Art Blooms in Mayfaire

These days, AMY GRANT is painting on a larger canvas, and with a bigger brush. Grant, owner of Art in Bloom Gallery in Mayfaire, has moved her business into larger quarters there and has ambitious plans for it. 

On March 9, the gallery opened in its new, 2,700-square-foot space at 970 Inspiration Drive. That’s a big step up from its former 1,700-square-foot Mayfaire storefront, and a giant step from Grant’s original 850-square-foot gallery in downtown Wilmington, which launched in 2015. 

The Inspiration Drive location gives Grant not only a larger footprint, but a larger wallprint too – essential for displaying more than thirty artists’ works that range from paintings, jewelry, and ceramics to sculpture and fabric art.  

Grant has other plans as well.

“That space, for me, will be an opportunity to hold small, niche classes as opposed to having to (draw) a certain amount of students,” she says. “Between three and eight students may be ideal for our space. Some teachers could even do tutoring.”

First on Grant’s agenda for the new space is a collaboration with DREAMS of Wilmington, a youth development organization for the arts. Grant is a volunteer and a board member, and a portion of the gallery will become the DREAMS Center for Art Education. DREAMS teaching artist CAMMERON BATANIDES will lead the project, which is funded in part by a grant from the North Carolina Museum of Art. Art in Bloom Gallery is the commercial partner.  

The project is more than just a temporary exhibition of DREAMS’ student artwork, Grant says. Arts innovation and mentoring are important elements as well.

“As Cammeron teaches the class, (the DREAMS students) are creating art, learning about the business of art, and entrepreneurship,” she says. “This grant gave Cammeron a chance to put everything together.”

The resulting pop-up exhibition, which runs April 5-6, gives students the chance to learn how to put on an art show, Grant says. “I’m excited that DREAMS is the first arts organization to have a show here,” she says. “I have watched some students grow and even go to college. I think art transforms lives.” 

The visual arts have certainly transformed hers. The Fayetteville native is a scientist by training and carved out a career as a regulatory scientist – first for AstraZeneca and then for a small start-up biotech firm – in the Philadelphia area and nearby Delaware. While she enjoyed her work, she had a “next phase” business plan in her back pocket: establishing an art gallery. Grant tested her ideas by operating a small experimental gallery in her spare time. She also traveled to several cities, including Wilmington, to gauge the best location for her venture.

When the no-longer-quite-so-small biotech firm was acquired, its new owners offered some employees early retirement packages. Grant seized the opportunity. She chose Wilmington for her next phase, after assessing the cultural landscape and meeting RHONDA BELLAMY, director of the Arts Council of Wilmington and New Hanover County.

“Wilmington had something no other place had,” Grant says. “The history, the love of art, the way arts converge here. The more I live here, the more I appreciate that. I also recognize how businesses and nonprofits support the arts here. It’s collaboration instead of competition.”

Changing her location and career was a risk, but taking calculated risks is part of Grant’s makeup. Leaving a large, established biopharmaceutical company to work for a startup worked out well for her. So has her new career as a gallery owner, gradually expanding from a tiny place downtown to a high-visibility gallery near Belk and The Fresh Market. But at each stage she cushions the risk, as she did when considering the original Mayfaire move. Finding a large vacant storefront in the shopping complex, she tested her idea with a pop-up exhibition of Wilmington artist ELIZABETH DARROW’s work.

“In the pop-up that lasted two-and-a-half months we met so many different people. … People who were traveling or maybe didn’t come downtown,” she says. “I took the risk because of that pop-up.”

When the initial move from her first small gallery to Mayfaire seemingly precluded her participation in Fourth Friday Gallery Nights downtown, Grant collaborated with TERRY ESPY at MoMentum Companies. She now hangs artwork inside MoMentum’s offices on Front Street, giving exposure both to her artists and to MoMentum. 

Most of her artists followed her to Mayfaire, and the gallery’s portfolio now includes two artists from the Raleigh-Durham area, who came to Art in Bloom through Grant’s guest artist program.  

Through promoting original artwork, Grant has found her mission. But she doesn’t attempt to tell people what to like.

“I’ve seen spouses, families, stand in front of a piece of artwork and argue about what they’re looking at,” she says with a laugh. “Art is truly in the eye of the beholder. What I know is how much original art is part of hope; doing things that bring out our best selves.”

To view more of photographer Aris Harding’s work, go to arisharding.com.

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