Valerie Gillespie beams with a misty look in her eye as she remembers attending her first Dallas Art Fair.
Gillespie recalls walking up to the booth of Bill Hodges Gallery. She looked around, mesmerized by the artwork. Then she saw Hodges, a Black gallerist from New York, who casually leaned back in his chair.
“He was so cool. There’s all this Black art. … It was the first Black gallery that I had seen in a setting like that,” she said.
That was in 2010. Now, more than a decade later, Gillespie’s Pencil on Paper Gallery is the first local Black-owned gallery to be invited to the Dallas Art Fair. It’s a significant milestone for Gillespie – and Dallas – but one that shouldn’t overshadow the journey she had to take to get here.
In recent years, there have been discussions about the lack of local Black-owned galleries at the Dallas Art Fair. Some Black artists and gallerists have stepped away from the fair, frustrated by what they feel is an exclusionary space. Platforms like The Other Art Fair Dallas have been created to make more opportunities for artists.
However, it’s hard to ignore the powerful platform the Dallas Art Fair provides for artists and gallerists.
From the connections she made to the opportunities to sell artwork, Gillespie is very clear about the fair: “It changed my life. It really did.”
Building Pencil on Paper
Visitors to the Dallas Art Fair can walk along its winding halls. Look up and they’ll read booth signs that say Montreal, New York, L.A., Atlanta, Chicago, Singapore, Dublin, Geneva.
This year, passersby also saw “Pencil on Paper, Dallas.”
Gillespie’s presence at the fair feels like a homecoming, a little slice of Dallas at the event that can feel very metropolitan and global.
She first opened her gallery in Addison in 2018 and made the move to her Design District location with an opening in 2022. She ventured into gallery ownership, inspired by the experiences she had as an artist in her early 20s who struggled to get her work into galleries in Dallas and Deep Ellum.
That’s when she decided to “create the space that I needed when I was younger…There weren't that many spaces for Black art.”
But getting a gallery space wasn’t so easy. When she and her husband Emmanuel were trying to secure a location in the Design District, they were unable to get a bank loan. So, they pooled their savings for the down payment.
Gillespie’s experience reflects a larger issue. About 50% of Black business owners applying for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance are denied compared to 18% of white business owners, according to the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2022 Small Business Credit Survey.
Acquiring a loan isn’t the only financial challenge Gillespie faces. In order to keep her business open she has to work a full-time job outside the gallery. Gillespie balances her role as gallery owner with being an arts teacher and director of fine arts at the Winston School.
She wakes up at 6 a.m., goes to work at 7 a.m. and works until 5 p.m. at school. Then, she heads over to her gallery, where she works in the evenings and on the weekends. It’s not usual for her to stay up until 2 a.m. finishing her work.
“I think that right there is kind of the difference between, sometimes, gallerists of color and everyone else,” she said. “[My full-time job] is helping me sustain the gallery that doesn't always pay for itself because not everybody buys from me.”
Getting an invitation to the fair
Gillespie’s unmistakable sing-song laugh helps visitors find their way through the labyrinthine maze of the fair to her booth. Weave past the crowds sipping champagne and admiring art, go around the ever-flowing coffee cart and take a sharp right.
There you’ll find Gillespie floating in the eye of the Dallas Art Fair tornado with a glowing smile and seemingly boundless energy. It’s not uncommon to hear a chuckle followed by “Right?” or “Oh, I get it!”
There’s a lot going on, but then an afternoon lull hits and Gillespie gets a rare moment of calm. How is the fair so far?
“A lot!” she exclaims cheerfully.
The marathon-like pace of the fair is a given. But there’s a lot more that Gillespie must navigate. For one, there’s the hefty booth fee that Gillespie needs to make back through art sales.
Booth fees are notoriously pricey at major art fairs. At the Dallas Art Fair, booths cost about $60 per square foot and booths range from about 10 x 11 to 30 x 30 feet, according to Kelly Cornell, director of the Dallas Art Fair. That roughly equates to a range of about $6,600 to $54,000.
“It's definitely an investment to participate in the fair, but it can have immediate and long-term returns,” Cornell said.
This year, Gillespie is relieved to say she recouped her booth fee. It means she won’t have to dip into her own funds to make up the difference. Research shows 61% of Black women self-fund their total start-up capital for new businesses, according to the Harvard Business Review.
