“Do you know what my favourite part is?” says Jordan Miller.
Even amidst the sadness of losing favourite parts and from behind the mask she must wear to protect herself as an immuno-compromised person, the artist’s eyes light up as she recounts it.
“The artist would bring in their art and I would unpack it and I would get to see them for the first time, and I would lay them out in the gallery and I’d figure out exactly where I wanted each piece. And there’s some sort of magic to trying to figure out the story behind the artwork.”
The magic of her gallery, the Cre8ery Gallery in the Exchange District, will officially run out when, after nearly two decades of exhibitions and creations, the gallery will permanently close. Miller, who has been its curator for the entire run of the gallery, formed it to address a need she saw coming out of art school in the early 2000’s.
“There were no gallery spaces for emerging beginner artists who had recently graduated. All the galleries were full,” she recalls.
As that problem has persisted through the years – indeed, by Miller’s estimation, it has only gotten worse – the up-and-coming artists have less places to go, both to create and to showcase their wares for the public.
“They don’t support the underdog artists like I do, which is the big loss for the community that everyone is talking to me about,” says Miller, who also notes that the artists in her gallery were free to create the “weird art” that wouldn’t be as economically viable in other spaces.
The writing has been on the wall for the Cre8ery Gallery since 2018, when Miller was informed of a substantial rent increase by her landlords. While she was able to make cuts to programming and adjust the gallery’s functions to serve the artists, there came a point where the bend became a break.
“When the pandemic started and we went into lockdown, I didn’t raise anybody’s rent and I was able to carry it,” says Miller, demonstrating that ultimate care for artists that has been at Cre8ery since its inception. “I wasn’t making money, but I was able to pay myself what I was supposed to be paid. I was able to pay all the bills. But I thought when the next [rent increase] comes in, I can’t raise the rent 30% and have them stay. There was no way.”
Before the gallery shuts its doors for good, Miller is giving it what she’s calling a retirement celebration: an exhibit of her own making called Beyond the Green: Building Perspectives and Layered Emotions. It’s a collection of abstract landscapes created by free-flowing paints, which Miller enhanced during her surgery recovery with little white dots that give the pieces a sense of landscape.
“I was trying to process my diagnosis and the fact that I was leaving my baby behind and how I was going to tell everybody,” Miller says, gesturing at the paintings as if to say that these artworks tell that story.
The Cre8ery Gallery will officially close its doors on April 19. Visitors can visit the gallery until then from Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
