We recently had the chance to connect with Paul Fisher and have shared our conversation below.
Paul, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
It took me way too long to figure out that I’m no good intellectually in the morning. Last week I went up to Seattle to visit my mentor Dale Chihuly. Dale gets up every day at 4 AM ready to work and he gets more done before 8 AM than most people will all day. But that’s not me knowing when you are the sharpest is a very valuable skill in life and business. I know what I’m sharpest and I tried to plan my decision making an interactions times I’m at my best for those things. So the first 90 minutes of my day is coffee, exercise, meditation and quality parrot time.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My career is kind of split between being an art dealer representing artists and selling blue chip resale works some work and Juried Art Services which I founded in 2000. JAS provides services to museums and art organizations including the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum. My life in the art world with Chihuly led me to the Smithsonian Craft Show and that is where I had the brainstorm to create (and patent!) digital jurying. With my co-founder and partner Jeffrey Gilbert, we are now growing the company in a big way. He’s an artist and computer scientist/developer who was with me at the beginning then trapped for 20 years in the high dollar but soulless corporate advertising and technology world. He wanted to do something meaningful, with a bit of fun and glamour, and we got back together and have totally reengineered all the software and systems and now it’s about getting the word out.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who taught you the most about work?
In the 80s and 90s when I was with Chihuly travelling all the time people would ask me: “It seems like he’s on the go all the time, constantly working and traveling. What does he do to get away from it all?” And the only answer was by the time he had reached the level of success where he could do anything that he wanted to do, all he wanted to do was make great art. My other mentor, Bruce Helander, who’s conveniently my best friend and often collaborator, once said about the late great Italo Scanga: “He’s incapable of pissing in the snow without making art”. And that is more true about Bruce Helander than anyone I’ve ever met. He cannot put food on a plate, dress himself or really do anything without taking it into consideration the aesthetic qualities. I remember back in the 80s when he owned three galleries and was working 75+ hour weeks and no matter what, every night he being in his studio making his own art. My work is kind of like my martial arts practice: I don’t do it just to get somewhere or something, the practice, the work itself, is how you experience your life, here and now.
Do you remember a time someone truly listened to you?
The only one that really, really listens to me is JoJo Pushkin, our African Grey parrot. Sometimes when I talk to him he looks me directly in the eyes and he listens with his entire being. I know it sounds silly or frivolous but I’ve never had anybody else look at me with such love and full attention.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Animals deserve respect and are not ours to exploit or kill for pleasure. Very few people I know practice this in real life. Most people would happily sacrifice a billion animals for a happy meal.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. When have you had to bet the company?
I’ve had to bet the company more than once. When I first started JAS there’s no chance of getting funding because nobody knew anything about the “jurying” business because no company had ever existed before just for this purpose so I had to boot strap it to build it. Then recently my partner Jeffrey Gilbert and I had to make the decision to completely re-engineer everything from the ground up, which would be a huge undertaking financially and attention wise and would take two years of work before it could even start to pay off. But you have to look down the road 5 years 10 years because how we look at art and find artists is changing. Juried Art Services was the first company to take art competitions and submissions from postal to digital and now we’re right here at the forefront of the next big step and we’re taking our 100,000 artists with us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.paulfisher.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/paulfisherPB
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/paulfishergallery
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAavZQT4458-v1GESWtqFMZC24Whive_&si=M_vrc4VrNahODM3I
- Other: https://juriedartservices.com/
