Katie Heffelfinger

Gallery and Fine Assistant

Exhibitions Coordinator

Fine Art Consultant and Sales

International and Nationwide Exhibitions Management

CAREER SUMMARY

Executive arts coordinator with heightened ability to perceive and anticipate needs in dynamic mobile environments resulting in powerful presentations and prolific sales.

CURRENT EXPERIENCE

Art Expediter / Exhibition Coordination

Various Clients: Joan Michlin Gallery, Valetokos Expediting

September 2009 – Present

Logistics and handling of multi-leg tours and shipping. White-glove and special handling of high priority and delicate items. Coordination of complicated logistics involving multiple stops and on-time arrival of time sensitive cargo. All sales, set up and tear down of art shows, fairs and exhibitions. Bonding, insurance, national and international permits and licensing.

- Excellent sales and logistics coordination for client confidence

- Specialist in challenging scenarios with on time and below budget delivery

- Art handling, deployment and full exhibition support

- Providing excellent customer service and vendor interaction

- Comfortable in Mac and PC platforms, iPhone, Microsoft Office, MS Project, CS

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Exhibitions Manager Molloy Gallery, La Jolla CA

August 2007 – November 2008

Held preparatory, exhibitions and management positions during dynamic tenure that included an appointment to Gallery Manager. Provided personal and administrative assistance to CEO. During this time gross margin grew by 10% and overall sales grew by over 40%. Pioneered the development of exhibitions at art fairs and doubled sales over 5 month exhibition tour season. Acquired and developed new dealer connections simplifying supply line problems in sourcing works. Solidified gallery reorganization to focus on museum and investment paintings resulting in a 66% growth in the average price of piece sold.

- Proven closer, extremely experienced in sales

- Excellent artist, vendor and customer interaction

- Preservation, preparation and installation of fine art inventory

- Management of all elements of exhibitions and events

- Assist CEO in scheduling, planning, proposals, budgets, correspondence, travel and operations

Salon Dada / Studio 62 Allentown, PA Community Gallery Coordinator, Artists' Assistant

February 2002- December 2006

Created a community gallery from the ground up. Managed events, exhibitions and artist programs. Assisted artists from physical production of art to sales and installations. Evolved gallery into a formidable regional center for the arts with 200-plus gala events and a member artist led board.

- Artists' assistant including; art work prep, installation, liaison with community, sales, design and build of prototypes to final product

- Organize weekly art events; setup of location, food and beverage

- Ensure attendance by local artists, coordinating models, lighting, and sound

- Compose and send out frequent, detailed notification of studio activities

- Maintain contact with participating artists

- Secure event locations, coordinate, credentials and guest appearance

- Maintain relations with press; releases, media contact and promotion

- Write grants and develop funding sources and projects

- Advertising for event and maintaining mailing lists

- Event planning and logistics

Assistant Midwife

Lancaster, Chester, and Lehigh Counties, PA

April 1997 – Sept 2004

Serve senior midwife in every capacity as personal and professional assistant attending labor, prenatal office appointments and emergency response.

- Skilled and calm under pressure, able to prioritize, delegate and maintain control

- Anticipate needs and maintain tools and supplies at hand at all times

- Provide information and constant support to clients

- Extreme work ethic; everything necessary for as long as needed until it 's done

- Preserve confidentiality with regard to sensitive client information

- Keep detailed records of patients' medical records and business

EDUCATION

Lifelong learner with educational experience including:

- University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2006 medical pre-requisites

- Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Spring 2004-spring 2006 academic sculpture - crossover program with University of Pennsylvania

- Assistant Midwife Training AAMI 1997-2001

- PA EMT-B certification 1999

- Graduate, Southern Lehigh High School, 1992

- Early admission to Allentown College 4-year full scholarship for poetry, Honors.

REFERENCES: Excellent references upon request

So what do you do, exactly?

I'm the team member that takes care of exhibitions and out of gallery shows, usually for fine art or crafts. In this capacity I;

investigate the opportunity for a show, prepare comparisons for different shows, prepare the application, gather tax, bonging and insurance documents, find the best price for hotel rooms, ship the art, load the van, act as first point of contact with customers, open customer interaction, sell, get the coffee, set up the booth, install the art, sell, figure out where to get the laundry done, sell, figure out where we go for dinner, sell, close deals, sell, keep the mailing list, shmooze customers, break down, do the accounting, figure out how much profit we made, return expense reports, evaluate the show for next year and do it all again at the next show next week.

Sometimes I do the tours solo with an existing collection of work I'm responsible for, sometimes I work as personal assistant to senior members of the team. Sometimes we do exhibitions at festivals, events or conferences, sometimes at galleries. I respond to: Art Handler, Gallery Assistant, Sales Maven, Art Goddess, Roadie, Exhibition and Tour Manager and "Hey, you".

Figurative work

Someday I will cast these ladies in bronze (or glass, mirrored like christmas balls) and make little armies of pin up fairie ladies sitting around bookshelves and teacups. These are my favorites from 2006 all sculpted from three hour model sessions.

