episode twenty-nine | bernard derroitte

Published 11 December 2019

Miranda Metcalf  Hello print friends, and welcome to the 29th episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. I release an episode every two weeks, and on the off weeks, I publish an article on the Pine Copper Lime website, which features images and maybe a bit more information about the artist I'm going to interview. Happy end to 2019, print friends! It's been a beautiful 12 months for Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), and I want to thank each and every one of you who helped make this community grow this year. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for subscribing, rating, reviewing, making your friends listen in the studio, or if you just sent me a kind DM. The PCL by the numbers for this year wrap up includes 23,500 Instagram followers, 29 episodes, 5 exhibition walkthroughs, 22 artists on the Pine Copper Lime online gallery, 28,000 listens on Soundcloud alone, and 14 stunning and generous patrons over on Patreon. Thank you all from the bottom of my inky little heart. Printmaking forever, shun the non believers, join the party. And I couldn't think of a better way to end the year than with my guest today, Bernard Deroitte. Bernard has been a major supporter of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) since the beginning and is a champion for contemporary printmaking. He is the owner of Mesh Art Gallery in Chicago, which represents contemporary printmakers from around the world. Bernard grew up in Brussels and studied art history through his master's degree before moving to Chicago, where he has been in the print trade there since 1998. He has an unbridled enthusiasm for works on paper, which is nothing short of a delight to experience. I'm so looking forward to sharing this episode with you. And be sure to check out the wonderful artists represented by Mesh Art Gallery. I will have a link in the show notes to Mesh's website and their Instagram. So sit back, relax, and prepare to catch that collecting bug with Bernard Deroitte. Hi, Bernard. How's it going? 

Bernard Deroitte  Good. Hi, Miranda. How are you? 

Miranda Metcalf  I'm really good. I'm good. How are things in Chicago?

Bernard Deroitte  Things are well. Winter came today. We had a big snow dump. And for early November, that's kind of unusual.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, wow. Yeah. Because the Chicago winter is no laughing matter, usually, right?

Bernard Deroitte  That's right. You do have to be prepared for it. Although it's always a little bit of a surprise and sometimes comes early, sometimes late. But this year, it came early. We already had, during Halloween we had snow and this year, again, early November, we're kind of in the thick of it already.

Miranda Metcalf  Alright. Well, hunker down. Absolutely. I've known you for a few years. Mostly through my time at Davidson, when we were both print dealers in the brick and mortar print world, print fair world. But I would love for you to give a little introduction for yourself of the who you are, where you are, and what you do questions.

Bernard Deroitte  Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I'm glad to introduce myself. Thank you for the question. I go by the name of Bernard Deroitte in the United States, although I was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium. So for those listeners who speak French, the name is "Bernard Deroitte" (with the French pronunciation). That's what I ended up calling myself. And I'm an immigrant to the United States. I moved the United States in 1998, after my studies. I studied in Belgium and in Germany, studied Art History, and got a Masters in Art History. And then moved here following my wife, she and I met in Germany, she was my girlfriend then. I moved to the United States in 1998, because she was starting medical school here. So I figured if we were going to try to make it work together, I was going to have to be here. And I stayed. And so I grew up speaking French at home, but going to school in Dutch and Flemish, and so that kind of turned my attention towards the Germanic world. I learned German, and then English, which brought me to Germany for a year, which is where I met my wife, and then brought me to the United States eventually to become more of an English speaker these days.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, definitely. And so how long have you both been in Chicago, then?

Bernard Deroitte  So my wife is actually from here. Her folks are German immigrants. I've been here since 1998. So it's approaching that point in my life, as I'm in my mid-40s, where I'm almost here as long as I was in Belgium before I moved here, and I actually became an American citizen last year. 

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, congrats!

Bernard Deroitte  That was a momentous occasion. And so yeah, I arrived in the fall of 1998 looking for work, which I found. And I stayed.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, beautiful. So you were saying how you grew up in Brussels. Was art a big part of your life? I mean, I know that all those incredible Northern Europe art museums, of course, someone growing up on the west coast of America would grow up with quite a bit of envy for someone who had The Ghent Altarpiece down the road.

Bernard Deroitte  That's right, not far at all. Yeah, absolutely. We grew up - well, it's interesting, because it also kind of reminds me of the fact that some things stick with some people and not with others. We definitely grew up in a house where art was important. Our parents - so I have two sisters, who have not at all turned their attention towards the world - but my dad's family was very much versed in the arts, and many of my cousins are actually in the arts in various capacities. So it's definitely something that's sort of in our DNA, I would say, but art came to me pretty early in life. My folks would basically travel with us, not very far, but whether it be within train distance or having to take an airplane when we got a little bit older, we traveled a lot throughout Europe, and it was generally for cultural destinations. So whenever we'd travel, whether it was the village church or the large museum that we visited, that was very much the goal of the visit. So the first visits were definitely close by in Belgium, mostly, my parents didn't have a car until I was about 11 or 12. So it was train distances, mostly, in the Netherlands, Northern France, Belgium, Germany. But we did make it to Italy when I was probably six or seven. And the first visit we made was in Florence, and we ended up going back as a family to Florence at least five or six times over the years. I remember those visits vividly and the visits to the Uffizi when I was young were just amazing. My parents had found this little pension in the hills outside of Florence, in a little town called Fiesole. And it was just unbelievably scenic. You just looked down onto Florence in the mornings as you were having breakfast on the terrace, and then you would just make your way down by bus to Florence. And I remember we were, like I said, I must have been six or seven. And the deal was, if we behaved for a week in Florence, we would get a week of coast vacation, like a beach vacation afterwards, which we got. We never went back to the coast ever after that. We always went to Florence. We just loved it so well. It was just amazing. It was definitely not as overrun with tourists back then as it is now. And so I have vivid memories of standing in the Uffizi in front of these amazing panels and canvases. I mean, you stand in front of the Birth of Venus by Botticelli as a six or seven year old, if you're paying attention, it will wow you. And it just did. And so it stuck with me. Yeah, from a young age, art was part of it.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, I love that. Yeah, I remember going to the Uffizi maybe for the first time 10 years ago, and I will never forget just turning around the corner, and there she is. And the scale of it, and the colors, and the fact that, at that point, I was in my 20s. And so it's already an iconic image. And to just turn a corner and there she is facing you, it stops you in your tracks. It's an incredible experience.