Gillespie said it also means she can take care of her artists.
“It's kind of simple for me. If they [can] pay their rent and if they [can] pay their bills, if they can feed their kids, I'm OK. You know, then I did my job and I did a good job.”
Building community
Inside Pencil on Paper’s fair booth, new collector Cathryn McLellan flips through a book of the gallery’s artwork, pausing to admire a piece and snap a photo.
“Valerie is like a warm hug in this industry. You never hear anything but a scream, ‘Hello’ as you enter into Pencil on Paper.” she said.
“I'm 31, I'm Black, and I come in usually as a millennial, and most people don't see me as a collector or someone that's trying to buy art,” she said. However, she always feels embraced at Pencil on Paper.
At the Dallas Art Fair, it’s evident that Pencil on Paper is a hub for a community of artists, patrons and collectors who might’ve been kept in the margins of the art world.
While in conversation with a patron, Gillespie crouches down in her jumpsuit and black flats to point at details in the corner of artist Jessica Vollrath’s painting New Nation.
Vollrath has previously worked the coffee cart at the Dallas Art Fair. But now she’s one of the artists represented by Pencil on Paper, with paintings selling for as much as $14,750.
“I've always been on the periphery or worked it or something,” she said. “So being a part of [the Dallas Art Fair] is exciting.”
Vollrath said she connected with Gillespie over a common vision.
“Our spirits aligned. We met and we just really got along,” she said. “I think we have the same mission and the same goals, so she's just been a dream to work with. I adore her.”
It’s hard not to notice how much Gillespie’s presence at the fair matters to the Black arts community. More than one person pats her on the back and tells her they’re proud of her. Many ask for selfies.
“The work that this gallery does and other spaces that are welcoming to the works of Black artists and also collectors, they support the community and they incubate artists and they incubate the collector community,” said Sammetria Goodson, an art attorney who runs her own firm Goodson Law in North Texas and has worked with Gillespie in the past.
From how to apply for the fair to where to place extra art, Gillespie is ready to pass on what she knows to other local Black gallerists when the time comes. “I'm excited that I know now [all of these things I didn’t know going in] because hopefully the next Black gallery that comes in after me, I have all of this information stored and ready to hand over. So it'll be easier for them.”
Gillespie wants to see the landscape of local Black-owned galleries – and artists – thrive. That starts with growing the number that exist in North Texas. Currently, there are three local Black-owned galleries in Dallas: Gillespie’s Pencil on Paper Gallery, Daisha Board Art Gallery and the Pan-African Connection.
“How can you make it diverse if we don’t exist yet, right?” Gillespie said. “We’ve got to keep it going. So it's not an anomaly if there's four of us or three or two because there's 35 of us, you know what I mean? It's where it's like the norm.”
Pushing forward
Being an exhibitor at this year’s Dallas Art Fair is a full-circle moment for Gillespie. “I don't know, maybe it hit different because I was a patron for so long. … I was proud of myself, like I put in the work and I feel like the Dallas Art Fair saw that.”
Cornell seems to acknowledge that. After talking with Gillespie for years, Cornell said now felt like the right time to bring her into the art fair.
Pencil on Paper has established itself in the last few years with shows featuring the work of prominent local artists like Sam Lao and Abi Salami. Lao, a tufting artist and muralist, has her work featured in Meow Wolf Grapevine and has partnered with brands like Hunter Boots. Salami, a surrealist artist, has exhibited in galleries across the U.S. and Europe, including Dallas, New York and Germany.
“The program seems like it's really taking off right now and has grown a lot and matured a lot,” Cornell said. “From her eye to the artists also progressing in their individual careers, so all of those things in tandem are pushing it to the next level.”
There have been a lot of strides that Gillespie has made in recent years. Opening her own gallery in Dallas. Becoming the first local Black gallerist at the Dallas Art Fair. She’s already been invited back to next year’s art fair. And while it would be convenient to wrap a bow around her experience, she still feels like she isn’t quite there yet.
“I have every degree that you could think of. I have all the experience in the world. I have all of this education. I'm an artist myself, and yet I'm still struggling," Gillespie said. “Sometimes it's hard to keep the doors open for a certain month, or if I don't sell some art, it means that, ‘Hey, maybe this artist doesn't eat.’ There's the reality that even with all of the things that I've gotten, I still can't quite make it.”
That’s the ongoing push and pull of progress.
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