They are tiny, smaller than Barbies.


I love anatomy, and particularly portrait sculpture.

Art Basel

A friend of mine and I are working on a story about the number of galleries carrying similar pieces at the fair.

The full discussion of affordable pieces you can find at satellite fairs vs Basel's elite.

Is over-spending passe, yet?

While Basel tops the chart at $33,000 for a small booth, can smaller fairs (with surprisingly varied booth fees) help exhibitors cut out of Basel? Long time Basel Miami dealers at SCOPE? Feeling woozy in the new world order?

Stay tuned...


(three hour sketch by me, model in Marie Antoinette)

Art Wrestling: Arm Wrestling for Art and pride

This is not a picture of me arm wrasslin Shamim Momin, this is me wrasslin another woman in a kiddie pool full of oatmeal at an art event in San Diego. As soon as I saw this announcement for the wrestling event I knew I was going to win.  

Artist Joshua Ukon along with the glitterati put together a great presentation for Art Perform. The idea simple, let the collectors battle it out and turn their muscle power into aquisitions power.

HOWEVER, Shamim (shown here from the NYT article  about a few of her favorite things)

kind enough to let me win when it was my chance to hold her

 hand in this fantastic art event put on at Art Basel Positions (the shipping containers) And yes I now reign as the undisputed queen

 of arm wrassling for art. The only one who was able to prevail against me--Left Handed-- was the male winner from Dietl, and I am hoping for a re-match at the Armory. Art Handlers unite!

I've been left after the event totally smitten by both Shamim's arm wrestling abilities, and her amazing curatorial smack down at Basel in general. Her work at "The Station" (ArtFagCity has a nice discussion METHLAB!!!)

 And then STYLE points, after leaving to

 get dressed and come back and wrestle in heels (total respect) and full party dress. I have

 decided to see if I can get into the Whitney Internship program this year, and get her coffee and stuff (will keep you posted to see how my application turns out)

My secret weapon was trash talking and artist/blogger Matthew Langley. He helped me become my art wrestling alter ego. Truth is, while I do unload and load alot of heavy crates as a exhibitions manager, and I am strong, I am a horrible arm wrestler. I just WANTED 

to win. The regulation table, helped tremendously.

The crowd's energy was amazing! They really supported me and the adventure just began when the battle was over.
What was amazing was the next day, how intense my fanbase was! Love and eternal

 respect to the crew at Dietl.

I won a great piece from Wallspace. Two (2!) Martha Friedman's Giant Rubber bands $3200 each. (A beautiful exhibition at Station, of the same piece that has a smaller installation in the Trailers, photo stolen from ArtFagCity)

Baby! Victory has never been so sweet.  

Austraila

Best part of Austraila was meeting Warrlimpurringa (Wal-lin-purri) Tjapiljarri and his wife.

As a member of the last family group found in the harshest part of the Gibson Desert without modern contact in 1984. He lives off of a surburban cul de sac, outside of Alice Springs not far from the 1950's houses near some hills under the open sky.  He is a nomad,  still,  and may wander back to the region set aside for aboriginals, Papanya Tula, but he prefers his freedom. He lives on one hill, but does use another hill across the canyon from where he usually stays when family comes to visit. When it is learned he is painting and I am paying him, huge numbers gather for the evening soirees. 

The people who have arranged my visit, Pastors Rodney and Christine Westbrook are my friends and amazing story tellers.  They tell of helping Warrlimpurringa and his family for years in their outback clinic not realizing he is one of the most famous aboriginal artists of his time. 

The Tjapiljarri brothers (Thomas, Walala and Warlimpurringa) paint the ancient mens stories that have been passed on for years.  The best pieces to me are his topographical maps.  He will paint these only for Rodney. The trust and relationship gets the best paintings, and the deepest stories.

They tell me how the aboriginal family broke Walala's fingers on his painting hand and his forearm for apparently not sharing according to tribal law. Albert Nampajira the famoust Aboriginal water colorist, and first Aboriginal to have a drivers license was imprisoned for running alcohol to the aboriginals. Albert would not have had a choice.  Tribal law is more feared than western law. 

Warlimpurringa was snatched off the street locked in to a painting shed and forced to work for a disreputable dealer at one point near my visit. The why of which is unclear, was this a repayment for a debt? Once an aboriginal walks away for a night of painting it can be months before a dealer sees him again, so often if the aboriginals are paid up front they must stay in the painting area.  Sometimes to keep the family away from them, and their demands for money they are locked in. Are they locked up or protected? Depends on your point of view. The way of life here has its own outback rules.  

Perhaps these were just opportunistic people with paint and canvas... no matter. Warlimpurringa laughs, in the way common to aboriginals that is pure joy and without malice to a past matter, that he never finished the piece with the dots after the linear strokes he lays in with a number 6 china brush.  The dealer wont know that.  Neither will the buyer.  