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, yeah. And that's what it is. I think people tend to forget that art is a physical experience. You've mentioned the scale of Botticelli, there's no question about that. At an early age, I got interested in mosaics. And so for instance, I had known of the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna from my early teens, and I've only seen them in books, or I had only seen them in books, for many, many years. And then for my 40th birthday, I managed to, literally on my birthday, make it to Ravenna with my family and see these mosaics firsthand. And nothing prepares you for it. It doesn't matter how well you know these images, when you see the Emperor and the Empress in the flesh, so to speak, peering down at you, whatever it is, 1400 or 1500 years after they were placed there, there's something undescribable. You have to stand there to understand them. And so absolutely, those experiences are unique.

Miranda Metcalf  I find it sort of endlessly fascinating, this world that we live in now, where the internet makes art seem so accessible. And it is in a lot of ways, but of course there's no replacement for the physical experience, the corporeal, in your bones, standing in Giotto's Cathedral, or standing in front of the Birth of Venus, or seeing a mosaic, or when I finally made it to seeing some of Durer's paintings and works in person when I was in Germany, it's just... you have to kind of bend to admitting about that physical and spiritual side of art when you have those experiences. And it's incredible. 

Bernard Deroitte  Absolutely. I mean, one of the most amazing moments of the last few years for me was standing - you mentioned Durer - standing in front of his self portrait. It is basically just a tad under life size. And it hangs at eye level in Vienna. And if you walk there, there's no glass in front of it. There's no encasement. You get to stand there in front of Durer, who looks at you like he would. And 500 years have passed, and yet, he hasn't aged a day and he looks you straight in the eye, you get to look him straight in the eye. You can look at that on your phone all you want, all day. It will never be the same as when you get to stand there for a minute by yourself staring at him. It's absolutely unique. So we should encourage people to do that. See art firsthand. Drop the phone.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely, absolutely. It's something that I hope - I can't imagine it getting lost as technology marches forward, but it's definitely something that I hope doesn't, just because it's so necessary. So you mentioned going to Florence and getting those experiences. How did you come to become specifically interested in prints and works on paper? I mean, as well as mosaics and paintings. I don't think any of us can can fully cut off all media, of course.

Bernard Deroitte  That's true, yeah. And I think that's one of the things that all of us who are nourished by art have to remember, is that we shouldn't cut ourselves off. I mean, I go back to where it started for me. And I mentioned mosaics, but I remember being interested in early Asian street arts, and that was just probably because I was a teenage boy. And graffiti arts were kind of rising. I remember going to dance performances when I was young. And they spoke to me, and nobody, even I probably can't tell why they spoke to me. But I think that's something we should encourage at all times, is to not be sort of in an artistic ghetto, whatever our perspective is. Just always stay open minded. But it's true that professionally, paper has been my world. And I think it was truly a combination of serendipity and then something that echoed or that spoke to me, echoed inside of me. So when I came to the United States in 1988, within days, literally, I met Richard Armstrong, who was the owner and director of Richard Reed Armstrong Fine Art. And so I started working for him in the fall of 1998. And I did until he retired and sold the business to me. And that was a paper dealership. I mean, he was a rag lover, as we call ourselves. So he really only sold paper, prints and a little bit of drawings. And so I think that was sort of an opportunity for me, obviously, I mean, I needed a job, I needed the income. But he was extremely collegial with me. He showed me anything he knew anything about. He introduced me to everybody he knew. And he gave me a great degree of freedom to try just about anything as long as it didn't bankrupt him. And so it really gave me the opportunity to experience art firsthand in all kinds of ways, the personal connections, the connection to the art. I think what spoke to me when it came to paper was that objectual quality that we discussed earlier today. I kind of dig that, it's a term from from Catholicism, and I don't mean anything religious by it, but it's an incurrence quality. It takes shape into an embodiment, something that's physical, you can hold it, it has weight. Paper is wonderful that way. I mean, why do people go to stores to buy clothes? Because they want to put their hands on them. Well, most paper is cotton. It's not very different. You get to pick it up, you get to flip it over. If it's older, you get to smell it. If it's large, you get to feel awkward within your hand. All these things are part of the experience. And so that spoke to me readily. As soon as I discovered paper, which I truly didn't know before I worked for Richard Armstrong, it was easy. It was natural. It felt very, very comfortable to have these works in my vicinity.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me a bit of my own journey in that I studied prints in my Master's degree, but it wasn't until I came to Davidson that I was just completely blown away by the physical experience. Because we had a print collection at the University of Arizona, which of course I studied, but in that situation, it's so formal, things are laid out for you, you only have a little bit of time, you've got the white gloves and the magnifier. And it's just completely different than the experience you get to have in a gallery setting where you are touching the work. And I think it took me almost 18 months or two years to get over just that feeling of almost like this wasn't allowed, because I'd spent so much time -

Bernard Deroitte  The great taboo. Don't pick it up!

