Gabrielle Shain-Bryson opened the Shain Gallery. As a child, she walked home every day from school, past where the gallery is now, on Selwyn Corners.
“I didnt get very far,” she says jokingly.
In truth, Shain-Bryson has been farther than Myers Park High School and Selwyn Corners, Charlotte. With a Fine Arts Master degree in Theatre from Chapel Hill, she moved to Kentucky where she had an outdoor theatre company for fifteen years.
When she returned to Charlotte, artist friends urged her to open a gallery.
“The art of the theater does translate,” she says. ”Art is art; it’s just easier to analyze a piece of art that isnt singing and dancing and changing every second.”
Shain specializes in artists she considers to be some of the best from all over the U.S. The gallery has a reputation for being relaxed and welcoming, where people come in sweats and bring Fido, but there is a certain elegance too, with high ceilings and a gorgeous chandelier.
The gallery’s potential motto is ”Classic is Classic” for a reason.
“We look for art that has a timeless quality and will be appreciated indefinitely,” says Shain-Bryson. “If the artwork makes me dig in my pocket because I really want one, my clients will probably love the work as well.
Art must have a human element. When she meets people who say they dont know much about art, she relies on the words of the late Thomas Hoving, former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Art is for fun, for partaking in life. Everyone’s response to a work of art is equal because it’s your response.”
For further information or to view the art available at Shain Gallery visit them online at www.shaingallery.com.
