Digging out from the antiques
MONTREAL – The first hints that something was up at Monastiraki were the few square inches of empty wall space and an uncluttered shelf or two.
Up until then, the quirky antique and curiosities shop at the southwestern corner of St. Laurent Blvd. and St. Viateur St. had always been an unedited, unabridged jumble of stuff. Every horizontal and vertical space in the store that owner Billy Mavreas took over from his father in 2000 was crammed, packed, filled.
There were vintage posters on the walls, old books, gossip magazines, maps and vinyl records in crates on the floor, 1970s brass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Everywhere kitschy little clown or duck or frog figurines, boxes of postcards, old door hinges and religious icons, which he had been collecting ever since he could remember.
It was stuff that Mavreas, a 42-year-old comic artist and Mile End habitué, loved – until he began to feel suffocated by it.
In its new guise, Monastiraki is what Mavreas calls a “hybrid space,” part art gallery, part antique shop, part artists’ studio. Galerie Atelier Boutique is what the sign in the window reads. There’s track lighting on the ceiling illuminating pen and ink drawings on crisp white walls, postcards announcing a coming vernissage.
“People ask, ‘Is it a store? Is it a gallery or a museum? Is it somebody’s house?’ ” Mavreas recounted the other day, as a couple of neighbourhood artists hung their work for a coming show.
“If I have to choose, I’ll say it’s a store, because I want people to spend money here. But I want this space to be an idea factory, too, a place where artists come to exhibit and to encourage each other.” As proof that he hasn’t gone altogether mainstream now that he’s a gallery owner, Mavreas has installed a “Green Wall of Chaos” adjacent to the white gallery space up front. It’s a wide expanse of wall, painted avocado green from floor to ceiling, with a wacky assortment of bits and pieces tacked to it.
There’s a row of feathers and rocks framed in see-through hardware packages, plastic measuring spoons, a Halloween mask, a Humpty Dumpty wall hanging, a felt finger puppet, swizzle sticks, a panel from a clementine crate and pieces from a board game, “odd bits of cultural detail that, on their own, never get showcased.” “It’s an homage to how the store used to be,” Mavreas says. “I’m containing the chaos now, instead of letting it explode into all directions.” Mavreas says Monastiraki’s cleanup, and the gallery that rose from its ashes, was personally liberating, too.
“I began to realize that I wasn’t happy any more. I’d complain a lot and my friends were always asking me what was wrong. I felt like a bird in a cage. Like I didn’t have enough control over the stuff. It had taken over,” Mavreas said. “It was an energy clog.” When his friend Jen MacIntyre, a Montreal filmmaker, told him in 2008 that she wanted to run an art gallery, Mavreas said it suddenly dawned on him that he had a gallery. Only it was buried in there among the collectibles.
“My own art was already here and I was always collaborating with artists in the neighbourhood,” he said. “And a lot of my clients are graphic designers and artists and people with a real aesthetic sense.” To create the gallery, Mavreas and MacIntyre pushed the merchandise to the rear of the store and cleared out the front for gallery space. Then Mavreas began to clear out the rest of the space, too. He gave away boxes and boxes of merchandise, sold some, and stopped buying new stuff. Eventually, he could breathe again.
Now the bric à brac for sale is in the centre of the space. There are still knick-knacks, brass headboards and jars and bottles filled with pins and buttons, and kitschy lamps in the shape of poodles and a barrel full of naked Barbies. But the collections have been edited.
He’s also kept the handmade zines and greeting cards and prints by local and visiting artists.
Mavreas says he’s relishing his new role as a mentor to emerging young artists in Mile End, who don’t have many opportunities to show their work. And he’s excited about a coming series of guided drawing workshops that he and his girlfriend, Emilie O’Brien, a sculptor and painter, are planning this spring in the studio space they’ve created at the back of the room.
Lisa Czech, a young Montreal artist who had her first solo show opening at Monastiraki last Friday, says the space feels cozy and relaxing for novices, compared to the stiff and static feel of established conventional galleries.
“It’s always been a big part of the community,” said Czech, who does silkscreens and lithographs in bold colours, in a style she describes as a cross between underground comics and Lisa Frank stickers.
“And it’s exciting to get a show so close to where my friends live.” As long as Monastiraki keeps evolving, Mavreas says it will maintain its Mile End vibe.
“It’s a mutable space that keeps reinventing itself, just like the neighbourhood,” he says, wolfing down a sandwich at the red Formica-topped table he couldn’t afford to part with in the last purge.
“This doesn’t mean it will be an art gallery in five years. If Emilie becomes a herbalist and I become a massage therapist, then Monastiraki will morph into something else.”
