This spring, with 52 Ft dormant since our COVID shut-down, we invited fellow Maspeth’ers Mrs. Gallery, located around the corner at 60-40 56th Dr, to curate two works for 2023. The first, “Vessels” by Mark Mulroney, went up in May. The next, “Fountains” by Chris Bogia, opens on Thursday November 30 from 6-8pm. We decided to interview gallery co-founder Sara Maria Salamone with colleague Emily Janowick about the project, their curation and what is required to paint across 52 feet.

KDC: Can you tell me a little bit about Mrs. Gallery, and how it started?

Sara: We started in 2016 and we've been here in Maspeth since we opened. And one of the reasons we knew Maspeth was a good idea was because the Knockdown Center was already down the street. So we knew that people were coming here that weren't just living here. But it could be a destination location that maybe could benefit from an art space. And in fact it has proven to be very true. It's been really nice that [director] Tyler [Myers] asked us to collaborate with Knockdown. You have been our neighbors for all this time, but we haven't been able to do anything together as of yet. So this does feel like a bit of a community or neighborhood outreach, but in a really positive light. I'm excited about it.

KDC: What was your background before you started Mrs.?

Sara: I have my master's in photography. Most of the people who work here are also artists. We're not officially an artist-run space, but we're also not unofficially an artist-run space either. That allows us to be quite sensitive to the artists' needs that we choose to work with and we're better able to support them in many ways because we understand what happens in the studio on a day-to-day basis.

KDC: How do you pick artists for the project?

Sara: We have been able to show two artists that are on the gallery roster. This is a little bit out of the box for some of them. And 52 feet is really long and, like, a pretty vast space. It's a real experiment on a number of levels. But when it came to selecting who we would first give the task to we knew that Mark Mulroney had a history of mural work. We knew that he could at least break in the process of collaborating with you.

Mark is maybe one of the outliers of our program. His work is very graphic in nature, very direct in many ways. But Mark's an incredible craftsman as well and an archivist and a researcher and collector of items and ephemera. All of that goes into his work. It’s very much in the background. So it's important for us to give Mark an opportunity where he can express his work in a totally different way. But this way he was able to do something that would be interacting with the people who come to the Knockdown Center on a regular daily basis. In many ways it was an experiment for him and a really freeing way for him to expand his painting process, which after he said was a great outlet.

Emily: When we were at his studio he was saying the mural was a kicking off point for a new body of work that he's been making. That's the beauty of the whole program. Artists get to really try something that they haven't tried or it’s at the scale of something they haven't worked at before. That gives them this generative space that then will move into future projects, which is pretty cool.

KDC: And what about Chris?

Sara: Chris has never done something like this before, but his most recent project is a series. He's been focusing on the fountains. It really kind of sprung out of this need for civic engagement during the pandemic when we were all shut inside. And he thought, what kind of a monument brings people together, but in an unassuming and non-political way? He came to this idea of the fountain, which is prevalent in many different cultures all over the world. It has a universality to it.

Emily: It's a centerpiece of the village. And it's also a kind of a jewel, this sparkling thing that brings people together. But it's free for the public.

Sara: And so that's when he was thinking about what he would produce for this wall. He often repeats forms and shapes and motifs, so coming back to the fountain idea just made a lot of sense because of the way that the Knockdown Center engages and brings people to the space and for so many different cultural opportunities.

KDC: Is there a defining aspect of a Mrs. artist?

Sara: There's a number of defining aspects, but predominantly it is really a unique use of materiality: it could be paint, like Chris is using now, but he also uses 3D printing quite effectively, yarn, tapestry… It's a new and inventive way that he is applying these materials. It's focused on each particular artist and their own specific mediums.

Emily: For example, Rose Nessler works with leather a lot, but she's making these leather flowers, which we haven't seen. She's working with leather and metal, which are traditionally masculine materials in this way to talk about the history of feminism and the history of craft. It’s taking materials that are traditionally used in one way and shifting them into a more contemporary lens.

KDC: When you're thinking about a 52-foot wall, as a curator or as imagining what an artist would be thinking going into that, what springs to mind? Challenges, exciting aspects, “oh hell no,” whatever.

Emily: It's a lot of labor…

Sara: It’s a lot.

Emily: And so the person who's going into it has to be ready and know what they're doing. Mark gave Chris sort of a little mini class. They had a Zoom call where Mark was like, “these are the things you need to get ready for, and this is the color the wall should be based on the colors that you're working with” and stuff. And so they're passing knowledge on to each other, which is really cool, because it’s not something that you would get to do in your studio. It’s a cool opportunity because of that, because it is so expansive.