: So we brought her onto the island of misfit toys.

Welcome to the Island of Misfit Toys, Jolene!

C: What else should people know about Young Blood?

K: Well, we hardly ever have repeat artists, in hundreds of shows, there’s only been a few times that people come back, but there’s a lot of artist that we still work with in group shows and things like that, our skateboard show we have every other year, it’s probably our most popular show. We have about 100 artists who do artwork on skateboards.

C: Do you have any other themed shows like that?

K: Yeah, in December we alternate every other year, we either have the seasons show or a home show, and there’s usually about 60 artists who have to create a piece either on the season they’re assigned or the home. And usually we have a few others, like we had a bike show this year [fyi…biker culture in Atlanta is huge] and we like to involve the community and bring people that don’t regularly make a lot of art but want to be involved.

M: We always have some type of event going on, it seems like. We had an indie craft market every month for the past probably five years, until recently. It was a lot of work and it may have been oversatuation, I dunno, but we decided to drop that. It was called Kraftwork.

K: The Underground Atlanta usually shows films here once a year.

M: We donate the space pretty often to fundraisers.

K: A lot of times people will propose events to us, and if we think it’s a good fit, we like to do it just to bring in more people to the space. But we also rent it out for events.

M: We’re hoping that will take off. It’s gonna require stuff like that to stay in business.

C: Are you worried about immanently going out of business?

M: Well…

K: It’s always in the back of our minds.

M: We’re always trying to make improvements, so that we can get into the black instead of just breaking even…because there’s gotta be a point where we can’t just keep working 75 hour weeks and still having to do supplemental things at times. But at the same time, we wanna be able to say that we did everything humanly possible, and we’re not even close to being able to say that yet. So we still have a lot to learn and a ways to go.

Because a lot of us are coming from more counter-culture backgrounds where we don’t think like conventional people.

K: We want to go against the system, but we need parts of it to make things function. We need to learn how to be adults and not at the same time. We started this off of going to punk rock shows in peoples basements. It was hot and sweaty and crowded…

M: And that was in opposition to commercial shows, where they couldn’t get booked and so they decided to do it themselves, so that’s the mentality we’re rooted in.

C: What do you think about this whole handmade movement? Do you think it is oversaturated or it’s becoming so?

M: You know, I don’t worry about it anymore, because we’re working with creativity and there’s always going to be something new and unique. People are always going to want a special gift for someone, people are always going to be creating, there’s always going to be art…knowing that will always exist, I don’t think the indie craft market will ever burn out, I just think it will evolve.

C: Kelly, what’s your painting style?

K: I do sort of illustrative, character type…I dunno, it’s hard to explain…my work has evolved throughout my lifetime…

C: And do y’all choose to show what your like or how does that work?

M: We totally choose what we like, and fortunately Kelly and I like the same things 95% of the time. But yeah, it’s based on our personal tastes and not so much what’s hot or what sells...which is good and bad.

C: And what’s the Scion thing about?

M: They came to us and basically said in exchange for having some of their magazines here, and we do feel differently than we used to, there was a time when we always turned down offers for corporate sponsorship, but it’s do or die.

K: I think it’s changed a lot too. I think the sponsorships, when they first started wanting to do that in spaces, they were a lot more aggressive and really wanted to park their car there and do huge banners, and I think now they’ve learned that these kind of spaces aren’t gonna do that, and they’re happy with a logo or a magazine, and they give you a couple hundred bucks and it pays for your flyers. It’s more subtle.

M: It’s nice that they’ve highlighted what the artists already do rather than trying to get the businesses to lean more toward their style. But they approached us for the first time probably four or five years ago and we said no. But you know…

K: I think the alternative gallery scene in Atlanta is a lot different from other gallery scenes. We promote each other all the time, two other galleries similar to ours are having openings tonight and we’ve all promoted each other, ‘make sure you go to everyones.’

M: We definitely consider ourselves a family with the other alternative spaces in town.

Share on Tumblr