Erin Cluley looks back — and ahead — as her gallery celebrates 10 years

It started in what its owner once described as “a crusty old truck repair shop.” Now, a decade later, Dallas’ Erin Cluley Gallery is set to celebrate its 10th anniversary with “Ten Years,” a month-long show opened on Saturday that features works by 28 artists.  To understand what’s driven the gallery’s rise, look no further than the woman behind it. Owner and director Erin Cluley represents internationally known artists, but she has also stood out as a champion of local talent.  Riley Holloway, a Dallas-based artist represented by Cluley, said the gallerist was open to any ideas he had as they planned “Home,” his first solo show in the gallery in 2020.

“I had a lot of crazy ideas that I was gonna throw at that,” said Holloway, whose figurative painting, Artist as Muse, will be in the anniversary show. “I almost wanted to put an interior in there that felt like my mother’s home, and she was just open to whatever creative change I had. … She trusts you to be an artist.”

Cluley says her goal is ultimately to nurture and promote artistic careers. “I couldn’t have the gallery and do what I do without the artist making the beautiful and smart and thoughtful work that they do in their studios. The business wouldn’t work without them.”

A native of Wichita Falls, Cluley, 45, worked at the Dallas Contemporary before opening her gallery in an unheralded spot in West Dallas in 2014. A former truck repair shop on Fabrication Street, it was “probably one of the least desirable places in Dallas to have a gallery,” said Marion Marshall, a Dallas artist and local art insider who has known Cluley since her days at the Contemporary.

“There were some artists that were there, but she put a fine arts gallery over there, which was quite unusual for the time,” Marshall added.

  Erin Cluley is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her gallery with an exhibition called ‘Ten Years.’ TNS

Dallas art collector Howard Rachofsky recalled the space as being “sort of strange and odd, little, very bohemian,” but said the artists Cluley was showing still drew interest.

Ree Willaford, the owner and director of Galleri Urbane in the Dallas Design District, attributed some of the early success to Cluley’s commitment to local artists.  “She showed local artists early on. That’s a focus of hers and that always will bring everybody out, because local artists support local artists,” Willaford said. “That was the key.”

The gallery’s early success drew the attention of Nic Nicosia, a Dallas native whose artworks have been shown throughout the United States and Europe. He’s lived in Dallas for most of his career, but spent about a decade in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before returning in 2015.

“When I moved back, I really didn’t feel like I needed to immediately try and find a gallery in Dallas,” Nicosia said. “But Erin Cluley kept coming up.”

When he finally visited her gallery in 2016, Cluley asked if she could see his studio and he agreed. By the end of that visit, Cluley was pitching him on exhibiting his work in her gallery.  “She had already garnered a pretty good reputation from people whose opinions I respect,” said Nicosia, whose series of graphite-on-paper drawings, 100 Years, will be in the anniversary show. “Sometimes you just know when you meet someone that they’re the person you want to work with.”

Bringing in Nicosia was a big moment for the gallery and its artists, Cluley says. His first solo show at the gallery, “At Home On Time,” was in 2017.

“He has raised the profile of the gallery in a way that I might not have been able to do with some of my emerging artists,” Cluley said, adding that he also helped bring more attention to other artists her gallery represents.

The gallery continued to grow in the years that followed. It participated in art fairs in Sydney, Miami and, of course, Dallas. In 2019, the gallery moved to its current location in the Design District, which, Cluley says, helped it draw new clients.

Cluley points to museum acquisitions as particularly proud moments for the gallery. Examples include Francisco Moreno’s Chapel, a work that combines elements of architecture, painting and drawing, that was acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art in 2019, and Nicosia’s bighands, an 8-foot-tall sculpture with oversized hands and feet, that the Nasher Sculpture Center acquired in 2020.

In 2021 in West Dallas, the gallery opened a satellite campus, Cluley Projects, with the goal of spotlighting Texas artists from underrepresented communities. It is a manifestation of Cluley’s desire to make art more equitable and accessible, both for artists and audiences.

“Her goal has been to really be inclusive, and that comes with a level of being uncomfortable, because it’s different from how most galleries in Dallas or most places work,” Marshall said. “They build their reputations, in many cases, on being exclusive … from the work that they do to the people that show up.”

Cluley Projects holds an annual open call for submissions from artists across Texas to exhibit at the space. Sarita Westrup, a native of the Rio Grande Valley, was selected from that process in 2022 and put together a solo show the following year. Westrup is now represented by Cluley Projects, and her Primos IV, a mixed-media work made with reed, mortar and paint, will be in the anniversary exhibition.  As the gallery marks the 10-year milestone, Cluley is thinking about the future. She says she would like to present more public pieces such as murals to engage more with the community. She’d also like for more of her artists’ pieces to be acquired by museums. Her focus remains on nurturing careers, she says. “Looking forward to the next 10 years is to see how much more we can accomplish.”

Tribune News Service