GALLERY WATCH

A farewell to O’Farrell

By Chris Thompson

"BIG FLOWAGE," 1979, woodcut, 18”x18”, Neil Welliver.

Just under two years after having purchased Brunswick’s New O’Farrell Gallery from previous owner Ray Farrell, and with a year remaining on their renewable three-year lease, owners Chris Huntington and Charlotte McGill have decided to sell.

When they first took over the space from Farrell, they began by doubling the size of what was arguably Maine’s premier commercial gallery. The first year, sales remained steady, the gallery added a few impressive names to its roster of Maine art luminaries (adding newcomers like Anne Ayvaliotis, Nina Jerome, Paul Plante to established folks such as Fairfield Porter and Marsden Hartley), and also doubled the size of their mailing list to over 2000.

In their second year, however, according to Huntington, “the gallery has struggled and some changes need to be made.” Considering himself an artist first and a gallerist second, Huntington has found that the attention required in order to keep the gallery running smoothly has left him unable to dedicate himself to his own painting and writing. So he and McGill are now prepared to sell the whole kit and kaboodle — office furnishings, computers, and most of the inventory of works by gallery artists — for $175, 000.

They note that this figure is below what they paid for the gallery at the outset, and is half of what they have invested to date. “This price,” Huntington says, “reflects the reality of the economic climate of today, as well as our desire to see The New O’Farrell prosper in the future.” To this end, the owners are willing to negotiate the price to include “the dozen or so relatively expensive works” by gallery artists such as Neil Welliver, Ed Gamble, and Tom Hall.

Huntington is eager to point out that he and McGill had never viewed the New O’Farrell Gallery as a primarily profit-making enterprise. “It was never our intention to run this as a money-making venture but more to preserve a great space to exhibit the work of worthy Maine artists. Running the expanded gallery was biting off more than we could chew. We made important and solid contacts that can be invaluable to new owners, and daily our customers are contacting us to say how saddened they are that we are not to continue.”