Equine Instincts is adding an artist-driven gallery to Horse Country with its new space in Aubrey.
Curator and primary artist Tammy Tappan and her partner Jenni Wallace are spreading the name that started in Tryon, North Carolina, to Aubrey and Florida to cultivate a more artist-friendly gallery space.
“I’ve had a small gallery in Tryon, North Carolina, since 2018,” Tappan said. “When I started, the first thing I did was start an artist in residency program where I would invite artists to come in, work in my studio and add them to my gallery as we went.”
Equine Instincts, which focuses on rustic or patinated horse-centric paintings, furniture and sculptures, not only looks to ensure artists are fairly compensated for the work they sell at gallery but also gives collectors an opportunity to connect with the artist after purchase.
“If you were to walk into the Aubrey gallery and find a piece you love, one of our first things is asking if you’d like to set a meeting and have a conversation with the artist because it’s important for people to know the backstory,” Tappan said. “When you take the artist out of the sales process, you lose that chunk. The artist grows from the communication as well.”
At the moment, Tappan’s art is more heavily featured than that of others, but this is something she plans to change as the new gallery continues to settle into the community.
“We recognize its currently not a high traffic area, and that’s OK,” Tappan said. “We would rather invite the right kind of people into the space then count on like a shopping mall-type traffic pattern. I like the small town feel of it, and we know one of the challenges is making people aware we’re there.”
As soon as August, Tappan and Wallace, with help from their coordinator Jessica Anderson, plan to host events featuring particular artists, both local and nonlocal.
“We haven’t started that outreach, but I expect when [we] put this into the paper, we’ll be inundated with phone calls,” Tappan said. “The intention is we will have month events starting in August, and what we’ll do is feature an artist each month so the art will rotate, and we’ll have a platform for local artists and nonlocal artists to come out.”
The price point, Tappan explained, covers a broad range.
“We are offering everything from prints and reproductions, which start at the $100-$150 range to large-scale originals, furniture and bronze pieces, which range from $10,000 to my monument size bronze works that are $100,000$200,000 work,” Tappan said.
One such monument, an 8-foot bronze sculpture, will soon be featured at the entryway of a development in Aubrey, though Tappan didn’t share which one.
As the presently most predominant artist at the gallery, Tappan’s work is twofold. She paints with acrylics, but does so in a unique style.
“The signature of the dripping paint happened by accident in the studio,” Tappan said. “I was working on a painting, talking to a client and was worried the paint was going to dry out, so I misted the acrylic paint and it ran down the canvas. I’m now known for that type of work because I developed my own style after that accident.”
The sculpting followed. “I googled equine sculpture in 2016, found a workshop and signed up for it,” Tappan said. “The instructor’s name is Rod Zullo. I, on a whim, went out and took this class. One of the reasons I took to it is I’ve spent a lifetime working with horses, so having that hands-on experience made it easy to translate the clay in three dimensions.”
She referenced clay because that’s how the bronze works start, with a clay sculpture, followed by a silicon and fiberglass mold.
“You then use that mold to pour a wax replica of what you sculpted,” Tappan said. “That wax is then dipped into a ceramic slurry, fired in a kiln, the wax melts out and where it once was you pour bronze. The shell, when it cools, shatters and you end up with a bronze replica of what you originally sculpted in clay.”
The process, which features several steps, is most often a collaborative one.
“Artists that sculpt in bronze typically partner with a foundry, so we do the creative work then we hand that off to other artisans in order to get to the finished process,” Tappan said, paying homage to one of her partner foundries in Texas, Pyrology out of Bastrop.
Tappan explained she and her team plan to further incorporate into the community over time. She credited former Pilot Point Mayor Elisa Beasley with connecting her with EquiHope, who she intends to work with in the future.
Equine Instincts is housed on Aubrey’s Main Street and is open from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on Sunday, though it is also available by appointment by contacting 940488-2727.
