When the San Diego Watercolor Society christened its new home Jan. 12 in Point Loma, it also redoubled its efforts as an enterprise. Its new digs, after all, are at the mixed-use cultural center NTC Promenade, whose multimillion-dollar budgets and construction costs don’t just up and disappear on a whim. Art is big business in some quarters “” and while the society is by no means independently wealthy, it accordingly has a solid handle on its obligations as a commercial entity and as the latest NTC entry.
Chalk it up to experience.
The 800-member society is “the best nonprofit organization that I’ve ever seen run,” board member Patt Abbott said “” “not that I’m an expert. But it’s handled as if it were a business, not just a hobbyist’s thing. We provide a product. We sell art. That sounds cold and calculating. But I’ve been with other nonprofit groups that just have their hands out. The watercolor society is not that way.”
It’s existed, in fact, since 1965, the year after Lyndon Johnson was elected president. Whereas art organizations often come and go amid shifts in their economic fortunes, the society has stayed afloat through due diligence on its bottom line. That’s how it can afford its high-end workshops “” the one it just completed this weekend featured Bob Burridge, the designer behind the Starbucks logo.
Abbott added that the purpose of the society is to promote water media with artists, which is not mutually exclusive to keeping the nonprofit fiscally sound: The workshops offered serve the two-fold purpose of generating revenue and furthering an art form.
“You’re killing two birds with one stone,” Abbott said of the workshops. “You’re providing education, and at the same time you’re providing income so we can pay the rent.
The education part involves more elusive criteria than dollars and cents. Watercolor is just what the name implies “” colored water, thin and wispy, the kind of stuff Abbott said is ideally suited to the Southern California locale.
“Traditionally, oil was ‘the’ art form, and watercolor was kind of a second-class citizen,” she said. “But we think of California as being the ‘new’ place as far as the arts, and California’s more open-minded. And the landscapes lend themselves to water media “” the sky, the lushness of the foliage and the ocean lend themselves to very expressive uses of water.”
The society’s move to NTC puts it a little closer to some of those vistas, and none too soon. For the last 16 years, it made its home at 2400 Kettner Blvd. in Little Italy, in a building with no heat and precious little parking “” and at one point last year, its rent was about to triple. It was time to pull up stakes. Society president Mike Shirk acted accordingly.
“This move definitely opens us up to a brand new group of people who can come to view and purchase the art,” Shirk said. “We do run a gallery, and everything that gets juried in must be put up for sale. Having access to a good walk-in market is important, and once this promenade is built out, we see that as a tremendous opportunity.”
Shirk declined to disclose the society’s monthly rental premium. He did say that the group is getting a price break as a nonprofit and that the cost is partially underwritten by the NTC Foundation and a grants and tax package. Tenant improvements to the space cost the society $150,000, about two-thirds of which has been paid for through donations. The society’s annual budget is $250,000. And Shirk said the society has “substantial” cash reserves.
“In this new place,” he said, “we want to be open longer hours (the gallery is now open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.), and we want to be prepared for future rent increases that we know will come down the line. We’re going to be working on an endowment program as well as trying to get money related to specific needs.”
Meanwhile, the society remains open to anyone in exchange for an annual membership fee of $50 “” and amid that sharp fiscal eye, that money is likely to be put to the best of use.
The society’s current exhibit is called “New Directions,” an exhibit of approximately 90 experimental works; it runs through Jan. 27. The gallery is located at 2825 Dewey Rd., Suite 105. For more information, call (619)-876-4550 or visit www.sdws.org.