Tucked into a teensy-tiny space in Studio & is what may very well be the smallest gallery in Durango.
The Recess Gallery comes in at just over 8 cubic feet, and the art on display there is rotated monthly, with openings the first Thursday of the month.
Studio & artist Tim Kapustka said the gallery within a gallery was a way to use an odd space, and also a way to have a constant space within an ever-changing larger gallery.
“This was a nook where we used to put a guitar in here, we used to put the broom in here, we used to use it for different, weird things,” he said. “It’s almost ridiculously small, but we want to celebrate that. It lets us show other things.
“It affords us the ability to have a secondary show,” Kapustka said. “This stays. We don’t take this down.”
And because all art displayed in The Recess Gallery is restricted in size to 5x7 or smaller, there’s not a huge space commitment when you bring a piece home.
“It lets us really cater to that situation where there’s a lot of people who really mean when they say they don’t have any more wall space,” Kapustka said.
Kapustka will also be June’s featured artist in The Recess Gallery. His “Feathers and Fur” series of vector illustrations are based on a passion of his: fly-fishing. He’s started tying his own flies and has found the best way to study them is by illustrating them.
The small size of flies in reality also translates well into the small size of the artwork required for The Recess Gallery, he said.
And the small, affordable pieces can help people get an art collection off the ground without breaking the bank.
“Our patrons know there’s always been small-in-size art – that kind of dashes ‘I don’t have any room on my walls anymore’ – and they know it’s going to be affordable,” Kapustka said. “All the pieces are always $100. And they know it’s going to change every month, so they can pop back in and see something different.”
