By Keiko Ohnuma
At age 41, Rena Charles had already reached the pinnacle of her arts management career. Four years after moving here from Tampa, she was elevated from art consultant to director of gallery sales at the multimillion-location Aerena Galleries. That’s when she took a step back to focus on her own art.
Charles had been painting since her undergraduate days at Emory University, but only in the last fifteen years did it become a serious thing. “The first five years, the work was not good,” she laughs—and she should know. Her career was built on understanding what art buyers want, and identifying the artists who can deliver it.
Embracing the easel was hardly a business decision, but investing in herself paid off in ways she could not have imagined. An art gallery in Albany where she had been selling small-format works offered her a solo show, and she ended up selling fourteen of the eighteen large-format paintings she created. When her life partner wondered aloud why she’d never thought to open her own gallery, the wheel of fortune began to spin.
“Could I? Dare I?” she remembers asking herself. “It’s in my DNA to assess all the factors, so we were uploading and downloading, starting with the idea of what artists would I represent?” Seven months later, Charles opened the wall-size folding glass doors to the Rena Charles Gallery in downtown Healdsburg, with the work of nine artists filling the former architectural office flooded with natural light.
Sales during the summer tourist season were “amazing,” she said, and the local community has proved excited to support a new gallery in Sonoma County and discover the artists it is showcasing.
“It was one of those things where everything started to align—almost eerily,” she says. Charles credits the backing of family and friends for her strong launch, but she hardly left the process to chance. Top of mind from day one was how she would survive. “I didn’t want the mindset of ‘If you build it, they will come.’ ”
She also had a clear vision of what she wanted in her own space. Charles’ gallery features painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, and textiles with a focus on local and regional artists who may not be widely known, but have what it takes to succeed: a cohesive body of “polished” work elevated enough to appeal to designers and other sophisticated art buyers.
“I also wanted to give a platform to women and BIPOC artists,” she says, knowing they face systemic barriers to gallery representation. Of some forty artists represented at Aerena, for example, she remembers only one or two that were a person of color. “I just wanted to be sure I was mindful of that element.”
Charles herself has a Taiwanese mother and black father, and one of her artists, Korean/black painter Lina Chambliss, shares a strangely similar background, down to the echo in their names. So alongside her spreadsheets and business know-how, Charles relied on her intuitions and personal connections.
“Of course, you want to be self-confident,” she says of starting a business, “but it was really the confidence of others saying ‘you can do this,’ along with resources like the AAPI and small business groups. They can help when you have a great idea but don’t know the next steps.”
“I thought that was an amazing example of how people in your community—however you define that—will support you,” Charles says. “It’s a matter of using your platform and influence where you can.”
🎄Meet Rena at her Holiday Sip & Shop🎄
Sat, December 2, 4-7 pm!
Rena Charles Gallery
439 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg
renacharlesgallery.com
Instagram @renacharlesgallery
(707) 813-2033, hello@renacharlesgallery.com
Open Thursday through Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday by appointment.
Keiko Ohnuma is an editor, newspaper reporter, and freelance writer/editor, continually diverting her passions to art, outdoor sports, and animals, now semi-retired and working on personal writing projects.
Photos by Grace Cheung-Schulman.