The Art of Style and Mad Flava

Even though Aaron Ellard was raised in Vancouver and spent many a day at the popular street wear hub El Kartel on Robson Street, Ellard is responsible for creating Calgary’s answer to exploring the gallery/store concept for up and coming artists in the city.

Every month, the street lifestyle and clothing store goes through a creative make over as The Gallery Street Life and Styles opens their doors to a new local artist. “Every time I throw up a show, I’m so stoked about the way the store looks,” Ellard said. “There’s a whole new look to the store every time. We have a different artist in and when that happens it’s just like, wow! You take a look around…you know we spend all night preparing, hanging the work, painting the walls, the artist doing the installation…When it’s all done, you step back, you’re just like –  Holy crap this place looks amazing!”

Amazing is right. The walls of The Gallery,  as it is referred to,  has light spray painted murals all over the walls, with abstract pieces on wood canvases  glazed with resin by the most recent artist to take residence at The Gallery, Darcy Obakata.

CF: So tell me about your store. You guys are a street wear clothing store. What sets you apart from the rest?

We steer away from being a typical mainstream street wear store. We do get some bigger lines that are hard to find, but a lot of our lines go from locals or Canadian designers to really young brands or brands you have to go to Europe or Japan for.

A lot of these lines you can’t get online. You see all the stuff on Hypebeast and don’t get me wrong, a lot of our stuff will show up there…but you got kids walking around today and that’s all they are. So they’re rocking the latest “Yeezy’s” with whatever it is they’ve seen on the blog and they just walk around looking like a walking blog.

The kind of lines we carry are more like you’re kind of on your own style and it’s still street wear. It’s still fresh and you can for sure grab a couple of pieces you might see on Hypebeast because they’re dope and you know that’s why they are there but our store isn’t dictated by that kind of fashion.

CF: So you guys are turning a year old. How’s your first year been?

Yeah, we just did our one-year anniversary and we’re celebrating. It’s great! The response from the city is amazing. It kind of took off a lot better than I thought I would for just kind of getting out there and people figuring out where we’re at and just the amount of people that are excited about this place.

It’s always nice to have your vision and get a good response from it too. You know from the amount of people that come in and are like ‘Calgary needs more of this’ and are just really excited about what we’re doing, so it’s been great.

CF: So the store also has artists come up every month and put up their work and you throw a bit of a party. El Kartel also does something like this. What can you tell me about it?

El Kartel does art exhibits as well but I don’t like to call it an art party or something. It’s an opening reception for the artist and that’s something that most galleries do for featured artists.

The opening reception is about the people that are interested in the work. They can check it out and get a chance to meet the artist because they’re always here and the artists can also invite their family and friends and show their work to everybody.

It gives them a little more recognition, rather than just throwing the work up on the walls and people mosey on in during store hours to check it out.

CF: So, a different artist every month? How does this affect the store?

It always has a new look and it’s always exciting each time. The current show by Darcy Obakata has pretty much sold out here. He was our first show we had when we first opened. But his work has just evolved so much and he spends a lot of time on it and he looks amazing in it.

There are all sorts of different things that influence art sales really, but it’s all about what the artist puts into it and it really shows. Anything, from the time spent on the painting to finishing,  is huge. We’ve had a lot of successful shows here so I can’t really say that one really pops out more. But one that I get really excited about is Art and Sole. It’s our custom shoe show where I hand out kicks to artists around the city and they customize them. That’s always really fun.

CF: What are you doing to celebrate the anniversary?

For the anniversary, we’re not going crazy here but we’ve teamed up with the guys at ILLDUBEXPRESS who are throwing a new night at The Forum, a new club on 10^th Ave. They’re launching off their new night at the same time so I thought it was a good opportunity for us to team up and make it a successful one because I’d like to see a successful hip-hop night, especially on a Saturday night.

CF: And the nights called Sabado Live?

Yeah, Sabado means Saturday and it’s going to be every Saturday at The Forum with DJ Roofeo and DJ C-Sik in there and they’re going to have guest DJs and stuff throughout the night.

CF: Why ILLDUBEXPRESS or Sabado Live? Is that important to The Gallery? Or is it a love for hip-hop?

Really, the hip-hop scene in Calgary is really like a tight family. ILLDUBEXPRESS is actually ILL Movements, DUBsac and Thought EXPRESS and all of these groups have been super supportive of The Gallery since we started out.

Ryan Josue from ILL Movements even helped around here for a while when we first opened and they’ve done a great job promoting us. I’ve worked with them at their events, like holding a booth or whatever and it’s been great promotion. So when it came to this I was going to do my own thing for the anniversary party and I found out they were launching that night at the same time and I was like “hey lets just work together on this, you know it’s the same family, it’s the same people, might as well make it a big one”

CF: I’ve seen that you guys have some video of the artists and shows on your website and Facebook page. Are you behind that?

We have a videographer, Ramin. He’s amazing at what he does, those videos are really good. I mean they’re not free but we’re compiling all the footage and the goal in the end, some time early next year is to drop/release a documentary style DVD of all the artists we’ve shown here and really expose the scene that Calgary has because Calgary really does have a strong art scene. It’s just kind of underground right now and just overlooked by so much.

For more on The Gallery Life and Styles:

http://www.gallerystyles.com

Interview by Jalil Bokhari

Photos by © David Austin 2009