Miranda Metcalf  Don't pick it up, don't touch it! I'd spent so much time in graduate school looking at the reproductions, zooming in on various great museums' websites, online, digitally, to look at all the details in a Bruegel and something like that. But it's that physicality that you get when you are in a gallery, or when you own a print, when it is yours. And it is sort of your ward, and now you're responsible for taking care of it. It's totally different. And like you said, just a beautiful aspect of works on paper is that intimacy and the physicality that they have. An oil painting... it's going to be completely different, the experience with an oil painting or a sculpture.

Bernard Deroitte  Absolutely, yeah. I don't know if you remember this from your dealing days. I always try to explain to people that they should pick it up, that there should be a physical connection, that in the end, that's very much part of it. And then especially [as] people became more regular buyers, I would always tell them, a few things could not go in frames. Keep them in a mat, or keep them even loose in a portfolio. Because the truth is, throughout history, most prints were not in frames, were not even matted. People pulled out a portfolio in the same way as you'd pull a book off your shelf to look at or to read or to share with a visitor. You did the same with the print, you'd tell them, 'Have you seen this impression of Manet's "Olympia?"' And you'd pull out a portfolio and pull out a sheet and you would pass the sheet around. That's one of those joys that I think people who put everything in frames forget is really very much part of it. And because prints can be very inexpensive, it's very easy to own a couple of sheets of paper that you keep next to your couch to pull up when the mood strikes.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, come up and see my etchings. 

Bernard Deroitte  That's right. No innuendo at all. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I say that as a joke, but also the intimacy of the viewing, I think, particularly when you look at historically, the way that prints had that ability, because they could be transferred and hidden easily, the subversiveness that you can find in prints when you're looking at that history of them is some of the really fascinating stuff, for sure.

Bernard Deroitte  That's absolutely right, you can see things in print that you could never see in painting. Whether it was commentary on religious matters, or it was something that was erotic, or whatever else you wanted to say that couldn't be spoken to a wider audience, you could say to a small, intimate audience of paper people. They would be willing to take that home and tuck it away for like minded people to share with, but they wouldn't have put it in oil on their wall.

Miranda Metcalf  Right, absolutely. And that separation that the framing has, I feel like it's this great hurdle that I have yet to come up with a solution to when it comes to works on paper, is if they're going to be on display on the wall, to protect them, they really should be behind glass, particularly as people live in smaller apartments. And so your living room is attached to your kitchen. And so if you're cooking with oil, or something like that, it would affect that paper. But yet there's that separation that is kind of a bummer.

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, no, I think that's also why, honestly, people have an easier time understanding oil painting than prints. The truth is, in an oil painting, generally speaking, you can just hang it on your wall. You might not even need to have a frame, you could just leave it canvas and all. So I think that objectual quality is easier to fathom for most people and easier to enjoy. But it shouldn't detract us from telling people to collect prints and not put everything in frames.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I think there's also something really special about when you do have a portfolio, you have flat files, something special about setting aside a particular moment to view the work. Because when something's on your wall, no matter how much you love it, you'll stop seeing it after a while. 

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, you do become immune to an image. Absolutely. 

Miranda Metcalf  Which is why one of the things I always encourage people to do is move your art around and rotate it, because it won't just sort of blend into the background then, when you do have worked framed. But also saying, 'Alright, it's Friday night, I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine, and I'm going to look at my prints,' that is going to be an experience, and the the joy and the satisfaction that you get from it is going to be completely different from glancing at something out of the corner of your eye as you're rushing out the door in the morning.

Bernard Deroitte  And I'm sure we'll touch on this as we as we progress in the conversation, but the truth is, if the eye doesn't wander a little bit in an image, it really is not doing much for you. I mean, there's no question that having the core, having things that are pleasing to the eye while you glance at them, is definitely part of living with art. But the truth is, we want something to transcend a little bit of that immediacy where you get something else out of it. There's an emotion that comes with it, or there's meaning that you hadn't seen in the past, or just associations to new aspects of your life that are echoed in the work of art. Those things you cannot grasp in a flashing moment, you have to give it a little bit of time. Like anything else of value in life, it takes time. It just does.

Miranda Metcalf  I often think about trying to explain that to people in terms of the time that an artist put into creating a piece. And of course, even then, it's not just that finished piece that you're seeing. There's all of the preliminary drawings, there's the things that didn't work, there's all of the training. And so they finally have come up with something that not only they have decided needs to be in the world, but in the case of prints, they've decided needs to be editioned, in most cases. And so they've taken the time to do this. And they put a lot of their time and energy into it. How much time and energy are you putting into receiving it? And there's something to that, I think. There's so much behind even something that may be a more traditional landscape that I think people sometimes can look at and be like, 'Oh, I get it, yeah, it's some trees.' And it's like, well, there was a lot of time that went into this. Maybe just take another breath and see what you can see. 

