Posted on Mon, Apr. 16, 2007
Artist/gallery owner believes two's company, three's a show

By ALICIA ZUCKERMAN

A curator once told artist Alette Simmons-Jimenez she could pull off a group show on her own, presenting herself as different artists by wearing various disguises. Her artwork varies wildly in style and form: She creates paintings, sculptures and videos, and while themes do tend to emerge -- flocks of birds, mice, wire formations -- her works don't have an obvious signature style.

Not so for 55-year-old Simmons-Jimenez herself. She possesses a trio of elements for survival in the art world: creativity, business savvy and adaptability -- and her most ambitious work so far is Artformz Alternative, her gallery in Miami's Design District.

FINDING A HOME

After years of spending her days in studios (first in ArtCenter/South Florida on Lincoln Road, then an old Spanish house in Coral Gables, and finally at home on an acre in South Miami), she opened the gallery in 2004.

At first she just wanted a place to exhibit her own work. But after a couple of months, she realized she needed more variety, especially if she wanted to hold the interest of the crowds that come for the monthly Second Saturday Art Gallery Walk, when local galleries stay open late.

''I couldn't keep up with it,'' she says. 'I couldn't put up more than a couple of new pieces every time and I thought, `This is gonna get old really quick. People are going to not come back. It's just going to become redundant and what purpose do you serve?' ''

Upstairs from the airy, white exhibition space is a small loft where she keeps much of her own work in storage. Leaning against the far wall is Icon #3, a 72- by 72-inch painting inspired by Russian Orthodox iconography, with shades of Keith Haring. Fiddle Dee Dee 2, a sculpture depicting an army of life-sized white mice crawling out of a birdbath, has been known to repulse gallery visitors to the point of walking out immediately upon seeing it. In Fantastic Fictions, two toilet paper rolls (Cottonelle and Scott Premium) become canvases for square after square of continuous black drawings, dotted with gold beads.

The chameleon-like nature of her works reflect her eclectic upbringing. Her father was in the Air Force, and she and her three siblings grew up as ''military brats.'' Born in Wisconsin, Simmons-Jimenez quickly makes clear that she's hardly a ''nice Midwestern girl.'' She was 6 months old when her family left for Europe, and spent much of her childhood bouncing around Italy, Germany and her favorite home base during those years, Portugal. After college, she and her husband lived in the Dominican Republic for 18 years.

Simmons-Jimenez's works in the current show include a video of burning dolls' heads; the plastic heads, accompanied by a pop music soundtrack, shrivel and morph into Rorschach-like formations. Another installation, Wave, hangs suspended in air, a patchwork of water photos dominated by shades of blue. The snapshots include Simmons--Jimenez's backyard pool, her daughter's swim meet, New York Harbor with the Statue of Liberty off in the distance, and a pond in New York's Central Park (taken with her cell phone).

She calls Artformz Alternative an ''artist-run space'' -- more co-op than traditional gallery -- with bi-monthly group exhibitions. Decisions are sometimes made democratically; she collects artists' opinions via e-mail. When a work sells, Artformz takes a 30 percent commission; galleries typically take 25-50 percent. To help defer the gallery's $5,000 monthly operating expenses, exhibiting artists pay a ''project fee'' -- $200 a month for the current show, Capture, Burn & Blow Up, photography-based artwork.

GIVING THEM THE BUSINESS

''I'm very big on artists learning how to promote themselves and to be more business-minded,'' explains Simmons-Jimenez, whose first job after college was working in a New Orleans advertising agency, an experience she credits with shaping her approach to promotion.

Her husband Day, who has an MBA in finance and marketing, has also helped.

``A lot of artists feel like they should just paint, take it there, drop it off and then, when they do sell something, [the gallery] will let them know and pay them. It's not like Paris in the day when galleries would make the artist and promote the artist. You have to do a lot of work on your own.''

One of the ways in which Simmons-Jimenez gets artists more involved in the process of exhibiting their work is ''hanging day,'' when the artists show up to hang and arrange the work for an upcoming exhibition. It's as hands-on as it gets.

Says artist Priscilla Ferguson, recalling the last hanging day at ArtFormz: ``We were sweating and smoking cigarettes, and the language, you could say, was colorful.'

Simmons-Jimenez says there's something of a stigma in being an artist who also runs a gallery. It is often viewed as a conflict of interest for artists to display their own work in shows they curate. Some artists and art dealers regard Simmons-Jimenez with suspicion.

``I'm up against that, and I know it every day. But then you know what? There are supposedly no rules on what artists can do.''

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