John T. Crutchfield between two murals, (left) by Swiss artist Onur, and the Artemis logo goddess, by Muhammad Arash (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
The woman parked her Mercedes-Benz in front of the Artemis Gallery and got to the front door but didn’t enter. Proprietor John T. Crutchfield came out to see what discouraged her and found a man braced against the wall shooting up. That incident occurred 20 years ago at the outset of Crutchfield’s enterprise and almost ended the concept. He recalls, “Right after that, I shut the door and put a sign out that said, 'If you want art, call me.’ And I went on the road for metal-making and crafts shows.”
But something worked, because two decades later, he’s holding a two-day gallery and street celebration to mark the longevity of this artistic endeavor. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 8-9, from 5 to 10 p.m., Artemis is host to a full-on festival with vendors, food and drink, and live music by such groups as Rattlemouth, The Happy Lucky Combo, Hotel X and members of the Richmond Floating Folk Festival — which, in a parallel and coincidental anniversary, is 20 this year, too. Crutchfield programs the gallery for 12 shows a year that embrace fashion, furnishings, and fine and decorative art.
When Artemis first opened, the street traffic was so light that Crutchfield played mischief with the stoplight buttons at the corner of Lombardy and Main streets. “I’d go and press the button to slow the traffic,” he says, laughing. “People stopped at the intersection will look over here and wonder what’s going on in the windows. So, yes, I owe all my success to a traffic light.”
The energetic bohemian Crutchfield grew up in cities around the world with a traveling civil engineer father before the family, with roots in Richmond, settled here. He studied art history at the University of North Carolina and metal work and craft at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 1987, he established his residence and studio in The Fan, where he completely rehabilitated a house destroyed by fire.
“I went to arts and crafts fairs in New York City and other places and acquired and traded for art, and accumulated a big collection,” he says and chuckles. “My wife finally told me if I got any more stuff, she’d have to move out, because there wasn’t any room for her. “
The marital separation was prevented by the fortuitous consolidation of what was then Main Art Supply’s framing shop. The vacated building went up for rent, and Crutchfield, ambling by one day, called the number. It turned out to be owned by artist and co-founder of the Texas-Wisconsin Border Café (and later dean of the VCU School of the Arts) Joe Seipel.
Crutchfield with an old gallery sign amid the notices and articles of the past 20 years (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
Crutchfield recalls that Seipel urged him to open a gallery there, but he didn’t at first think much of the idea. He asked Seipel for a three- to six-month lease just to see if anything could happen, but Seipel didn’t agree. “He told me to give it a year,” Crutchfield says. “If I couldn’t make it work in 12 months, I could leave and he’d refund my deposit.”
He signed the lease in July then began, with assistants, to rip out everything in the place. New walls were installed, and a film set designer built ziggurat-shaped display shelving. The distinctive Artemis Gallery mural was painted by a then-VCU student, Mohammad Arash, which was complemented by the 2014 Richmond Mural Project participant, Swiss muralist Onur Dinc, whose explosive thought piece seems even more relevant today.
He picked out the name Artemis because, well, it has “art” in it, but also because of the mythic connections of woodland creatures, mystery and women.
“Plus, I was thinking she’d aim her bow and arrow and pluck out some patrons for us,” Crutchfield says.
He planned a soft opening for friends for the first Friday in September 1997, but for the grand October opening featured a performance happening of the notorious musicologist/punk rocker Dika Newlin. “It was unlike anything else and couldn’t ever be replicated,” Crutchfield says, throwing out his arms to indicate that evening's eventfulness. “There was video, art, performance, she sang, she gave a talk. The place filled to the walls with her students, and people couldn’t stand, so they sat around her with their legs crossed like a yoga pose.”
Yet for all his enthusiasm and promotional energy, the neighborhood at that time hadn’t quite caught up to this ragged edge of the Fan District. “There just wasn’t much going on, most of this block was boarded up. People got jumped and robbed on Cary Street. It was dicey.”
For about the first five years, Crutchfield underwrote the gallery through the craft fair circuit.
He decided to maintain early evening hours, reasoning that during the day, everybody else is at work — and sought to entice the increased pedestrian traffic as more restaurants opened and the nearby blocks changed. "I knew the neighborhood had arrived around 2002 when I saw a woman pushing a baby stroller across the street," Crutchfield declares. "Before, this was not a place people where people brought infants." Artemis is now a mainstay, and its frequent art events spill into the small backlot of the gallery and sometimes onto the sidewalk. Performance and music are constant components of the programs.
He's been around long enough now that he's seen other galleries and businesses come and go. One loss hurt in particular — when Main Art closed its doors in 2013 after 33 years. The shop and gallery attracted a kindred clientele. Crutchfield persisted.
“I never considered this a business,” he says. “This was a place for my collection, for events, an investment in the community.”
You can experience all that, and more, this weekend, where Artemis' bow is taut and ready for art to strike its target.
The music lineup for the festival:
Friday, Sept. 8
- Meade Skeleton, 6 p.m., Street Stage
- Galen Ross, 6 p.m., Garden Stage
- Hotel X, 7 p.m., Garden Stage
Saturday, Sept. 9
- Rattlemouth, 3 p.m.
- Floating Folk Festival, 5 p.m. (Normal Norman, Wendy Pace, Pam McCarthy, Meade Skeleton, Bill Eldridge, Calvin Cecil, and Brooke Saunders)
- Happy Lucky Combo, 8 to 10 p.m.
Artemis Gallery is located at 1601 W. Main St. in The Fan.