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, and enjoy line, enjoy juxtaposition of color, enjoy contrast. These things can speak to you in ways that are deeper than their immediacy. If anything, they give a little bit of time for your mind to rest, which is not a bad thing in our contemporary world, given how busy and frenetic it can be.

Miranda Metcalf  And it I think it invites us also to use our intuition. And that's something that can make people a little bit uncomfortable sometimes.

Bernard Deroitte  I guess that's true. Yeah, there's a little bit of subconsciousness that's less valuable to some of us. That's true.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, I think we live in a very analytical world where we're asked to collect information [and] make a decision based on the information that you've collected all the time. Whether you're looking for your next vacuum to buy or the next person that you're going to vote for. This is what we do. And because of all the information that we have, we do it more and more. And art, I think, asks people to have an instinctual response to something. And it can be difficult sometimes to get people to allow themselves to trust that.

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, to put their guard down and just accept they like something, even if they can't articulate it.

Miranda Metcalf  Exactly. Yeah. And so that was one of the interesting things, working as a dealer, when people would say, 'Oh, I don't know anything about art.' And I'd kind of be like, 'Well, you don't need to. You just need to know if you like it or not.' 

Bernard Deroitte  Yep. Absolutely. It's a good place to start, at least. 

Miranda Metcalf  At least. Yeah, exactly. I'd use it kind of to get over that hump of the "this isn't for me" dialogue that someone might have in their head. So you were mentioning how you really kind of landed on the shores of Chicago, got immediately started at Armstrong Fine Art, eventually took that business. But you also have a fairly new venture as well in Mesh Art Gallery. And I'd love to hear you talk about that process and your motivations and ideas behind that, and what Mesh is and where people can find it.

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, so Mesh Art Gallery is definitely a newer venture. I started it about a little over a year ago, it sort of was a brainchild that came to me maybe a couple of years ago, but it took me a solid like nine months to give it shape. But it's something that goes back actually to the beginnings of my activity in the world of prints. When I started working for Richard Armstrong, he mostly worked with secondary market material, but he did have a little bit of contemporary art in his inventory. The reason being that he did quite a few shows. I mean, there were years where we were on the road 120, 140 days of the year, either at shows or coming back from shows. And so honestly, keeping inventory, keeping stock, was hard. We were selling art so fast. So having contemporary art also enabled us to diversify, but also enabled us to more quickly have new material. And so we mostly worked through intermediaries, other galleries who had contacts with artists. He wasn't all that interested in dealing with artists. And so he also... I mean, it's pretty mundane, but he left money on the table. He basically would give intermediaries money to give them artwork that he could have sourced themselves. And so very early on, we started building rapports with contemporary artists. And that was sort of one of my main early missions, because I spoke other languages, French artists and Dutch artists and German artists that he wanted to approach, I could speak to, which he couldn't. And so we proceeded, we basically made appointments with the artists, mostly in France, but also in the Netherlands and in Germany, to discuss having their work to sell. And so we did that. So Richard Reed Armstrong Fine Art, which became Armstrong Fine Art, sold contemporary prints alongside older material from around the time when I came on, until probably about 2012, 2013. I had to give up that part of my business, sort of my dealings, around that time, just because I'm a father of two and my kids were really taking up a lot of my time. And so it was just not fair to the artists that I was trying to represent. I just didn't have enough time for it. And so it was really only about a couple years ago that I realized there was a little more daylight starting to come back into my professional life, and kids were growing up, and I had more time to do what I wanted to do. But also I missed it. I missed that rapport to contemporary artists and to being in that primary market, the discovery of the new image, something that didn't exist and now it does. And so that brought me back to it. Having the timeframe, but also having sort of the personal inclination for it. But it was one of those... I mean, because the art market has changed a lot, it was also a matter of finding sort of the right perspective for me. I wanted it to be meaningful to me, but also to the people I worked with. And so one of the early memories of seeing artists at work, and actually, I probably wrote this up when I sort of made a mission statement for Mesh Art Gallery. And so if you go to the Mesh Art Gallery website, you probably can read it better than I can say it. I can probably not say it as eloquently as I wrote it. But it was this realization, you'd walk into people's studios, and I remember, for instance, this artist - who is still active, but mostly as a painter these days, less as a printmaker - by the name of François Houtin. He lived on a small street in the sixth arrondissement in Paris, and we climbed up to the fifth floor to what is basically servants' quarters where he had a studio. And between the three of us standing in the studio, you could barely turn without elbowing the other. I mean, that's how tight the space was. And yet, in that space, for two or three decades, he had created these masterful little etchings that, even when they were 6 by 8 [inches], felt massively expansive. They were these worlds of wonder. And I just remember thinking, here's this man who, every day of his life, climbs up from his apartment a few floors down, and comes and cloisters himself for 6, 8, 10, 12 hours of the day to create these images, all by his lonesome. All by himself. The world is going on outside, and he has to motivate to do this, have the inventiveness, have the trust in his own capacity, and then toil. Work at this, day in, day out. And it felt so lonely as a pursuit, I realized sort of what my role, our role was, when we visited him. We were there to enable him to do this. He was willing to put that time, that effort, that passion into it every day of his life. But he needed people to bring that art to the world. It just needed to be out there so he could keep living and keep doing it. And so that spoke to me immensely. And that's sort of where I circled back to when I started thinking about Mesh. I really only work with independent artists, people who basically work on their own terms, whatever those might be. But I tend to not gravitate all that much to people who are in very collaborative realities. And maybe that says something about me. And it's not that I disregard that process. A lot of printmaking can only be made in collaborative effort. And Mesh does show people who work in collaborative effort. For instance, we work with Pine Feroda, which is a sort of consortium of one plus five, now four, and then three people making prints together. But I like the concept of people who just put their own effort in their own work fairly independently. And so that's really the impetus of going back to dealing in contemporary artists, wanting to give those quiet voices a stage.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, absolutely. And I love what you were saying about when you develop these professional and personal relationships with some of these artists, and you see what goes into the making. It's so stunning. And really, we just see these finished products. And those long hours spent alone in the studio, it's really an incredible undertaking. And what it makes me think of is, when people talk about this podcast, when I get messages from people, one of the things that I love hearing the most is that they say, 'It makes me feel less alone when I'm in the studio.' Because I'm here talking to a nice person, somewhere out there in the world, who's into prints, who loves prints. And so through the magic of technology, someone who's doing that toiling can feel like they're in on a conversation with someone who loves just what they love.

