Toucans don’t migrate. The massive-beaked birds — whose colourful visage has been used to hock all the things from Guinness to Froot Loops (a balanced meal, really) — are resident breeders, which means they dwell 12 months spherical in the identical place.
For a very long time, the identical was true of Toucan Gallery. For over 40 years the artwork gallery was on Montana Avenue. But they’ve migrated north, to a brand new location at 1002 2nd Ave. N. And fittingly for the avian adjoining artwork gallery, that now makes them part of the Billings Industrial Revitalization District, or BIRD.
“We felt like we needed a new energy,” mentioned Alison O’Donnell. She owns Toucan, alongside together with her husband Mark Sanderson.
“We were looking to reinvigorate,” Sanderson added.
The pair are gallery homeowners and curators, however they’re additionally artists in their very own proper. O’Donnell is a painter, and Sanderson is a author, playwright and photographer. At Toucan, you will discover her work and his photographs prominently displayed.
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Over at 2505 Montana Ave., Toucan had a long gone. It was initially opened in 1982 by Vicki Van Buskirk, after it grew out of the body store at close by McIntosh Art Company. O’Donnell and Sanderson purchased the gallery in 2007.
But after a future, it was time to begin interested by the longer term. When COVID upended all the things, together with each artwork and galleries, O’Donnell and Sanderson, like many people, began pondering.
“We started to reevaluate what we were doing, how we’re doing it, and how can we keep doing it,” Sanderson mentioned. “How do we keep this up for another 10-15 years?”
They couple are the one two workers, and their old place had gotten just too massive. Their Montana building was 3,200 sq. ft upstairs and one other 3,200 downstairs. The new spot is 2,100 sq. ft, all on one degree.
A search by the Gazette archives reveals that the building at 1002 2nd Ave. N. has been a couple of issues over the years. It was constructed within the Fifties, and in its early years was home to a gasoline firm and a building business. In the Nineteen Eighties it was Billings Tire, and after that it was known as Ken’s Auto Service. Most lately it was Frank’s Towing.
True to many locations within the BIRD, the building has at all times been industrial. So it required quite a lot of work. The inside was, in O’Donnell’s phrases, “scuzzy.” They needed to take away a storage door, and there was a giant automobile carry anchored the place the primary showroom flooring sits now.
You wouldn’t know that to take a look at it now. The Toucan area is heat, nicely lit and coated in artwork in every single place you look. Almost all of the furnishings is smooth, stark white. The outdoors partitions are painted completely different shades of blue, and there’s a type of modular archway that beckons patrons in from the car parking zone. It feels merely, very cool — like a naturally inventive area.
On Montana Avenue, O’Donnell and Sanderson’s studio at Toucan was within the basement. Now it’s built-in into the ground plan, like a pure extension of the gallery.
“I’m looking forward to getting my supplies out of their boxes and seeing what happens,” mentioned O’Donnell. “I’ll have some daylight on my art instead of fluorescent lights.”
Industrial buildings like these are likely to have vast open flooring plans and massive home windows that allow the sunshine pour in. In different phrases, they’re excellent for each retail and creativity.
And Toucan is each. The spot features as a showroom for varied artists — they’ve acquired round 20 on show proper now — in addition to the studio area and a full-time framing business.
Framing is massive business, and Toucan does work for normal of us and museums, each from Montana and elsewhere. They’ve framed Pablo Picasso items, and work by most of the nice Montana modernists.
The artwork displayed at Toucan is all on the market, in fact, so curating takes some talent. You must know what folks wish to purchase, and at what value level.
This area can be much more adaptable than their old spot. Right now all of the artwork shows in Toucan are modular, which means they are often simply moved. Over 40 years, issues began to build up on the Montana Avenue location. When a member of the family or buddy was carried out with a bit of furnishings, it’d usually wind up within the gallery.
Now all the things right here is shiny white and simple to alter round. If Sanderson and O’Donnell are available in sooner or later and wish to rearrange the format, they’ll do it. They’ve additionally acquired a car parking zone, and a few outside area. None of that exists downtown. There’s much more freedom right here.
They stopped doing common gallery exhibits — previously they’d rotate as usually as as soon as a month — through the pandemic, and by no means actually began it again up afterwards.
Now that the transfer is over, they’re trying to return to the occasions world just a little bit. And because the spot is so extremely adaptable, it opens quite a lot of completely different choices.
“Who knows what we might do?” requested Sanderson. “We have possibilities and opportunities now.”
O’Donnell and Sanderson made the choice to maneuver round September 2022, and acquired the brand new building in March 2023. They bought their Montana Avenue property to the oil and pure gasoline firm Iron Oil, who used the building for expanded workplaces.
For Toucan, staying close to downtown was crucial.
“We’re not really West End people,” Sanderson mused.
“It’s not for us,” O’Donnell added.
So the BIRD is an efficient match. And quickly they will have firm out right here. Undammed Distillery is shifting in proper down the road. With the Loft Dance Club on the market, one other sizable piece of actual property is there for the taking.
Plus, that is type of what Toucan does. When Van Buskirk opened the gallery again within the early Nineteen Eighties, it was one of many solely businesses on Montana Avenue. Surrounded by city decay, she struggled with getting the property insured.
The BIRD proper now doesn’t look terribly completely different than Montana Avenue did 40 years in the past. This transfer isn’t simply revitalizing Toucan, it might assist revitalize an enormous chunk of historic Billings.
“Toucan’s always been moving into neighborhoods that are up and coming,” Sanderson mentioned. “That was part of our motivation.”
“We love a good underdog neighborhood,” mentioned O’Donnell.
The BIRD is actually that. And the chances are lengthy. But if locations like Toucan hold shifting in, it’s most likely a fairly secure wager.
