We found a store-front space in Bath which we can rent for 3 months, and have been scurrying around setting up a gallery ever since. Peggy wanted to call the place GALLERY MUIR, and to color all our promos, signs, and et ceteras with bright yellow. So now a yellow “Gallery Muir” sign hangs over the door to 9 Centre Street. And the door is open.

I’ve fought shy of running a retail space ever since I dabbled in a co-operative gallery back in the 70s. In a co-op someone always ends up doing all the scut work, and I’m unable to delegate (or duck) the drudge. And the artists I’ve known who run their own galleries have always seemed a bit snappish to me. Trying to balance the necessary extroversion of sales and the necessary introversion of creation can be an unhappy juggle. Four days of out-front rapping at the Maine Festival, once a year, seemed more than enough for me. But now we’re committed through September, with an option to renew.

We’ve attempted to strike a balance between full-time retail and creative peace of mind. I went around and asked our Bath neighbors about peak pedestrian traffic hours, and we’re scheduled to be open Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays 10-2, and Fridays noon-8:30. Mondays and Tuesdays are reputed to be very slow, and we have yarting scheduled for Thursdays. Of course it has rained every Thursdays since we took possession of the space. Just as well, since we had scads of details to nail down.

This whole scheme is a house of cards, and getting the bottom tier in place has been a shaky business. It all began with the pieces themselves. I’ve been working on two collections of work since I began backing away from commissions a few years ago. The American Icons series now has ten pieces in hand, and that doesn’t seem enough to make a show, to me. But this winter I managed to round out the Perennial Dancers series at 16. These are the core of the LOCAL MYTHS show. Nineteen other related sculptures fill out the exhibition.

The first piece, Raven Hides the Sun, spoke to the dark of the year, the winter solstice. But, just as I’ve never been able to make a totally serious image, Raven’s yarn was as ridiculous as it was sublime. In it I found a voice, and a pattern for the other tales.

I could sit down without any preconceptions, think about the character in the sculpture, and the time of year, and begin writing a simple description of who, what, where, and when. The story would then tell itself. I discovered a mythic cadence, a pattern of repeated refrain (like Kipling’s “great grey-green greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever trees”), and a moral tag for each story. “Which is why Raven’s feathers are now black. And why he has such a miserable attitude.”

I averaged a finished tale every third day, and had the whole kaboodle in my kit by May 1. It seems that April, while cruel, is the month I write in. Getting from manuscript to finished book is harder, or at least slower. I approached a local printer, whose work I like, and who I wanted to give the business, and he estimated that he could have the book in hand by July 1. So that was our initial deadline for a gallery opening. We set about finding a place to rent for July and following.

Brunswick and Bath seemed full of empty store-fronts. But the landlords in Brunswick didn’t want any short-tern tenant, even for cold cash in advance. In fact they were quite disobliging. We hoped to find a nearby space with street visibility and walk-in traffic, and there were some dandies vacant in Brunswick, our closest burg. Some of them still are.

Compromise, compromise. The cheapest and most readily available possible spaces are out of town, and would have to be strictly destination galleries people knew to come to. You’d pay the difference in advertising, and still not get the chance discovery. The best spots, in terms of traffic and art trade, would be in Portland or the summer meccas – Rockland, Boothbay, etc. But that would mean a lot of travel in the summer crush, and the urban ambiance. Not to mention the steep rents.

Bath, on the other hand, is a real town where visitors walk in an old downtown, and the flavor is shipyard. Not an arts and crafts sort of place, but a nice place to spend your summer, if you want to play storekeeper. Three Nice Guys, the acoustic trio I play in, has been gigging at the Café Crème on the corner of Front and Center Street, right across from Bath City Hall, and it feels like home to me.

So we started looking at spaces in Bath. When I walked into the Sagadahock Realty to ask about the storefront under the local art supply house (The Full Spectrum), Roy looked up and said, “Bryce the Toymaker, nice to see you.” Talk about a welcome.

Sagadahock owns and leases something like 80% of downtown Bath, and has the reputation of being a great landlord. They were kind enough to offer us this showroom space for three months, so we could try it on, starting July 1. The new gallery is across the street from the Café.

