Jason Franz, a Cincinnati-based art curator and educator, presented the development and continuation of his art gallery, Manifest, in Halle Library Thursday.
“Manifest believes that people benefit from having excellent art around them,” Franz said. “I’ve always been a maker. I do what I do out of a sense of excitement and creativity.”
Franz started his career at the University of Cincinnati and was an art handler at their gallery for 10 years. He then taught at various universities around the Midwest. Franz said it was in those experiences where he learned what he didn’t want in an art gallery.
Manifest’s art is sold at a 30 percent commission, but profit isn’t the goal.
Manifest is a gallery by and for artists, Franz said. It has been a gallery dedicated to quality, presentation, experience and documentation. It isn’t focused on selling art and it deliberately kept established art galleries out of it. It takes up the entire shop floor of a hundred year old storefront on Woodburn Avenue in East Walnut Hills, Ohio.
It hosts art from established artists, students and amateurs – anything that passes its panel of unpaid judges. It will not point out who is just starting and who isn’t.
When the six months of renovations were finished and it finally opened in January 2005, Franz said he was pretty nervous. He was an artist, not a businessperson, but Manifest was a runaway success. Four hundred people came to the first show.
“It was a mob,” Franz said.
Since then, Manifest has hosted 154 exhibitions, made 16 documentary books, 74 full color books and hosted 1,676 artists from all 50 states and 40 countries. Manifest also has an art residency program. In the back of the building two artists have studios and are subsidized by the gallery.
Manifest hosts many themes. Some of the upcoming ones: Clue Extremities, which is art that focuses on the hands and feet, and Losing Your Head, which concerns art depicting the human skull.
In another location, the artists have a Drawing Center, which has swapped locations several times. In one of the spaces, Franz remembered having no heating, cooling or running water. They kept going through the winter and the model, who was nude, had to sit in the middle with three kerosene heaters going while the artists kept their coats on.
“That worked for three years,” Franz said.
In the Drawing Center artists practice live drawings, learn from each other and occasionally can get featured in an upcoming exhibition. Manifest is self-funded. Only 13 percent of their funding comes from donations, 12 percent from grants, 30 percent from sales and 50 percent from fees.
If you are interested in submitting your art for one of Manifest’s year-round exhibitions, or the art residency program, or want to find out more, visit manifestgallery.org.
