Michelle Y Williams: Selling in the Abstract
by: Adam Falik | posted: Mar 4, 2009
There are two stories here, and for some--artists, particularly--they might seem diametrically opposed. One story is about art, an abstract artist named Michelle Y Williams. The other story is about the partnership of Williams and her husband, Michael Conway, and how they turned Williams’ paintings into a thriving business; how they’re able to sell pretty much every piece of work the prolific Williams produces; how Williams has come to be one of the best-selling artists in more than ten galleries across the country; and how they’ve now opened the gallery on New Orleans’ Julia Street under Michelle Y Williams’ name.
First the art. Williams’ abstract paintings, which incorporate canvas, metal, and Plexiglas, as well as other non-traditional materials such as book-binding thread and sand, carry on the tradition of Abstract Expressionism born in the late 1940s and which gathered momentum through the 1950s. Jackson Pollack is an easy landmark; he navigated his craft from the then-current surrealistic trend, to drip, pour and fling paint onto his canvases, removing himself from the primary desire of imagery to focus on the results of technique, texture, and process. Other American artists, like Franz Klein, drew a viewer’s attention to the spatial possibilities of a given frame with a few simple lines on white canvas. Clyfford Still, with thick slabs of color, addressed the possibilities of layers, of fusing textures and shapes into previously unseen expression. Monumental scale, expressive brushwork (when brushes were used), and spontaneity (or the impression of), became the trademarks of Abstract Expressionism.
The names and history are worth revisiting if for no other reason than to reconstruct the movement which began anarchically, went mainstream, and has since evolved into one of the most recognizable--and marketable--forms of contemporary painting.
Working on canvas, torched metal, and wood, the self-taught, Houston-born-and-based Williams almost exclusively applies her paint (mostly acrylics) with a pallet knife. It’s easier for Williams to speak about the process of her paintings than the art itself. “People want to know from start to finish about the process, about the artist, about what they were feeling,” Williams complained from her Julia Street studio where we sat down with her and Michael Conway, “and that’s really hard for me. I hate talking about my work, I wish they would just figure it out on the end result. I even hate titling pieces. I’ve done a lot of untitled pieces because I don’t want to pigeon hole anyone into thinking this is flowers, or whatever.”
When asked what the title of a certain piece: S06-1 means, Williams explained, “It’s a sculpture, it was done in 2006, and it was the first one I did. It’s as simple as that, reduced to a date and a number.”
If her response sounds harsh, it’s unintentional. The soft-voiced Williams projects no offense--nor does her artwork. Her paintings are soothing pastorals of light and color. Occasionally some calligraphy, or a vaguely human shape, or some seemingly misplaced material such as a metal washer, a piece of thread or wire (these last three from her multi-framed installation called Basic Connections), appear more discernible than the abstraction that frames them. Her artwork is consciously apolitical; she shies away from artwork that makes statements; instead it is the simple desire of beautiful imagery, and the pleasure of creating it, that drive Williams to paint every day.
It is finances, though, that enable Williams to work with the freedom to which she has become accustomed. And it is her husband/business partner Conway who assures that freedom. Before Williams had even begun to paint on her own, the couple owned a gallery in Houston that featured national and international artists. Conway recalls, “a year and a half later we sold that gallery for three times what we paid for it.” At that point Conway returned to the corporate world, and Williams began painting. “Michelle kind of got her feet wet those first few years. I was still working a full time job; that was our income. Then in ’99 things started to take off so I said, ‘Let’s move full force with this.’ In 2001 things really jumped to another level. 2004 was another landmark year, and things have not stopped,” Conway says.
If this success sounds cut and dried, it was anything but. Those years involved Williams maturing as an artist, and Conway selling non-stop, learning new art markets, chasing funds for work sold, and haggling with gallery owners to show Williams’ work. A story Conway tells of a Santa Fe gallery epitomizes what he’s done for Williams’ career. “They were interested and asked us to send out a few pieces. They received the work and said, ‘You know what, I don’t think we’re going to take this on.’ He was ready to send the work back! So I sat there on the phone with the gallery director and convinced him to hang the work for two weeks. A piece sold within twenty-four hours. Three more pieces sold within seventy-two hours. Michelle has been their number one selling artist ever since.”
Great that it worked out for this couple, but who is going to rally for a young, unknown artist trying to make a break?
Williams says, “I would have shriveled on the phone and said, Oh, how humiliating.”
Conway adds, “There’s a real need for somebody like me to step into that situation and help put that person on the map. However, it’s a little difficult when it’s not a husband/wife relationship like we have. It’s something that needs to be given thought by the industry as to how the young talent is found, and what the compensation structure is for that person to connect excellent young talent with the gallery.”
“It’s very important that artists have a sense of business,” Williams stressed. “A sense of fiscal responsibility. They need to be professional. A creative person has a hard time putting themselves out there because number one, it’s not usually in their personality to do that, and number two, artwork is so personal. For that person to market themselves and say, ‘Hey, this is something you need to look at’….Very difficult.”
So what advice does Conway have for the artist currently struggling without that partner? “Take a solid look at your work, not anybody else’s opinion of it, and see if you can see a success story. If you can honestly answer yes, then travel down that road. It’s not going to be easy all the way, but rewarding.”
