The Nonprofit Gallery Directors: Frances Trombly & Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova
“What we are trying to do is balance the power dynamic between non-artist and artists. We’re trying to give artists a seat at the table and reclaim power…”
5 QUESTIONS WITH
Frances Trombly & Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova
Co-Founders, Dimensions Variable, and Visual Artists
Miami, FL
Dimensions Variable (DV) is a nonprofit led by artists committed to the education, presentation, and support of contemporary art in Miami. Through a supportive community, DV provides studios, curates exhibitions, produces external projects, publishes content, hosts discussions, develops education, and organizes events that engage the community and support challenging and experimental art practices. Dimensions Variable (DV) was founded in 2009 by artists Frances Trombly and Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova. After sharing a studio donated by Craig Robins of Dacra in the Miami Design District, Frances and Leyden decided to open an official project space named after a short-lived blog they created a year before called Dimensions Variable. They designated the front area of their studio space as a small gallery and started inviting artists to produce site-specific projects. On September 8, 2009, DV opened its first project—a two-person exhibition titled Build-up with Shane Aslan Selzer and Tom Scicluna.
1. DV is a unique, hybrid model: a gallery, nonprofit, studio collective, conversation space, and more. How are the events of 2020 impacting your work?
We have been laying low since the pandemic became a real issue. Our last event was a conversation on March 7th, but we are moving forward now with new projects. Mainly we’ve been trying to understand what is happening and how our personal, livelihood, and family safety is being jeopardized by all this uncertainty. We're mostly a volunteer staff, so this unprecedented situation creates a survivalist pause since our incomes are not related to DV. We also thought, everyone else needed the same time to just pause, reflect, plan, and regroup. It seems like every other organization has been scrambling to keep things going online since there are a lot of jobs that depend on this, but we preferred to pause and think for our own peace of mind. Since we don’t necessarily have employees, we can pause when needed. Although, we need to still fulfill grant obligations, even though funders have understood this pandemic’s affect on timelines. Our next round of projects was going to open May 1st, they're moving to September and we’ve opened something else instead. We’re also fortunate to be small and nimble and can adjust our programming at a moments notice.
Now after months of our family being isolated, we are beginning to cautiously act on some of our ideas and plans for moving forward. We figured out that the best way to keep serving artists is to pay them for working with us on new projects, as well as helping them sell their work. Just this morning I emailed all the artists in our next round of projects—including strictly digital projects. We've decided to move ahead with our plans. We've also been following some work purchase inquiries to get more cash in artist pockets at this time.
2. Do you see potential for more collaboration, or collaborative practices, across the sector?
As the art world realizes the importance of engaging people globally online, we believe there will be a lot of new ideas and changes to "business as usual.” We have been talking a lot about how social and digital media are fundamentally changing the world we currently live in, yet the arts have generally dismissed this space for mostly in person “exclusive” experiences. This means the people and collaborations are drastically limited by geography and the budgets to bring all these people together. The internet has completely changed that and it takes a pandemic for the rest of the art world to understand that. We see amazing possibilities for future collaborations that will yield a higher connection with arts leaders for less of a budget strain. Not to say in-person community is not important—it will always be. However, the importance of reaching a global audience and intellectual capital is currently being overlooked by arts organizations until this pandemic. DV has now launched a Digital Gallery to commission work specifically for this space. We don’t see it as only a promotional space, but as a real space and medium for making art.
3. As artists, what is the impact on your practice?
Frances has been selling work during this pandemic, funny enough. She is also working towards a big Art Basel Miami Beach solo exhibition in her gallery—Emerson Dorsch in Miami. However, most of our income does not come from art and during this time of staying home, making sure the family is okay, homeschooling our daughter, and making sure our livelihoods are okay, it’s been hard to focus on making work. After months in isolation and laying low, we are finally beginning to take action on our work and on DV projects. Frances and I find it difficult to make art in uncertain and stressful situations. In order to think, contemplate, and feel safe to create, our state of living must be secure. Space to think requires peace of mind.
4. Is there now an opportunity for increased support of local arts ecosystems, as opposed to the focus on the global market?
We have always had a focus on the local talent that lives and works here in Miami. I think one of the positive things emerging in Miami during and before this situation is the support for the local arts community. I think as a city we are becoming more aware about how unique we are and how unique any place is really. As I travel, I seek out the “local" anywhere I go. From the food to the art community. I also couldn’t understand why people saw the same art in every city as they visited art fairs for example. I feel the local awareness is changing and people understand it’s uniqueness. People are understanding that their community needs to be supported.
5. There is a consensus that the general public does not understand what the arts sector really is… Arts Funders Forum research uncovered that people believe “cultural institutions are experiencing a crisis of relevancy.” Yet, art has been sustaining people through the pandemic and quarantines. How can we best make the case for the sector, which is essential now more than ever?