Bernard Deroitte  And that's what it is. I mean, we all have different characters. And there are people who do well in surroundings that are busier or more collaborative. But there are many of us who need our solitude to do some of our best work. And I agree, I think what you bring to people who thrive in that solitude is that within the parameters that they've set for themselves, you bring a little bit of life that animates their day, and breaks a little bit of that monotony, or that solitude, which of course gets to us all. A little bit of the outside world does us all a world of good.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, totally. So apart from what you were saying about how you love being that kind of voice to those people, what else do you look for with artists that you represent? We touched on it a little bit earlier, about needing a little something more, a piece that kind of keeps giving as you keep looking, but just in general, I'd love to hear how that happens. What's that process like for you?

Bernard Deroitte  I guess I go from two simple concepts. There's always this expression, I forget how it goes, but 10% of inspiration, 90% of perspiration when it comes to great things in life or art in particular. I would say I very much look for both. I think there's a little bit of difficulty for people who look at prints to step away from technique. I mean, technique is obviously what is necessary, it's a necessary evil to get to a result. But I do look for both. I look for people who basically put amazing quality in their work. And so that tends to be time, it tends to be dedication to techniques that are not straightforward or complicated. But I think it's a combination of the two that I look for. I look for people who tell you a story you haven't seen told that way before, but also do it with technical skill that shows the dedication to making sure that as they are telling you that story, it's done with excellence. And so I guess I tend to call my attraction towards any artwork I want to take in to the Mesh fold "narrative." And I don't mean that in the strictest sense of the word. I think in the end, abstraction can be immensely narrative. I think it is the fact that the work of art doesn't give you everything at once. And I don't mean to denigrate pop art, for instance, but a lot of pop art is predicated in this concept that it strikes you at first glance. I mean, Marilyn Monroe in pink? Straightforward. It's Marilyn Monroe, she's pink! I got it! I look for artwork that makes you look in more than one way. You obviously want a decorative quality, for want of a better word, you want something that pulls you in because visually, it's attractive. But once I get closer, it has to continue speaking to me. And so I think I look for things that have wall power, that speak to you from farther away, even if they're small. But where I also want to put my nose on it. If I come close and it doesn't continue to speak to me, that tends to be a no no for me. I'll walk away from it. And so I think when you come close, then you're in that technical aspect of printmaking, or of drawing, Mesh shows a couple of artists who draw exclusively, we work with a photographer, same parameters. I want to be able to walk up close and still be captivated by it. The initial impetus is probably a little bit of the wanting to be surprised. But I'm willing to take something that doesn't surprise me a whole lot if, once I get close, my eye wanders and continues to be delighted by quality of line, by quality of contrast, of color, anything. Thematic. It can be just something that's delightful because it's charming. And that's quite alright.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that that pure aesthetic pleasure is something that... since my husband is in graduate school right now, of course, I'm a little bit in graduate school myself, because that's how that works when your person is there. And there's so much rejection of pure aesthetic pleasure in academia, which is so unfortunate, because I think that the arts is... people are trying to quantify it and make it functional, to the standard to which sciences are held to and technology and that sort of thing. And so it has to really have this purpose, this functionality in theory, or in politics, or something like that. And I adore work that does that. But it completely skips over just the joy that a beautiful piece can bring, and the parts of you that it can open up that you don't have access to in other ways. And I love that there is a space that still celebrates that, which is in galleries, for sure.

Bernard Deroitte  Absolutely. Well, and because I'm sure you have a lot of listeners who are artists, I would remind artists who listen to this that in the end, anything you add to the aesthetic enjoyment is bonus, no question about it. If you challenge me in other ways, that's wonderful. However, when it comes to art, the concept is still that it gets to live a life outside of the artist's creation in the eye of the beholder, the collector, the owner, and you can only pull that owner in, generally speaking, with at least a little bit of aesthetic enjoyment. It doesn't mean that there aren't works of art that gets sold purely on cognitive behaviors, or for cognitive reasons, but most art, the overwhelming majority of art, first needs to attract and delight. And so I think artists need to definitely keep that in mind. Before you go cerebral, remember, you got to pull me in. You got to bring me into the fold. You got to captivate me. If I'm not coming close, there's no chance I will want to live with that work of art. So, first you got to pull me in, and then we can talk.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, and I think in that pulling in, that doesn't just happen because it's a pastel sunset, right? That kind of aesthetic pulling in can take many different forms.

