New Gallery Will Feature Works From Glass Artists Drapery Mart’S Second Floor Will Be New Home For Art

Glass will meet fabric when Conrad Bagley opens an art gallery atop a longtime family business.

Conrad Bagley and his wife Barb are turning the second floor of the Drapery Mart building located at 225 W. Indiana into a gallery featuring glass artists.

The gallery will make its debut sometime this month.

“Hopefully we’ll attract more artists as time goes on,” Bagley said.

Bagley is hoping to piggy-back his dream of running a gallery on the long-time success of the Drapery Mart downstairs which his father, Gordon Bagley, founded in 1953.

In the early ‘50s, the elder Bagley recognized the need for a drapery manufacturing plant that could fill both customer orders and supply stock-size draperies for Spokane-area retail outlets.

Until May of this year, Drapery Mart was located at 902 W. Indiana. Store officials moved down the street to get an additional 5,000 square feet in the new building.

So after talking with his 12 other siblings, many of whom are still in the family business, it was decided that an art gallery might help attract a clientele that in turn might be drawn to Drapery Mart.

And it may be only fitting that an art gallery will sit atop the drapery business, given the wide array of other businesses that have been located in the big, red brick building in previous years.

The building once housed a veterinarian clinic, the Brownie Baking Co. and Lloyd’s Service Center, according to Bagley.

As for the gallery, the Bagleys have been working day and night in recent weeks to make the 3,000-square-foot space presentable to the public.

To get to the gallery from ground level, one must enter the building on Indiana, walk up a flight of stairs and down a long narrow hallway. There are many empty rooms along the hallway that may figure in later plans.

“We’re thinking all these rooms would be great for art classes or some of them could serve as reading, smoking or coffee rooms,” Barb Bagley said.

Conrad Bagley said as far as he’s concerned, he’ll try to do anything to give Spokane’s art scene a boost. A glass artist himself, Bagley said he has a few works on display around town.

“I don’t imagine that Spokane’s art galleries would ever resemble what they have in Phoenix, you know, 100-plus something galleries and shows going on at any one time,” he said.

“But I’ve always thought it would be great to have a place trying to support other artists,” Bagley said.