Conversations with TJ Templeton

Today we’d like to introduce you to TJ Templeton.

Hi TJ, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
My professional career has been a hybrid of experiences that have led me to have the perfect skillset for what I am today: A professional fine artist and contemporary art dealer. After high school, I worked my way into business and personnel management after a brief stint in art school. In the mid-1990s, my work began being collected to the level I could support myself. Still, I opted to balance my studio work with the exciting new technology of web-based communication and graphic design. By 2003 I had relocated to LeMars, Iowa, and started my own company (LeMartian Studios) as a freelance web and graphic designer. I had no idea at the time how vital the internet would become to career development in the arts.

My web design and graphic arts company did well enough for my spouse and me to purchase a 110-year-old home. This is where my unexpected secondary skillset came to life: handyman. Through DIY remodeling and repairing the old Victorian house, I accumulated the tools and skills necessary to hire myself for small (and not-to-so-small) handyman gigs. All the while, I was continuing my studio practice. Again, I had yet to learn this skill set would be such an asset in the future.

Later, my (then) wife and I relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I was offered a job as gallery director for a gallery (Spatium) following a successful solo exhibition. This role continued for me for a few years and allowed me to build a robust stable of artists and collectors until divorce allowed me to return to my hometown of Kansas City, where the art scene was booming. When I left KC in 2003, First Friday in the Crossroads was a few hundred people milling about in Leedytown. When I returned, it was 10 to 15 thousand strong. I knew coming home was the right idea.

When I returned to Kansas City, I had everything I needed to build and operate a gallery from scratch: business management and ownership experience. I could do the website and social media. I could handle e-commerce. I could do the graphic design. I could even put up and take down walls, and of course, I had clients and artists already on my phone from my time in Nebraska.

Fortunately for me, the city had created tax incentives for property investors who bought buildings on the periphery of the crossroads after the original crossroads tenants had been gentrified out. The primary thing the property investors have to do to earn the tax reduction is to have an arts-related business on their property. Of course, they all needed someone to make that happen for them. That’s where I come in. That’s how I became the gallery director and curator of the Bunker Center for the Arts and the new Firehouse Gallery.

Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
The biggest challenge has always been the balance of maintaining a robust studio practice with the responsibilities of managing multiple galleries. There isn’t enough time in the day. When inspiration strikes, you must heed that call and put everything on the back burner to the best of your ability. Sometimes it pans out differently. Sometimes it does. Managing the galleries has slowed my personal development and learned skills as an artist. Still, the sheer joy of working with artists and putting their art into the hands of collectors is a reward that I would never wish to forego.

Technology and web-based marketing have been a real double-edged sword. As an artist, it used to be that you put together a body of work, pitched it to a gallery, sent out postcards, and had a show; maybe Alice Thorson at the Star would write about you, and that was it. Now, the artist has to find the time to maintain a website, post on social media, do internet-based marketing and bookkeeping, and remember all the arts-related events in your Facebook feed that you must attend! Being an artist today requires far more time doing things that are not making art, likewise for the gallerist: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn. They all need a little of your time. Like the artists, you must attend the events, but as a gallerist, you must also host a few. The biggest challenge is time.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an interdisciplinary artist and a Kansas City native. My work has been collected for over 30 years nationwide. It has been featured in such outlets as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, ArtMove Magazine, KC Studio Magazine, and the Martin Scorsese screening room at the Tribeca Film Festival and the 21C Museum. I’m the artist-in-residence at the Bunker Center for the Arts, where I maintain my studio. My work is typically two-dimensional and done through observation. I use my imagery as a narrative to address contemporary social issues. Most recently, my work has centered around economic inequality, social stratification, and the socially constructed meanings of “wealth.”

My current body of work creates these narratives through screen printing and painting and the blurring of lines between the two media, literally and figuratively. I began this method of image creation at the beginning of 2020 when the pandemic appeared, and I’ve been immensely enjoying it ever since.

To answer the question of what I am most proud of in my work: I have the space and resources to explore whatever medium I’m using at the time to its fullest extent. I habitually use any mark-making tool as long as it is archival. I’m very fortunate to be able to explore all those possibilities as they come.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Yes. I want to plug the galleries again and encourage your audience to see the work of all the fantastic artists I have the luxury of working with. The Bunker Center for the Arts is at 19th and Troost, and the Firehouse Gallery #8 is at 1600 Locust. Don’t think I’m being completely selfless; there’s much of my work in those spaces too! Please stop in and take a look at what we have going on.

Contact Info:

• Website: templeton-arts.com
• Instagram: @tj_templeton
• Facebook: @omgtjartist