Bernard Deroitte  Oh, absolutely. You can shock, you can delight. It can be beautiful. It can be repulsive. It can be all kinds of things. No question. People have all kinds of perspective, it doesn't mean that what attracts me will attract somebody else. But you have to remember that visually, first of all, I have to want to come close. I have to want to walk towards the work of art.

Miranda Metcalf  Artwork, like everything in this world, is competing for attention that people have less and less [of].

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah. Or maybe not less, but less durable. It's very short. It's very short winded.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. Well, I feel like that's a really interesting point to segue into my next question, which is one that I find really fascinating, which is the future role of galleries and gallerists, or the intermediary or the art communicator, or however you want to put it? I'd love to hear you speak to that.

Bernard Deroitte  It's interesting that you, I forget now how you phrased it, but that it's not, per se, the gallery, it's the intermediary. That, to me, kind of sheds a little bit of light on your question in my own mind. It's a tough question. I guess all of us, obviously, consider a gallery to be a white or off white space that's blank, on which we hang works of art, and people walk in and get to see if they like them and take them home if they do. That clearly has disappeared, or is disappearing, fast. It doesn't mean that it's gone. But the realities of overhead of the galleries, meaning the rent, the staffing, the framing, the advertising, and everything else that it takes to bring people in, has made it almost impossible in most markets to do just that. And so I'll address that maybe first. Very recently, there was this lovely little jewel box of a gallery called Printworks in Chicago. They didn't sell any prints, but they did show a lot of prints. They also showed a lot of people with drawings, all manner of works on paper. It was a duo, two men who just had wonderful programmatic ideas. They were there for maybe 35 or 40 years, well before I came to Chicago, and I remember seeing that space, probably late '90s, early 2000s, and thinking, if that ever becomes available, I'm jumping on it. Because I thought it was just wonderful. Well, the neighborhood has changed. They recently closed up shop, one of the men passed away a few years ago, and the man who remained decided to close up shop. I think it was last December. In January or February, I went to see the space. It was very reasonable in price. It was - I don't know if we get to talk about money on your podcast. So it was, the thing to rent was $2500, plus some expenses. So say $3000, so it's $35-40,000 for rent, but then you add the necessity to have probably at least almost full time staff. I can be there part of the time, but I can't be there all the time. So add another $25,000 or $30,000 for a part timer, and then you add advertisement and refreshments. And then you realize, wait, hold on, I'm going to be spending $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 a year just to keep the lights on. That requires, at the very least, a couple $100,000 in sales on an annual basis to clear the overhead. So that was one of those moments where I realized, yeah, the world really has changed. Once upon a time, this would have been a non-issue. But I looked at that neighborhood, that was changed, where people didn't really go for gallery visits all that much anymore. Was it possible to do it? And the answer is probably no, unless it was just an exercise in futility. It just was not feasible anymore. So I think that has changed dramatically. It's very hard to do the traditional gallery thing. And so I think the people who are interested in the art have to accept that many of the places they could have visited are no longer out there. Does it mean that our trade, that intermediary of being an art dealer, or being somebody who basically plays that middleman role, is moot? I think if anything, the answer is more than ever, we're necessary. One of the things that I very quickly realized as I was rethinking launching Mesh was the fact that the internet is a great fallacy when it comes to going directly to people. We think that because everything is at our fingertips, people will turn their attention towards it. But nothing could be further from the truth. Because there's all that competition for your attention. When I'm sending you an email to say, 'Come and see what we've brought together,' big corporations, and I won't name names, but big corporations are after that same attention. So if my only way of reaching you is the internet, it gets very difficult to compete with people with much deeper pockets than we little guys [have]. And so I think what we have to do is what you do with this podcast. We have to basically, more than ever, create compelling narratives. For one artist in their lonely corner to create that narrative and keep people's attention and keep people coming back is almost impossible. Mesh now represents about 20 artists. Even getting people to come regularly to the website, or accept to give us an address so we can mail them something, or come and see us in a show, or allow us to send something to them on approval, requires all this building of all these narratives, all these stories that eventually hook people in to say, 'Yeah, I should ask them to send something to me,' or 'I should see them in this show,' or 'I should go back to the website or pull up that email or pull out that letter they sent me,' because their attention is being pulled in all kinds of directions. So I think more than ever, having people who curate this artwork that puts them in a context and gives them a louder voice that transcends just one image, I think more than ever is valid. But how we do it and make it financially viable? That's another question altogether. I don't know that I have the answer to that yet. I mean, the truth is, and we spoke about Mesh these last few minutes, I get to do what I do because I cobbled together an income that's from multiple things. It's a secondary market that's still strong, I consult for a couple clients, I'll do an appraisal when that falls into my lap. And then I also deal in contemporary artists' work. And so it's only through a combination of all these things that it's realistic, but it's not because trade has become tougher that it's become moot.

Miranda Metcalf  I think it's really significant, when you were talking about that idea of opening up that little space and you were running the numbers for us, you didn't even calculate in your own pay.

Bernard Deroitte  Oh, nonexistent, absolutely. And I mean, the truth is, all things of passion in life are about not counting. My wife is a physician, is a doctor. If she added up the amount of time she spends on making people better versus what she gets paid, she would realize that there's many other ventures in life that would pay better. But that's just not why you do it, right? In the same way as we are in this world of art, because we need it. We know we need it. And so if we get to bring that to people who have that same priority of knowing they need to live with beauty and aesthetic enjoyment in their lives, if we get to do it, we're happy to do it. As long as we pay the bills.

