The Secret is in the Details
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
“We love color,” explains Thomas Bruski unnecessarily. A quick glance around the Main Street art gallery he owns with his wife Carolyn offers the same conclusion. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the Thomas Anthony Gallery is an intimate boutique gallery offering original, quality works of art from around the world. While the gallery is not limited to a particular genre, all of its offerings — from turned wood, to palette knife paintings, to sculpted leather — are united by a meticulous attention to detail. And, of course, by their celebration of color.
“Art appreciation is totally subjective,” acknowledges Bruski, “But we look for the superlative artists in a handful of fields.” Consequently, the Thomas Anthony Gallery generally showcases only a single artist in each genre, making for an original and eclectic collection. Explains Bruski, “We lose our identity if we try to cultivate too many genres or too many artists from any one genre.”
Nearly 30 years ago, Thomas and Carolyn Bruski opened their first gallery in Fort Collins, a college town in northern Colorado. While neither had a background in art or art history, they had discerning eyes and a keen sense for sales. The Bruskis soon found they had outgrown their market. So, the young couple followed their intuition and moved to Dallas, Texas, opening a much more ambitious gallery adjacent to a new hotel and high-profile retailers like Tiffany and Cartier. “We had a very calculated business plan,” says Bruski, “and a healthy dose of good luck.” Their gallery thriving, the Bruskis remained in Dallas for 13 years, until a desire to disentangle their lives from urban gridlock and the chaotic hustle of city living prompted a move to Park City.
In his 10 years in Park City, Bruski has noted a major upswing in the community’s gallery scene. Even so, he doesn’t see all the new galleries as competition, but as a fortification of Park City’s reputation in the arts. “Park City is becoming a respected destination for the visual arts,” he says. “I repeatedly hear visitors comment on the quality, variety and sophistication of our art scene. This community doesn’t take a back seat to any of the major art destination towns.”
During the past decade, Bruski has also noticed a change in his own gallery’s reputation. “I spent the first 20 years of my career chasing artists,” he laughs. “Now, the hard work has paid off, and they approach us looking for representation.” Bruski stresses that the Thomas Anthony Gallery views its relationship with artists as a partnership in which the gallery’s role is to put the artwork into a context and convey the story behind it. When a sale is made, “We’re on the phone within seconds, excited to share the good news with the artist.”
Some of these featured artists include Spanish hyperrealist painter, Javier, who uses oil paint to convey the delicate wood grain of a table or the translucency of a green grape. Another Spaniard is Josepha, who creates whimsical bronze sculptures focusing on the female form in motion. Officially registered as a living national treasure in China, Liu Miao Chan sculpts leather into lifelike figurines, an ancient art form dating back to 1000 B.C. Leather sculpting is a rare practice today; the aging Chan has no apprentice to continue the tradition. Mexican artist, Luis Sottil, uses paints made from minerals, vegetable dyes and natural substances like crushed mother of pearl to create vibrant images of wild animals. As the artist’s Web site states, “Sotill uses nature to paint nature.”
“We select artists not by geography, but by who they are and by the quality and originality of their work,” explains Bruski. As such, his gallery displays a tremendous diversity of art forms — ranging from molded acrylic resin sculptures, to functional glass pieces painted in reverse from the inside, to acrylic paintings inset with vintage Japanese calligraphy and adorned with medieval coins. If at first glance the selection seems disparate, the unifying qualities quickly become apparent: detail, attention and uniqueness.
It’s clear the Thomas Anthony Gallery places great value on painstaking attention to detail and a substantial investment of time into any work of art. Patrons and browsers will find no abstract impressionism or pop art, nor any works in the Western genre often popular in mountain resort towns. Instead, they will find an international assortment of original works that transcend genre and style in celebration of rich details and vivid colors.
Alexandra Fuller is a freelance writer and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. She lives in Heber City with her husband, Garry, and dog, Spooner.
Thomas Anthony Gallery, 340 Main Street, Park City, 435.645.8078, thomasanthonygallery.com.
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