McLeod Residence announces it is closing

I just plugged the current show at Seattle's McLeod Residence and was hanging out there Friday night. It's such a cool space for shows because it pushes the envelope for what a gallery can be. For those that have been around Seattle for the past decade or two, you might remember Vox Populi up on Capitol Hill, which was really the first gallery in town where I saw the music scene and the art scene smashing into each other in a big way. Vox Populi, run by Grant Alden (of the Rocket and No Depression) and Carl Carlson (now owner of Tigertail) was the first gallery in town to really focus on so-called "low-brown art" - poster art, rock'n'roll aesthetics, zine artwork, comics, etc. After Vox Populi closed, a few years later Roq La Rue took up the cause and is going strong to this day. The McLeod Residence, while not focusing solely on the same genre of art, similarly was able to pair the music community with the art community, drawing in tons of non-traditional art fans and building a new community around their space. Unfortunately, as with most small businesses in America, financially they seem to have lost the struggle. It's one a sympathize with immensely because my co-horts and I when through a similar struggle with Tablet, creating something cool and awesome that's community building and exciting, but not always financially viable. And when a small business in the U.S. is struggling financially, government doesn't step in to bail you out like Wall Street and corporate America, you survive or fail on your own and you pay your own debts.

I can tell it's with a heavy heart that the fine folks behind the McLeod Residence announced today that they will be closing down their gallery at the end of the month. In the last three weeks of the gallery's existence, I challenge everyone in Seattle to stop by and check out the current show, buy a few drinks in the bar and tip the staff well, and give a few words of encouragement and support to the people that started and kept McLeod running. They could use a lot of thanks and support from Seattle right now. If you read through the whole blog entry I linked to, they do say they plan to regroup and start up the gallery in a new location at some point in the future. That, at least, is encouraging.