Miranda Metcalf  Exactly. I mean, that's really it. It's, all right, do we make it to next month? Okay. And I think that often people don't realize how many gallery owners [there are] who take home less every year than their receptionists.

Bernard Deroitte  Oh, absolutely. Oh, there's no question. There's many gallerists who basically pay their staff more than they pay themselves. There's no question about that. Yeah, absolutely.

Miranda Metcalf  There's no question. Yeah. Because they're in it for the love of it. And because they believe, like you and I do, that seeing work in person is the best and the greatest and so important. 

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah, you're undervalued, you truly are. 

Miranda Metcalf  So fighting tooth and nail to keep a physical space alive, or a print show alive, so people have that experience. Working long hours and waking up early and going to bed late and sacrificing time with our family or time that could be spent with friends. It's... sorry, I realized saying it now, it really sounds like I'm painting a "woe is me" picture, which I'm not meaning to at all, but I do think it is important that people understand that there is the high echelon of the art dealing world. And there are one or two bad eggs, like there are in any field, but 99.9% of dealers in it, like yourself, they are in it for the love and to be advocates for the artists. 

Bernard Deroitte  Oh, fight the good fight, yeah. Absolutely.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, I would love to hear kind of just things that you're looking forward to, anything that's coming up on the horizon that's particularly exciting, for you or for Mesh?

Bernard Deroitte  Well, so one of the... and I guess I'll kind of maybe tie up this loose end when it comes to the future of galleries, the future of dealership. I guess the one thing that I look forward to - because I'm living it already, but I think most people aren't in the art world - I think today, people will order all kinds of things on the internet without batting an eyelash, right? I mean, people get computers shipped that are worth thousands of dollars, or their groceries are ordered on the internet. I am surprised at how approachable art has become on the web. You get to see all kinds of things and read up and discover works of art fairly intimately on the internet, very easily. And it's a pet peeve, but many colleagues could still do better jobs at making art more accessible online when it comes to acquisition. There's many websites where you get to buy art easily. And most, like all, other internet ventures will have return policy. So if you don't like it, you return it. I'm just amazed at the amount of accessibility there is to art, and yet how little of the art trade has migrated online. I mean, I can convince people who already know me and trust me to order things on the two websites, Armstrong Fine Art or Mesh Art Gallery without too much trouble, but convincing new buyers that it's okay to click and just say, 'It's going to show up in two or three days, and you get to enjoy for a couple of days. And if it doesn't speak to you, you just take that return label and send it back to me.' That has not yet happened. So I'm looking forward definitely to a day when people understand that is something that is part of the art trade. But mostly, I think even before we get to that - and I just bring that up because we're wrapping up sort of the idea of dealing in art. But what I also am amazed by is how much I think a lot of people have a hard time allowing themselves to buy art. And I think people should just get over it. I mean, just get over it! No, but truthfully - I'm making you laugh, Miranda, I'm glad I am - but the truth is, people will spend thousands of dollars to go on vacation for a week, right? People will spend 500 bucks with four people in the restaurant to have a meal, and by two days later, they don't remember what they had. 'Did I have the cod? I don't remember. What did you eat?' Artwork that's worth a few hundred dollars sometimes languishes on certain websites, and it's readily available. And it's something, once you bring it home, it's yours to have and to hold for all of eternity. That is one of the things - I look forward to the day people feel empowered to do it and feel uninhibited to do so. I'll give you, for instance, I'll give shout outs to to a couple of people. I bought a couple of prints from an artist that didn't know - and you might know her, I think she might be from sort of your former neck of the woods - Diane Sandall. She makes these lovely linocuts and they're 100 bucks, 150 bucks. They're readily available, you send her an email and you send her some money and she sends them back to you. They're wonderful. I just looked at that, and I thought, how is it possible that these editions aren't sold out? I bought maybe five or six pieces from Lunch Money Print, I don't know if you're familiar with them. They have this print exchange. And last year they had their first print exchange. Almost every single one of the images on there I would want to take home. They're just wonderful. I ended up buying five or six. Pine Copper Lime's very own [Opal] de Ruvo, for instance, participated in that print exchange. And I just couldn't believe that probably the most unbelievable, intimate self portraits for $200 was available on there, and nobody had bought it. That, to me, boggles my mind. So I think I definitely look forward to people feeling empowered to click, but also feeling uninhibited to do so. Just buy it. Just take it home. So that's sort of one of the things. But when it comes to sort of personal venues on Mesh, to answer that question, I'm definitely looking forward to having people discover more of these artists whose work we've recently brought on. So I collaborate for Mesh, specifically, with a woman who is in Minneapolis and is sort of doing a lot of work for me in the shadows, but does great work. Her name is Jessica Kruekeberg. So she's helped me kind of bring in new artists. So we have, actually, a woman who lives in Australia, in Melbourne, but who's Czech, who does these amazing monotypes. Her name is Marketa Kemp. So we've just put a few things on the website of hers. And I've just taken a few of her works to shows recently, and they've been selling really well. They're amazing. They're very reasonably priced. So I'm definitely looking forward to featuring her work more. Probably the next person to be featured on our website specifically will be a British artist by the name of Laura Boswell, who does both amazing watercolor based, Japanese style moku hanga prints that are really beautiful, but she also does linocut and linocut reductions. She makes these very small editions of these very inventive landscape images. And so we just started collaborating with Laura. And she's just put out a book, I think it's coming out today, yesterday, or tomorrow, I don't remember. And it's called Making Japanese Woodblock Prints. And actually I think the first run is already sold out, before it was published. So it's definitely anticipated. So we'll probably feature her work and that book on the website coming up. And then we have other artists whose work we haven't featured in detail that we're also going to be focused on. For instance, we started working with Dave Lefner, who makes these linocut reductions, who's an LA based and sort of pop art inspired artist, but whose work is both beautiful from far away, because they're larger, but then also delightful in their texture when you get closer up. So yeah, those are the things I'm kind of looking forward [to] there. And then on the secondary market for Armstrong, there's a couple of artists whose work we're going to feature soon. One is a forgotten artist just because he was active in the '60s and then stopped making prints, but he's still alive and kicking. He's a wonderful man by the name of Gil Cowley. So if you go to Armstrong the next few weeks, look out for Gil's work. And then an artist who passed away a couple of years ago, a French woman born in Belgium, Yannick Ballif, whose heirs I've contacted and found, and so some of the work from the estate is going to be featured on the website. So some of these things are sort of on my radar, and all kinds of techniques, some intaglio, some woodcuts, some linocuts, some etching, so I like to keep it diverse.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. And I'll definitely put links to all of this in the show notes so people can open up their app of choice and take a little peek at these great artists that you're mentioning. 

