Local artist opens new gallery on Main Street in Fort Bragg
FORT BRAGG, CA >> On Friday, January 6, during one of the recent storms, Button Quinn held the opening of Cobalt Gallery on North Main Street, which she owns and will operate. Quinn intends to display her own artwork for the first three months. Other artists are scheduled later for showings of a wide variety of contemporary media.
A resident and working artist on the coast for the past fortyfour years, Quinn intends her gallery to present a different layout on the walls than is commonly seen in commercial galleries. “I want to keep it sparse,” she said. Other galleries, she believes, “are crowded. There’s too much on the walls. I loved the museums that give space for the paintings and have benches.”
Her goal is to provide better art presentations for the public’s enjoyment which she believes will also increase the likelihood of sales. Her gallery presentation advice is “don’t crowd it. Let people see what that artist has worked on and see the connection between the paintings.” She added, “You’re just putting another’s art in to make money, and it’s not very polite to that artist.”
Four years ago, Quinn opened Cobalt Gallery in Mendocino. Sixteen months later, the landlord decided to sell the building. Quinn could stay on for the duration if she agreed to a monthto-month lease. She was already booked with artists for the next three years. She was forced to close her gallery.
Afterward, showing her own art meant accessing group showings and seeking entry into annual art events such as Botanical Gardens’ Art in the Garden. Participating successfully in it for two years, the second year as the featured artist, Quinn found herself addressing the repeated question from attendees “When are you going to open the gallery
again?”
Her response was that she hadn’t found the place. Later, while placing art print orders at Braggadoon Signs and Graphics on North Main Street, Quinn noticed that the Masonic building had been newly painted directly across the street. “Oh my God,” she thought. “That’s my building!”
The story of Button Quinn’s art career has been chapters of native talent, hard work, and fortunate outcomes. Born on Long Island, her mother and father moved the family to her mother’s homeland, England. Quinn explained, “She had nine daughters and one son, and she couldn’t bear the idea of trying to control all these girls in America.”
Quinn describes her upbringing as growing up in an artistic and creative environment. Her mother was a ballet dancer, and her father was an analytical chemist, a cartoonist, and an inventor. “My father always gave us painting competitions every Sunday in the library, and he would choose the weekly winner,” she recalled. Some of her sisters went on to art schools and were trained in classical styles.
Quinn had solid basic art instruction while attending her English primary school. However, she was not drawn to oils and fresco. “I wanted to do art,” she said, “but I didn’t know what kind of art.” On the other hand, her sisters disapproved of modern paint media such as acrylics. She married and moved with her husband to New Zealand at age twenty. “Basically,” Quinn said, I didn’t really take up art until I went to New Zealand and got away from the family.”
New Zealand gave Quinn the opportunity to begin experimenting with art forms. She became a westernstyle batik artist who created scenes on her textiles rather than patterns. Galleries eagerly showed her work. Her decision to move on to acrylic painting did not interest New Zealand’s galleries, so she headed to America to visit a sister and engage in painting.
Quinn has pleasant memories of the San Francisco art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She credits her time with Open Studio in San Francisco with “a wonderful art education just being there.” She continued, “There was all kind of venues going on. Many artists lived south of
Market Street in warehouse rentals which were unbelievably cheap.”
From there, she followed others up to Mendocino County to work with the new Mendocino Art Center. She worked on bronze casting, co-taught a children’s graphic art class, and continued to paint. Over the years, she created wall paintings inside commercial buildings, participated in group showings, designed rubber stamps, and had showings in England and Greece.
Strangely, she never had a showing at the Mendocino Art Center. Her opportunity finally came just as COVID appeared in the county. Unfortunately, her show was canceled. It was also the wrong time to think about having her own gallery again.
Eventually, she realized COVID had isolated her to the point of habit. Quinn said, “We saw our lifestyles and traditions out the window. There was no common sense to be found from others. Artists naturally do a lot of thinking about what they’re doing, and I began to think that I was such a recluse.”
The time came for the talk to self. She recalled thinking, “Okay, Button, you’re going to put yourself out now. This is enough now.” She continued, “You’re going to become an absolute curmudgeon and never go out, and your hair will get wilder and wilder, and you will be a deteriorating disaster.”
Her self-talk led to a Facebook art class which led to a weekly art group session. “It was a wonderful break for me,” Quinn noted. Given an open mind, interacting with other artists can be a new schooling in art. Quinn realized how well she would have done in art school had she chosen that path. She still remembers the time she applied for an art grant in England and was turned down because she lacked the educational pedigree.
These days she’s excited to be back in the world with her art gallery. Thinking ahead to opening night, she hoped for a good crowd in spite of the rain, but she also hoped to see people she hadn’t seen in a long time. She is preparing for her gallery’s first featured artist showing for Comptche cabinet maker Otis Schmidt in the spring. She described it as “a salute to his lifetime’s art.”
The Cobalt Gallery is located in the Masonic Building at 428 North Main Street in Fort Bragg. The gallery will be open Thursdays through Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.