Boots Gallery brings international art to St. Louis … and aims to put us on the larger map
Photograph by Pete Newcomb
“Artist” is one of those vague, romantic professions to which people aspire before the reality of mortgages sets in. It is, therefore, a self-purging field, sloughing its fickle detritus until only the proud, the foolish, the True Artists remain. The people behind Cherokee’s newest gallery space, Boots, are of this elite stock. The first success from artists Juan William Chávez, Georgia Kotretsos, Jon Peck and Bryan Reckamp, Boots appeared at the perfect moment in St. Louis—three years after the Contemporary had opened, whetting the local appetite for conceptual modern work.
But “appeared” is an insultingly diminutive term for the gallery’s creation. A stint as an artist-in-residence in Greece gave Chávez the opportunity to explore artist-run spaces, which inspired him to return to St. Louis, where he grew up, and establish something all his own.
The place on Cherokee, a shoe store in a previous life, was an impulse buy, Chávez admits: “I found this space, and at first I was like, ‘OK, I have a gallery. Now what do I do?’ So I got on the phone and called three people that I think are right for the job.” The first to sign on was Reckamp, a friend of Chávez’s from high school. The second was Peck, an old roommate from the Kansas City Art Institute, and finally there was Kotretsos, who was a graduate student with Chávez at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The four have since established themselves as the city’s contemporary-art ambassadors. Their first show, “The Politics of Friendship,” supplemented the founders’ work with that of artists from Chicago, Canada, Germany and Turkey. The second show, Kotretsos’ “10 Fingers 88 Teeth,” marked the inauguration of the Boots’ International Artist-In-Residence program, and February’s Kansas City Group show, curated by Peck, cemented the venue’s eclecticism.
As if the project weren’t ambitious enough, 2007 also marks the release of the first edition of Boot Print, an art journal that Chávez hopes will provide yet another avenue for outsiders into St. Louis. “The thing about Boot Print—and the gallery—is that I’m really banking on artists and their own motivation, their own drive. This is an artist-run space. There aren’t only four of us—there are thousands of us. So we’re really relying on them to step up to the plate.”
Boot Print debuts this month; contact the gallery for more information. Also keep an eye on their storefront for the next installment of the “Pedestrian Project” series. Boots Contemporary Art Space, 2307 Cherokee, 314-772-2668, bootsart.com.