Then there was infrastructure, advertising, and all the doodahs. A special amusements license from City Hall for music in the space. Approval for signage from the codes officer. I had to grin. Back when I was writing art reviews for the Maine Times there was a controversy about appropriate signage and murals in Bath, and I mouthed off on the subject. My take was that the urge to maintain a “period” look was misguided, as the 19th century pictures of Bath show a riot of signage, rather than the pristine brick look currently in favor. Now I had to conform to the tidy rules. In fact, I was allowed way more signage than I could want. As for murals, they’re still controversial, but I see there are some nice ones under the viaduct, where I suggested Bath might make its reputation as the “City of Murals.”

We submitted our proposed signs to the codes officer (who doubles as a stand-up comic, that sort of town). But I had questions about the rules and before I was done the CEO, the city manager, and half the staff were helping me decode the ordinances. I felt like a favored nation.

Peggy made the cloth signs for the windows, and the banner. I set about making 16 pedestals for the myths. In the past I’ve concocted pedestals out of birch logs -- which were elegant, but prone to hatching out hoards of bugs – or by cannibalizing fluted porch pillars. But the latter are way too expensive now. I considered pvc pipe, or stovepipe. I put together a grand shiny galvanized pillar with black metal cap and base, only to discover it would be just as expensive as the porch pillars.

One of the crew at Brunswick Coal suggested sonna tubes, the cardboard cylinders used to make cement posts, and the price was right. With 2X12 caps and bases, and half-filled with sand, they work slick. Better yet, the sand is my winter de-icing supply, and I can use it on the driveway if the gallery goes bust. The tubes are all covered with brand printing, so I didn’t notice until I painted them that here is a lovely spiral seam curling up the pillars.

I concocted a bracket and pulley rig to fly our banner, and put together a sandwich board and façade sign. Every time we asked Roy (the realtor’s agent) about paint colors or small repairs he went out and bought paint or sent Ray to make a fix. Need parking stickers? There are two on the shop desk in the morning. Can you believe it? Roy and Ray even repainted the façade for our opening. Dazzle steam-cleaned the rug.

And all the neighboring storekeepers have stopped in to check us out, and wish us well. When the city manager looked in, to talk about the TOAD, which he could see tied to the town dock under his office, I said I should probably move it (there’s a 3-hour tie-up limit). He said, don’t be ridiculous, it’s a showpiece for the tourists.

More than a hundred friends and relatives made the trek to Bath for the celebration, and Seth was here from Mendocino, just to put the cherry on top. He sat in on drums. What with all the music-making, I hardly got a chance to chat with anyone, but it was a delight to see all the smiling faces, and watch the mix. Thank you all for being there.

The book of Local Myths came off the presses two days before the opening, and Dale (the printer) stopped by to see the show. We sold 50 books at the opening, so maybe I’ll be able to pay him.

Now we are settling in to the weekly round. I’ve been wandering our new neighborhood with Olympus, printing out choice Bath images on our puter, then doing colored drawings from those photos in the gallery. To keep my hands busy. I’ve also been working on a complete cycle of Local Myth ornaments. Cutting and priming the signboards in Seven Eagles, then slapping the paint on at Gallery Muir. I haven’t gotten a whiff of hardwood sawdust since this game began, so I’m feeling itchy, but drawing and painting daily keeps me from creative withdrawl.

That will be the biggest hurdle on this steeplechase. How to be a sculptor and a storekeeper at the once. Right now I’m juggling too many hats. Bookseller, promoter, salesman, artist, musician, and cruiseboat skipper. I feel scattered. And the whole commercial whirl spins me out, away from the center the carving comes from. But that’s summer in Maine, anyhow.

Such as it’s been. It has rained, and rained, and rained. I’m told this is the worst summer ever for the tourist trade (and the summer galleries). Of course that’s when I’d make a commercial experiment. But somehow it doesn’t matter. We went into this fully prepared to take a total loss. The point is to show the work, and we’re doing that in spades. Even if we’re shoveling against the tide.

So far we have made just enough sales to hold our noses above the waves. I’ve produced postcards and posters of the Local Myth pieces, in addition to the signboard versions and the books – all of which are selling nicely. And the interest I’m getting in the views of Bath suggest that the originals and prints of them will be another cash item. We’ve decided we’ll re-up for the whole year and ride this pony all the way round the course.