A Family Affair
29 Dec 2014
Contemporary art thrives at SmithKlein
By John Klein Wilson Photos by John Klein Wilson When Nathan Klein was a young kid, his mother, Deborah, would bring him to work with her at the art gallery she owned on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. There was a big wooden rack used to display Navajo rugs, and Klein would spend hours playing under it, pretending it was his “own secret fort. The gallery was really my daycare growing up,” he says.
Bigger and Bolder
That eclectic taste is still very evident in every corner of the SmithKlein Gallery, from the vivid cityscapes rendered in oil by painter Mark Lagüe or bright, modern wildlife portraits by local painter Linda Israel, to whimsical bronze animal sculptures by Jim Budish and bold, nature-inspired jewelry by Rebecca Myers, a recent addition. Nathan says the most noticeable change so far may be the size of the art. Both he and Ann are fans of contemporary pieces, especially big ones. They’ve tried to open up the gallery space, taking out some display cases to make room for larger, bolder artwork, but Ann says they’ve also been careful to preserve the same inviting feel the gallery has always had. They have no plans of “being an extreme minimalist gallery,” as she puts it. The contemporary energy seems to come more from the art itself rather than some spartan decorating scheme. Pearl Street’s rich history shines through in the gallery’s wood floors and exposed brick, while big, dynamic forms like the work of sculptor Kevin Box speak to the second-generation owners’ tastes. Box works in cast bronze and steel but takes inspiration from the delicate qualities of paper. His oversize “paper” airplanes in flight, folded origami cranes and crumpled sheaves seemingly plucked from some giant wastebasket appear at once solid and weightless. Nathan and Ann Klein are also plainly excited to be working with abstract painter Hilario Gutierrez, whose complex, layered use of acrylic colors has earned him critical acclaim in some of the world’s largest art markets. Gutierrez and the Kleins were initially unsure how collectors in a smaller art community like Boulder would respond to his work, with its deep hues and rough textures on large canvases that fall somewhere between the blocky shapes of Mark Rothko and fading layers of house paint on weathered wood. Nathan says Gutierrez quickly became one of the fastest-selling artists in the gallery, exceeding both the painter’s and the owners’ expectations. And while Ann says they are always pleased when an artist turns out to be lucrative for the gallery, that’s not their starting point. “Nate and I, we show the art that we love,” she says. “We don’t pick it out to sell.”
