The Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon-cutting for Atelier art gallery, 104 E. Center St., Warsaw, on Friday, May 5.

Text and Photos
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — Sea Grandon wants to expose the Kosciusko County area to contemporary and emerging art.

The Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon-cutting for her gallery, Atelier, on Friday, May 5. It’s located at 104 E. Center St., Warsaw.

Atelier opened in March.

“I’ve been a contemporary art advisor for about 10 years, and my work takes me to New York. It takes me internationally,” said Grandon. “Most of my clients thus far have been on the East Coast and West Coast, and I live here and I love this community, and I wanted to be able to do the work that I do here where I live.”

“While there are other visual arts opportunities in the community, there isn’t a tremendous amount of contemporary and emerging art in this area, so I wanted to bring that to our community,” she added.

Atelier’s first exhibit by Andrea Granger just ended. Its next by Jon MacGregor runs from Friday, May 12, through Saturday, July 1.

The exhibit, entitled “The Subtle Thief of Youth,” begins with a public reception from 6-9 p.m. May 12. MacGregor, 25, from New York City will be present for it.

The show features 17 paintings.

The gallery’s regular hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

“I want to be open later on Fridays and Saturdays so that people can come downtown and have dinner, pop by and see some art or vice versa … just to sort of create a little bit more foot traffic and have more things to do downtown,” said Grandon.

In addition to viewing art, people may also talk about it, with a book club occurring at the gallery. People may learn more about that by visiting www.seagrandon.com/events.

Grandon previously worked as an attorney in New York City.

“I became very interested in art, was collecting for myself and then other people asked me to help them decide what was investment grade, not just decorative art, but what was a good investment and how to build a collection and my career kind of grew organically from that,” she said.

“I’ve really been thrilled by how many people have stopped by and how excited people are to see just something a little bit new,” Grandon said.

She noted “the arts in general are about everything about humanity.”

“They’re about love, about immortality, about purpose, all of these things, so by inviting artists here and showing these exhibits, I hope people can come in and have interesting discussions about art and life,” said Grandon.

Some of the artwork for Atelier’s next show sits inside the gallery waiting to be hung. The paintings are by Jon MacGregor, with the exhibit “The Subtle Thief of Youth” to run May 12-July 1.