This is a super important topic for us as it includes so many factors that affect us. I feel like cultural organizations, public or private, create so many barriers for people and it seems they're not very aware that they’re doing it. It’s a huge systemic problem that plagues the arts and it starts as early as children’s education. The arts are getting dismantled in schools, but the bigger issues happen further up the chain. For example, we are a nimble and small operation but it feels like in order to access bigger grants we need to become more and more corporate. This then takes more of our resources that would go to artists and the cycle continues.
But when it comes to the relevance of the arts and the general public, it just feels like cultural institutions talk a lot about community and the public, but in practice they alienate themselves further from the community. They seem really opaque and elitist on many levels. There’s not only financial elitism at play, but also educational elitism. Many people feel like they need no less than a Master or PhD to walk in the doors. You don’t get that at the movies or at sporting events even though there are film and sport scholars. For example, maybe you have a panel on gentrification and instead of inviting some REAL people who are living it, you invite only specialists and PhDs. This is part of the disconnect. Even artists themselves are being pushed more and more into a must have MFA instead of looking for REAL cultural artistic risk-taking. For example, the State of the Art exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas is amazing in attempting to break down some of these barriers. Their deep exploration of ALL the smaller cities in the country to find the work that’s actually being made through the country instead of only the four or five major cities is super important. Not to say that education is the enemy, just saying that if we want to make real change, we need to start with everything including education, yet people think a Masters from the very institutions who are part of the problem is a viable direction to change—it seems misguided.
I also see culture coming for so many different places and not only the Ivy League. We don’t see the same requisites within music, food, sports, and film. Highly educated curators should be finding culture wherever it exists and not only in masters programs.
Basically, it just feels like the arts have major work to do in breaking down the walls that contribute to the public not caring about artists. All I discuss above are contributing factors.
5. The three massive intersecting events of 2020 — the global health crisis, the pandemic-induced recession, and the growing social justice movement — could encourage a reimagining of our current system of cultural patronage and wealth. In your view, how does it most urgently need to evolve?
First and foremost, we think people need to understand that support for the arts needs to be super divers. I’m not talking about hot artists, auctions, bluechip, or secondary markets, I’m talking about the experimental contemporary art being made by the 90% of artists that are currently not famous. This work is new, ahead of its time, full of research, and possibly with no current market. For galleries to think that this is a viable business model is ludicrous. A business model based on 100% research and development is a terrible business model. For organizations to think that only grants and contributions are okay is also short sighted as government funding goes up and down and you’re not guaranteed those grants. We also need to rethink a system that only relies on wealthy individual contributions to operate—it causes an unbalanced power dynamic that further alienates the general public among many other issues.
What we are trying to do at DV is balance the power dynamic between non-artist and artists. We’re trying to give artists a seat at the table and reclaim power that’s not only associated with giving us a show or not. We want to inspire traditional funders to support this empowerment and not subscribe to the tired old world structures. By further empowering artists you reach further into the community and get different ideas about how to reach them and how to raise money in new ways. All this as long as you can convince artists not to get tantalized by the glitz and glamour of fancy parties and fame that just contribute to the same power structures we continue to see. It’s hard, but we are hopeful. It’s a long journey of not just educating the general public, but also our peers and established patrons who are used to a way of doing things and rarely question it.
At its core, we want a balanced board of directors, and break down all the typical corporate structures to become a highly diversified income organization. Board dues, fundraisers, donations, memberships, crowdfunding, endowments, special events, art sales, foundation and government grant—it’s all on the table. All in the name of supporting the experimental, underrepresented, minority, and research in contemporary art.
Frances Trombly (b. 1976 Miami, FL, USA) is an artist, Co-founder and Deputy Director of Dimensions Variable. She is based in Miami, FL, United States. She received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a solo project at Locust Projects, Miami; and curated group shows Americana: Formalizing Craft at the Perez Art Museum Miami and united states at the The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. Her work has been featured in various publications including The New York Times, Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine, Surface Design Journal, and The Los Angeles Times. Trombly’s work is in the permanent collection of the Perez Art Museum, Miami and NSU Art Museum, Ft. Lauderdale, among others. Trombly is represented by Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.
Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova (b. 1973 Havana, Cuba) is an Artist, Curator, Co-founder and Executive Director of Dimensions Variable (DV) and Fulano Inc. He lives and works in Miami, FL, United States. His work has been exhibited widely at Sculpture Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Abrons Arts Center and White Box in New York; Museo de Bellas Artes and Factoria Habana in Havana, Cuba; ZONA MACO Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, Mexico; Capri Palace and Villa Lena in Italy; Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger, Norway; PAMM, Frost Museum, The Bass, MOCA, DV and Locust Projects in Miami. His work is in many public and private collections around the world and institutions like PAMM, Frost Museum, Cintas Foundation, and The Bass. He has been written about in the New York Times, The Miami Herald, Art Nexus, Arte al Dia, Artforum, Artsy, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Miami Rail, and Miami Magazine. Since founding DV in 2009, he has organized and curated many projects by local and international emerging artists.