From Vision to Fruition
A Dream Forty Years in the Making
When I moved to Portland in the 1980s, the plan was simple: sell my fine art photography in galleries. The reality was a quick education. Galleries kept 50% while the photographer covered all hard costs. In my early twenties, that math felt like a hustle. It took a few decades of running my own commercial space to fully appreciate what a gallery actually carries - but the sting of it sent me in a different direction for a long time.
Twenty years in retail management. A portrait studio built into my home in 1996, funded by a cashed-in 401k and a small family that needed more certainty than fine art sales could promise. Portrait work grew quickly - doubling every year for the first five - and along the way, photography assignments took me to places I'd always wanted to see. Japan. Kenya. New Zealand. Australia. The Bahamas. I added days to every trip, chasing sunrises and light that most people sleep through, building an archive of images I didn't yet know what to do with.
In 2015, a large art-commissioning company hired me to photograph flatwork - original paintings by Portland-area artists, captured under double-polarized lighting for duplication. Charcoal, watercolor, oil, acrylic. The artists were talented and underpaid. When that company later folded, I thought about them often.
Then the pandemic arrived, and everything stopped.
The Buddha and the Double Infinity
In March of 2020, while my wife was home in New Zealand and the world was recalibrating, I took a drive with my camera gear and stopped at a favorite gallery in Cannon Beach. I came home with a Buddha statue I hadn't planned on buying. On the drive back, it tipped over on the front seat - and the $88 price tag landed face-up, horizontal.
Two eights on their sides. Double infinity.
By dinner I had registered DoubleInfinity.art. The name eventually gave way to StudioBGallery.art, but the symbol stayed with me - the idea of something without end, without ceiling.
Sandy Said Nobody Would Buy These
My first call was to my studiomate and longtime friend Graham Salisbury - known to most as Sandy, and known to readers worldwide as the author of Under the Blood Red Sun and a Scott O'Dell Award winner. He'd been painting for years and consistently dismissing his own canvases. Junkers, he called them. Just practice.
I asked what split he'd want if I could sell his work.
"Fifty percent," he said. "But nobody will buy these."
Several originals and giclée editions sold within weeks of the soft launch.
That early success confirmed something I'd been circling for years: the gallery I'd always wanted to build was possible - I just needed to start it in service to someone else first. Promoting others has always come more naturally to me than promoting myself, and we share the same quiet affliction: imposter syndrome, well-fed and persistent.
Where It Stands Now
The studio was remodeled in 2022 to add wall space and convert the camera room into gallery space during events. What began as a web gallery has grown into a physical one, modest but real.
In 2026, we launched WOW - Wednesday Originals & Wine, a monthly event series held on the third Wednesday of each month. Each event features a guest artist, benefits a local nonprofit, and is designed with buyers in mind - not just an audience. The space is intimate. When the weather cooperates, the doors open, the wine moves outside, and the work gets room to breathe.
The root system has been growing for a long time. The canopy is just beginning.
“Mirage” by Graham Salisbury (20x24” Acrylic Gallery Wrap) Experimenting with a bold, whimsical, more graphic style.
“After The Rain” by Graham Salisbury. 24×24 Gallery Wrap
“All Rise” Pre-sunrise photo by Brian Geraths taken in Arches National Park. - Currently displayed showing ub the gallery as a LImited Edition 30x60” Acrylic. Contact for pricing.
