Julie Nester Gallery
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
Nauri Bilawa just kind of chuckled when a builder at a neighborhood party in Goshawk Ranch mentioned there was a new modern art gallery in Park City. A transplant from Washington D.C., Bilawa had discovered that “contemporary” and Park City were not the best of friends. It had been an uphill climb to find a development that would allow her to build a modern home, as most architectural guidelines stay safely close to the mountain-home motif. When she scoured Park City galleries to find art, she came up empty-handed. “I saw pretty things,” she says, “but not as contemporary as I wanted.”
Skeptical though she was, Bilawa couldn’t resist checking out the Julie Nester Gallery. The gallery’s location seemed as unlikely as its very existence. Tucked away in the middle of a parking lot, surrounded by a power plant, a paint store and the Windy Ridge Café and Bakery, the concrete building is simply marked by vertically hung orange and red banners. When Bilawa walked through the double black doors, she was instantly transported into a space that could just as well have been in San Francisco or New York.
With stained concrete floors, high ceilings, white walls, an open floor plan and light streaming through the windows, the gallery has a distinctly urban feel. The art is displayed relatively sparsely on the walls, almost museum-like, leaving space to breathe and to appreciate each individual work. “I love the look on people’s faces when they first walk in,” says gallery owner Julie Nester.
Bilawa was thrilled, not only with the space, but also with the art. “Julie has very good taste, and I’m very fond of a lot of the stuff she brings in,” she says. For the past year and a half, Nester has helped Bilawa find and position art throughout her home. “Had Julie not been here, I would have had to go out of state, because what I was looking for was not here.”
That was the feeling that Nester and her husband Doug, a Salt Lake City native, had when they scouted out Park City three years ago. The Bay Area couple bypassed formal market research and, instead, conducted an informal assessment by visiting Park City galleries and driving through neighborhoods. As far as they could see, there was an unfilled niche for contemporary art and a clientele to support it. “We figured that the owners of these homes were traveled and sophisticated and would have good taste in art,” says Nester, reflecting back on the decision to uproot their young family from San Francisco and move to Park City. “But it was mostly a leap of faith.”
While working in galleries and as an independent art consultant for the last 20 years, Nester dreamed about opening her own gallery someday. What she envisioned for her Park City debut was a gallery with a cosmopolitan feel that showed daring and sophisticated artwork.
In September, Nester featured an entire show of abstract nudes by Gérard Bougeois, a Bay Area artist. The impressionistic oil paintings were well received, as Nester suspected they would be. “The human figure has been formally painted for centuries,” says Nester. “And these are beautifully painted.”
Nester wanted a space that would allow her to show large-scale work, which made a Main Street address difficult. Impressively, she saw potential in a warehouse building. Without the hum of Main Street traffic, the 1800-square-foot gallery is peaceful and quiet. It’s a trade-off of space for location, and most of the time the Nesters feel they made the right decision, especially as the neighborhood, known as NOMA (North of Main), is rapidly expanding.
With 33 artists, Nester feels her roster is nearly full. The gallery focuses on emerging or mid-career artists, and the prices reflect that. Works on paper are priced around $600, large-scale paintings can climb to $20,000, and sculptures are sometimes in the $30,000 range.
Nester reserves the spacious front room of the gallery for rotating exhibits and sculptures, while in the back, she has created a salon atmosphere, displaying one work of each of the artists she represents, always mindful of not crowding. While Nester would love an additional 1,000 square feet, she is used to working in urban environments where space is a premium. When people are intrigued with a work in the back salon, Nester will invite them to the storage area and start pulling out additional pieces by that artist. Inevitably, their faces light up.
“We’ve been to many galleries in Houston and New York,” says Melanie Gray, a Houston attorney who owns a second home in Deer Valley. “And I don’t see many galleries with the caliber of art that the Julie Nester Gallery has. She has such depth, and it’s all well done.”
Gray and her husband Mark Wawro are part of a growing number of people who feel that the juxtaposition of abstract art in a traditional mountain home offers the best of both worlds. “I don’t want to look at other scenes of mountains,” says Gray. “I have that right outside my window.”
Gray also appreciates Nester’s easy style, genuineness and candor. Nester gladly makes house calls and is always completely honest about whether she thinks something works, even if it means she loses out on the sale.
Nester, like the artists she represents, is somewhere between emerging and mid-career, but her future looks promising. “Julie isn’t totally discovered,” says Gray. “But when that time comes, it will be no holds barred.”
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