a tight summer, light foot traffic contribute to gallery closing 

One of Portsmouth’s original Art ’Round Town member galleries, Family Tree Fine Arts at 23 Ceres St. in Portsmouth, is closing on Wednesday, Jan. 10. Friends of the gallery and of the eight painters, sculptors and jewelry makers currently on display can view and purchase work through Jan. 8.

“We’re not closing because we don’t want to do it anymore,” says Theresann D’Angelo, who owns Family Tree with her husband Ernest D’Angelo, a retired doctor. While the D’Angelos enjoyed running Family Tree, they found it difficult to survive in Portsmouth as a gallery “primarily dependent on fine art.”

Theresann admits she had been warned by a fellow painter and gallery owner that it’s hard to make a gallery work in Portsmouth, but the D’Angelos thought that this was a business well-suited to their family. Theresann is a landscape oil painter, her daughter Jill is a jewelry maker, and her son-in-law is a finished cabinetmaker. The D’Angelos, who have lived on the Seacoast for 40 years, opened Family Tree Fine Arts in March 2003. They thought of it as a family venture. “It’s something we would enjoy doing together,” Theresann explains.

Although Theresann thinks she might have done more research before opening a gallery, she wasn’t going into the business blind. As a longtime artist, her work had been exhibited in galleries in Ogunquit and Provincetown, among other locations, and she had been on the board of the N.H. Art Association and the Ogunquit Art Association. Still, she says, business in Portsmouth was “much more seasonal than I expected” and “our location is dead in winter.”

Family Tree is located on the ground level of a historic warehouse. With a low, wood beamed ceiling, the gallery feels both spacious and intimate. The “coziness” of the space is something Jackie Abramian of Haley Farm Gallery in Kittery notes in her appreciation of Family Tree as “a high quality place” where “everything was unique.”

“Ceres was a really strong street with them (on it),” adds Tara Peck of TaraPeck gallery and studio on the same street.
Ceres Street looks out on Portsmouth Harbor, but the street is not a through-way and thus receives much less foot traffic in the off-season than neighboring Bow and Market streets. “You have to weather the off season; they’re long here.” Peck says.

Theresann, who found her gallery couldn’t “rely on Portsmouth buyers,” wasn’t prepared for “the number of days you have when nobody comes through the doors.”

“The location would be something I would have done differently,” says Ernie D’Angelo. The D’Angelos looked into a space closer to Market Square where there is more consistent foot traffic but found the rents prohibitively expensive.

Kim Ferreira, owner of the nearby Three Graces gallery on Market Street, knows that “visability makes a difference.” From her five-plus years in business, Deb Thompson, owner of Nahcotta on Congress Street, says that getting people in the door is half the battle and that sufficient foot traffic helps. But she also believes that it takes time for any business to become well established and that word of mouth helps the process.

During their years in business, the D’Angelos counted on the summer tourist season to create a cushion for the leaner winter months, but the summer of 2006 failed to do this.

“I’d be happy if we were breaking even,” says Ernie. According to Theresann, apart from the restaurants, local businesses have had a difficult year financially. Ferreira and Peck agree that business was tough this past year. Thompson speculates that the rains in May and June may have really tightened people’s wallets.

But from the D’Angelo’s point of view, other factors have contributed to the struggle to keep their gallery going. When it opened in March 2003, Family Tree was the only gallery on Ceres Street; now there are four. “I don’t know if Portsmouth can support this many galleries,” says Theresann of the 11 galleries in town.

But Peck says she thinks competition is a good thing. “It raises the quality,” she says. Ferreira agrees. “The more serious high quality art galleries we have, the more collectors we will attract,” she says. There needs to be a “key number of galleries to draw people in,” says Thompson, who also recognizes that there might come a point when the number of galleries could put a dent in business. At the moment, Thompson feels the existing galleries complement each other through their differences.

A less positive form of competition for the art galleries comes from the number of venues in which art is shown or is on sale on the Seacoast. Open studios and auctions, as well as art on temporary display in banks, real estate agencies, lawyers’ offices and restaurants, cut into gallery sales.

And there is a question of whether people think of supporting the arts by buying art. Initiatives like Art ’Round Town, of which Family Tree is a founding member, have helped familiarize people with the galleries in town. The event, which takes place on the second Friday of every month from 5 to 8 p.m., is sponsored by local businesses, in particular by Ocean National Bank. It tends to be a social occasion during which people have the opportunity to meet the artists whose work is on display. “I think it’s wonderful,” observes Ferreira, who appreciates the positive energy of the event. It “allows (people) to meet and talk with artists in an informal setting.”

“We’re jammed,” says Ernie of the gatherings. But Theresann observes that while Art ’Round Town is “nice to do,” it “certainly wasn’t profitable.” Overall, “the percentage of the population that buys original art is probably half of 1 percent.”

Financial struggles aside, the D’Angelos are proud of Family Tree Fine Arts and the art they’ve shown. They strove to achieve a high level of quality and professionalism, and colleagues admired their work. “It’s what makes me want to be associated with businesses like that,” says Ferreira. “They helped us keep the bar high,” agrees Thompson.

The gallery showed primarily landscape and figurative oil paintings that straddled the line between realism and abstraction. The work was produced by contemporary artists from around the Seacoast and outside the area.

“We got some awesome artists,” such as the nationally known Michael Palmer and William Thomson, says Theresann. “We were very proud when Michael and William even considered showing with a start-up gallery.” Theresann also enjoyed working with emerging artists like Lisa Scontras Noonis, Daisy Adams and Stacey Durand.  “(We’ve) no regrets about the artists we’ve chosen,” says Ernie.

“I will certainly miss the artists,” he adds. “I will miss selling their work, talking about the art ... getting to know the new artists and being surrounded by all these beautiful works of art.” So, it is with both pride and regret that the D’Angelos will close their gallery on Ceres Street. “We almost made it,” says Theresann. 

The show “The Art of Giving,” featuring the paintings of Theresann D’Angelo, William Thomson, Michael Palmer, Lisa S. Noonis and Stacey Durand, and the jewelry of Jill D’Angelo will be on display at Family Tree Fine Arts until Monday, Jan. 8.