Bernard Deroitte  Great! Thank you so much. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, of course, of course. So I feel like I could just open up a whole 'nother can of worms and go down just another great little rabbit hole about that time down the road when people will buy art the way they buy $60 steaks.

Bernard Deroitte  Yeah. We will get there. I think we can convert people. 

Miranda Metcalf  I think so. It's so funny that I couldn't tell you why, other than just maybe my unquenchable optimism that I do suffer from, that it's just like, I really do believe that there will be a time when people will realize that. That if we keep doing the good work and putting this information out there, that there will be a time when people realize, 'I can have art in my life that speaks to me, that's mine, for less than I paid for the shoes that I'm wearing.' And I really look forward to that time when print sort of... you know, talking to people who've been in the business for decades, they talk about an ebb and flow to print collecting. And that they consider, we're kind of in a bit of an ebb at the moment, but I think that it will come back as people realize and discover what it is and how accessible it is.

Bernard Deroitte  Well, that's what it is. It is very accessible. And the truth is, I think we cannot fail to overlook the fact that there's been a huge transformational shift in the way we consume information. I mean, the truth is, until 25 years ago, you consumed information on paper. You looked at books, you look at magazines, if it wasn't printed, you didn't get to discover it. Today, or in the last couple of decades, all of us switched to these screens. And these screens are very good at capturing our attention. And like I've touched on, I think there's a lot of corporations that have, obviously, all the interest in the world of keeping you hooked. But I think as all of us mature with these technologies - and the screens are obviously wonderful, they really do give us access to amazing amounts of information that we could only dream of accessing a couple of decades ago - I think all of us are also going to have to learn to turn them off and walk away from it. And I think as that occurs, as all of us, and I'm sure many of your listeners are already saying, 'Forget it, I'm leaving the phone home, or I'm turning it off for the next few hours.' I think as that happens, we will go back to the analog world. We'll go to these sheets of papers, these canvases, whatever else has a physical presence in our lives and [that] we get to hold the same way we hold people who are dear to us. I think that will happen. I think people will realize that the screens are an access point. But the real thing, it is meeting with friends for a drink or for dinner, it is holding a work of art. Those are the real things. The screen is only an access point. It just gets you to those things that are real. So I too am hopeful. I think your optimism is warranted.

Miranda Metcalf  I love that. I love that so much. I wholeheartedly agree with all of it. And I'm so glad that you are on our side in this, fighting the good fight.

Bernard Deroitte  Yes. I look forward to many more decades of it. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, absolutely. So I think that is a beautiful place to close on this wonderful chat. And I hope that you can join me again sometime, maybe next year or something, and we can check back in on all of the progression, because I have so much respect for what you're doing in this world and the work that you put in. I think, like I said, we're lucky to have you on our side.

Bernard Deroitte  Well, thank you. The feeling is mutual. Thank you for putting these podcasts together. I was speaking to Laura Boswell, who does these instructional videos. And she mentioned that she makes them in part because she wants these places that are quiet. She says, 'All I want is for people to turn it on, and for the next 15 or 20 minutes, be quietly seeing me at work. I don't even need to say much of anything. Just look at the gestures.' So your work is very much appreciated for that same reason. Giving us these places where we get to quiet down and discover somebody else's life and let it enrich us.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, I guess we can sign off, and I'll be in touch about the release of the podcast in the next couple of weeks and everything, and thank you for letting me steal an hour of your time. 

Bernard Deroitte  Oh, thank you so much. I'm honored to be on your podcast, I really am. 

Miranda Metcalf  Beautiful. All right. Well, we will definitely be in touch. Well, that's our show for this week. And print friends, I can't think of better words to leave you on. Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friends) is going to take a short, short break for the last two weeks of December. So let's all take Bernard's advice and put down our screens for the next little while. Go hold your friends, your family, and really look at and appreciate the art that we're lucky enough to have in our lives. I will be back in the new year with interviews from printmakers from all over the world doing something a bit beyond the expected. 2020 is looking bright. Lots of love to you all the way from a sunny Sydney summer. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing help from Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you January 1st.