Media
GALLERY PROFILE – THE CUTTING EDGE
Jan Patience talks to barber and art enthusiast Carolyn Jarvie about her new gallery in The Herald April 11 2009
Although she seems but a slip of a girl, Carolyn Jarvie has been barbering in the douce Glasgow suburb of Milngavie for almost 18 years. Her barber shop appropriately called “Frontroom Hairdressing” looks like just that….. a front room in an old tenement block down a side street and up a close. “Forget “something for the weekend, sir?” and red and white striped stereotypes, Jarvie’s approach is to offer friendly and efficient haridressing for the metrosexual man and boy, without all the hassle of booking in and all that pampering nonsense. To add to the mix, the barbers are young women who could be the glamorous girl-next-door or your sister’s pal.
In recent years, perhaps because of the domestic-seeming setting, not to mention the fact that Jarvie has developed an abiding passion for art, the walls of her wee barber’s shop have gradually become adorned with paintings of some of Scotland’s best known and emerging artists. “The art started to become a talking point in the shop,” she says. “I’d hang my own paintings initially, but then, as I got to know the artists, I started to sell their work, purely on a non-commission basis.”
Now, Jarvie has taken that idea and run with it to the west end of Glasgow where she has recently opened her second shop, The Barber Too. The front room setting (styled by Jarvie, who obviously has a keen eye) is still there, but this time the art has become a focal point. She plans to have exhibitions that rotate on a five week basis, selling the work and taking a small percentage. Her debut artists in the Hyndland Road shop are Bulgarian-born Valentin Petrov, who has made Glasgow his home in recent years, and Gordon Wilson, whom Jarvie got to know through the retail community in MIlngavie, where he runs a framing business.
“Their work is very different,” she says. “I’ve known Val for about six years and bought some of the first paintings he did in Scotland. His work speaks straight from the heart in a way his voice can’t and could never be confused with the work of any other artist working today.”
“Gordon I’ve known for a long time, and have watched his painting style develop to the point where he is becoming a significant Glasgow artist. His style is very diverse, from colourful landscapes to troubled portraits”
Jarvie’s barber art idea in her Mingavie shop idea began several years ago with a little painting by her mother, Eve Jarvie, copied from a famous Oscar Marzaroli photograph of a little girl in a Glasgow Street, “I didn’t want to sell it because it’s so personal, but so many people asked about it, I could have sold it several times over,” she explains. “As I got to know artists whose wrk I really liked, such as Sylvia Allen and Gordon Wilson, I started putting up paintings for sale and, probably because we were in quite an intimate setting cutting hair and chatting, I found they were flying out of the door.”
“I want to show work of artists I like because it’s important I can talk about their paintings with passion. The artists are always quite sceptical initially about whether or nt their work will sell. When I told Val Petrov I would have the work rotating on a five-six week basis in the west end, he couldn’t believe it.
“He didn’t think I’d sell them in that space of time, but I’ve only been open for three weeks and already I’ve sold two of his paintings.
“Art has an ability to get people talking. Even the wee boys point to the paintings and ask about them, particularly with Val’s work. I had a print of a very dark painting he’d done called The Curse of the Old Shaman, and the little boys loved it.”