The question of selling art might best be approached with a classic Zen riddle: If a painting hangs on a wall and there is no one around to see it, will it ever sell?
To many art gallery owners and directors in Ketchum, the answer is, well, maybe.
Thanksgiving weekend usually provides a short spurt of holiday shopping and spending, though it is but one hiccup during an otherwise lengthy autumnal slack period. Spring has its own lull, lasting from approximately late April through mid-June.
Slack, or the "shoulder season," as it is also called, is a point of contention among many valley retailers and gallery owners in particular.
Some are ardent believers that slack exists.
"When there's nobody in town, there's nobody in town, period," said Polly Frostman, manager and director of Images of Nature Gallery, on Main Street.
Don Devore, who owned Gallery Oscar for eight years before closing this fall, agrees.
"A true resort town will always have a slack. That's the nature of the beast," he said.
Though Devore says he closed Oscar strictly for retirement, rather than economic reasons, he believes in the devastating potential of a very slow shoulder season.
Still other gallery owners, particularly fine art dealers, have a more nuanced answer to the slack question.
Gail Severn, a local fine-art dealer for 29 years, has developed a business model that sidesteps the challenges slack presents.
"We have been fortunate in the sense that we have not relied solely on local walk-in traffic for our business," said Severn.
By developing lasting relationships with clients over many years, the lines of busy and slow seasons have become blurred for her gallery.
Severn and other sellers of highly coveted fine art—prices for single works often reach over $100,000 at select Ketchum galleries—have also come to rely on an evolving client base of wealthy, second-home owners.
There has been a "change in our visitors in terms of the second—or third or fourth home—community," she said.
Hye-Young Lee, a sales associate at Ketchum's Anne Reed Gallery, located just a block north of Severn's in the heart of Ketchum's unofficial gallery district, offers a similar picture. Lee says that slack "sales aren't high," but that Anne Reed sales are maintained through loyal, second-home owning customers and the interior designers they employ.
Severn sees this landed gentry as both a potential boon and drain on the local economy.
When second homes are built, art is needed to fill blank walls. "But if they are home cooking ... or catering in a lot ... that might be bad for restaurants," Severn said. Then again, the rainy days of fall and spring keep people off the trails and in town, possibly shopping for art, she said.
Regardless of the variables, many art dealers point to the Internet as the No. 1 slack-negating tool.
For Robin Reiners, co-owner and director of Ketchum's Gallery DeNovo, a gallery specializing in introducing international artists to the United States, the Internet has become indispensable.
Before opening DeNovo with her husband, Michael Carpenter, Reiners said they were warned: "People had told us, if you are starting a business, beware of slack." With that in mind, they "knew the Web site was critical."
Today, DeNovo is one of a handful of galleries, Gail Severn Gallery among them, that survives slow times with a steady stream of Web-generated business.
For both Severn and DeNovo, the singularity of Ketchum's slack presents unique opportunities. Reiners and Carpenter use the time to travel, often to Europe, seeking out fresh, unknown artists. Severn sees the season as an opportunity to give her employees some substantial vacation time.
"One benefit of a seasonal economy is that employees can have real vacations, two to three weeks instead of two to three days. It makes coming back to work exciting and dynamic," she said, mentioning one employee who left for a seven-week tour of Southeast Asia this fall.
Devore is not so upbeat about the seasonal doldrums. "I think every slack is getting longer and deeper," he said.
"Slack was always a struggle and also absolute boredom. A week would go by and no one would come through the door," said Devore, a former president of the Sun Valley Gallery Association.
Devore blames the problem largely on a dearth of overnight accommodations in Ketchum. "No new rooms, no convention center, there's nothing to accommodate anyone ... what do we expect?"
With no new major hotels currently proposed in Ketchum, gallery foot traffic seems unlikely to drastically change anytime soon. As slack remains a tangible force in town, it seems the smart art money is either online, or getting prepared for the next peak-season wave.
Joel Vilinsky, of Hailey, browses Ketchum's Kneeland Gallery with his sister, Beth Vilinsky, who was visiting from New York City for Thanksgiving. Express photo by Michael Ames