Aboriginal art is a very complicated business.  The effects of the black hole of western Australian culture devouring the galaxy of Aboriginal culture.  There are no good guys or bad guys, once you scratch the surface, the problems are complex and the solutions create an effective neutral. The latest attempt to regulate the industry, a 5% royalty to the artist with every sale, effectively will destroy the art market and annihilate the industry. A lop sided solution with best intentions to be sure.

Imagine the artworld if everytime someone bought a piece a set percentage royalty went back to the artist. Auction houses would have thin margins.  Trading between private collectors would increase, and dealers would decrease.  Since dealers serve to introduce new artists and new product, it would reduce profit and remove motive for anything but the top sellers. How would prices rise without the profit motivated art dealer or auction house and quality consumed. And how to regulate that system? The logistics? What if Jackson Pollock was drunk on a bender or on walk-about in the deep desert for a few months as you tried to get him his due?

Rodney is fearless and comfortable among the Aboriginals.  The Westbrooks are protective of me and concerned for my safety. At their insistence, I do not join the nightly parties that seem to rage like a stampede on the desert or go out after dark into the bush. My money bought the alcohol, which rages through their bodies unable to process it from aeons of evolution living off the desert, but who am I to tell them what to do with their cash. Is it different than Jackson Pollock drunk stumbling and self destructive? I am a visitor in a strange land.

The Aboriginal Art market is very interesting because the artists are not entirely assimilated into modern culture.  With tribal obligations to share, individual ownership of money is not a concept.  Money is spent immediately, and often on beer and junkfood. I wonder how they can survive on the diet of expensive junkfood I watch them eat.  Cars trade ownership along these same tribal obligation lines to be discarded wrecks often in a few weeks. Washing would be a terrible waste of water. There is no concept of tomorrow, only the present and using what you have today. What could be farther from the Western Value system? How do you contend with hordes of poor, dirty, humans managed by internal tribal systems governance which can be both brutal and indulgent at the same time,  happily living with one foot in and one foot out of the society that surrounds them. Warrlimpurringa commands prices above $30,000 at auction, but his possessions could be gathered into a shopping cart and he looks for all the world like a dreadlocked homeless man, but he struts down the street with an air of ownership you would find on most leaders.  He is obviously a man of great importance, respected and a great repository of the knowledge of his ancestors and aboriginal law.

The first painting I visit him and bring the canvas to him and Rodney brings it back at night.  The next day he comes over to the house to paint, he puts on shoes and a shirt.  He orders me around like every artist I have ever worked for, the demands of artists are universal I am happy to learn.  Get me paint, get me water, make me meat and tucker over an open fire.  I am in heaven.  I have prepared canvasses, bought paint, and his favorite brushes with Rod and Christine's help and I am ready to listen to the stories and watch. 

I want a certain style painting, he chooses another.  I still have to pay. I am greatful.

In pidgeon english he explains that we should go to the Gibson Desert and see the beauty of it there.  I want to go immediately.

Later in the week I meet his Kinswoman, Flora Brown Napangardi.  She knows stories similar to Dorothy Napangardi, a favorite artist of mine. There is no written language so painting acts as a record of the past.  She paints me the story of the exodus in the 1970's from west to east when some of her Pintupi ancestors met with modern settlers and ranchers. 

We weave through government cinderblock houses that seem to be bombed out with the use of people who are unsure of how to take care of a home, or regulate their lives when everything in the environment does not decompose.  If a cousin gets wild and breaks a window, how do you stop him? Or if a relative wants to use your stove and then gets hostile and breaks it, there is no recourse for an aboriginal homeowner. Tribal law is first.

One house is different. The yard is fenced and clean. Three cars are parked next to a well kept garage. There is a satellite dish on the roof and curtains on the windows.  A man sits on his front porch in a rocking chair. How is this possible?  Rodney explains he was probably stolen generation, raised among Anglo-Austrailians. Rodney with his big Austrailian cowboy hat waves broadly and the gent waves back like all country gentlemen do.

The Napangardi home is contemporary aboriginal, but such outward appearance poverty.  The house looks bombed out.  An open fire is on the back porch which seems to be the center of family life. Beer cans are strewn about like leaf matter.  Dogs and children play among the trash and beer cans and do a good impression of a third world country. While the welfare system and can does give them enought to eat, free education, houses to live in, etc they can't change the culture without destroying it.

We feed the artist and her family, as is customary while they paint.  They want simple things, the white fluffy bread, the high fat meat, formula for the baby. These will last longer than the cash for the painting which will be distributed to all the family who ask. 

Curating Intuit

Most fun show to curate and design. Finally, about a year into my position, Peter the Molloy Gallery director trusted me enough to have me go off on my own and send home reports of the pictures. I did all logistics and set up alone. We looked great and had a wonderful booth.

Art Chicago Report will follow. It was upstairs along with several other fairs in the art chicago ARTOPOLIS events