Death Of Reflex Will Leave A Void In Area Arts Scene
Reflex, a nonprofit journal that has covered the Pacific Northwest visual arts scene since 1987, is dead. After months of financial problems, it has ceased publication. The last edition was in February, though the journal's board of directors didn't make the tough decision to close down until this month.
Kurt Kiefer, president of Reflex's board of directors, said the publication had incurred "substantial debt for a small organization and we could see no easy way out."
Especially troubling, said Kiefer, was that the publication's dwindling resources had made it impossible to pay Reflex's two full-time employees, editor John Boylan and publication manager Jim Demetre, who are now owed back pay.
Reflex's annual budget of about $100,000 was in theory supported in equal parts by government and foundation grants, advertising and subscriptions. But since the publication was distributed free at art galleries and elsewhere, subscriptions were never a great source of revenue, said Demetre.
Reflex won a $5,000 grant from the King County Arts Commission a year ago - flattering recognition of the journal's importance to the regional art scene - and used the money to leap from bimonthly publication to 11 issues a year. Kiefer said the increased publication schedule ultimately was not supported by increased advertising or subscriptions, however, and Reflex fell further into debt.
With the demise of Reflex, the visual art scene loses an
energetic and thoughtful voice. Boylan and his stable of freelance writers, many of whom are artists themselves, made a habit of covering the unexpected, hard-to-find art shows as well as the big-venue exhibits. They were as likely to show up at new galleries on Capitol Hill, in Boise, Idaho, and in Portland, Ore., as at crowd-pleasers at the Seattle Art Museum and the Henry Art Gallery.
Though Demetre and Kiefer say in hindsight that the publication may have been geared too much toward artists and people already in the art-scene loop, the publication nevertheless offered insight into art that otherwise didn't get covered. Reflex will be missed.
Boylan says he might try to continue Reflex's monthly discussion/forum at the Two Bells Tavern, an event that was usually an evening of vigorous debate.
Meanwhile, Demetre is hatching a plan to fill the void, sort of. He hopes to start a bimonthly journal in July that he says will cover "mostly visual arts but also some performance and dance." He says he will publish investigative reporting on the visual arts, and pieces that relate the visual arts to popular culture. He plans to limit coverage to Portland and Seattle.
"I'm going to bankroll this myself," Demetre says. "And I'm going to use some Reflex writers, though I'm not only going to stick with the Reflex crowd."
Demetre hasn't come up with a name for the journal, but says he'll probably go for inspiration to "either the Old Testament or `Gray's Anatomy.' I definitely don't want anything with `art' in the title. There are too many of them out there already."
Artists' studio tour
An early warning: The Seattle Art Museum Supporters, a group of SAM volunteers, is sponsoring its annual Artists' Studio Tour on May 5 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The event is an opportunity to take a self-guided tour through the studios of some 40 artists who work in Belltown and the Denny Regrade. The artists will be on hand to answer questions and give demonstrations, and for those who've always wondered just how and where artists work, this is a great chance to find out. In the past, more than 1,000 people taken the tour. Proceeds go to support SAM.
Tickets are $8 for SAM members and $10 for nonmembers. Tickets can be purchased at the SAM box office in the downtown museum, or by calling the box office as 654-3121.