Choose954 Podcast #88 With Jeremiah Heller

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC3NQzpnr84&list=PLOQvdw7d0cd9RZZkd2lZy2hmrnJv-cfLI&index=11

Evan Snow: And welcome back to another episode of the Choose954 podcast, episode 88, with Hollywood-based curator, collector, and our upcoming AAF Creative Zen speaker, Jeremiah Heller, from his beautiful Endtoend Gallery here in downtown Hollywood off of Harrison Street. If you didn't know about Choose954, we started a social movement a few years ago to cultivate culture and community in Broward County, to keep people in the know with all the great things going on, and to make this a better place to live, not just a better place to vacation because we live here. The point of the podcast is to connect you with interesting people like him who do important things in the community.

Evan Snow: If you haven’t been on one of our art walk tours, you’ll find out that art and this gallery serve a great purpose in the community. So without much further ado, for those who are not familiar with you, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself at a high level and how you kind of got started in the art on this journey?

Jeremiah Heller: Well, thank you, Evan, and thanks for coming today. Like Evan said, my name is Jeremiah Heller. I am an award-winning curator and owner-operator of Endtoend Gallery here in downtown Hollywood, Florida. My journey actually starts going back to pre-2008 when I was teaching scuba diving here in South Florida. I was working for South Beach Dive and Surf as a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer. In 2008, we had the market crash, and all of a sudden, the tourism industry shifted. There weren’t the bookings, there wasn’t the interest, so I started looking for ways to subsidize my income.

My wife was actually working for a gallery in Aventura, and a friend of a friend got me a job in there with her. I started working there, which turned out to start off being a part-time job, literally in the back, cold calling, trying to drum up business during the economic crash between 2008 and 2009. I started literally at the bottom and slowly worked my way onto the sales floor.

Jeremiah Heller: The gallery I worked at had a massive inventory, 10,000 different pieces, a thousand different artists, from major Blue Chip artists like Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Picasso, to some lesser-known artists. You had a wide exposure to art, and we got to buy, sell, and trade, so it was a constant process of learning how to research, how to appraise, what to buy, at what price, and then seeing what sold and what didn’t. The main reasons why something doesn't sell typically are the price—the owner is attached to it, and the price is too high—and typically it won’t sell.

Jeremiah Heller: So yeah, I started literally at the bottom and worked from 2009 all the way till 2020, so 11 years in a Fine Art Gallery. I worked my way to the top, eventually becoming the gallery director, working with the owner on multi-million dollar acquisitions, multi-million dollar sales, setting up booths, traveling to art fairs, handling logistics, packing, and more. It was a heck of an education.

Evan Snow: I’d say so! Were you previously into art before that point?

Jeremiah Heller: No, I grew up in—I was born in North Carolina, grew up in St. Louis. I went to university on an athletic scholarship.

Evan Snow: What did you play?

Jeremiah Heller: I was in track and field and cross country.

Evan Snow: I didn’t know that.

Jeremiah Heller: Yeah, so I was an athlete. My freshman year, I was in Iowa, and then my sophomore year, I was at Central Missouri State, following a coach who was, at the time, the Olympic Triathlon coach. I was just interested in him and his program, but unfortunately, I got injured. They put me in the pool to rehab, and that’s where they were doing scuba classes. So I transitioned and got scuba certified in Missouri, started diving with a local dive shop there, and worked my way up to instructor level in Missouri, diving in lakes, dams, quarries, doing deep dives, ice dives, wreck dives.

Jeremiah Heller: Then, in my junior year of university, I took a break, got a job with Club Med, moved to the Bahamas for six months, then a hurricane came and wiped out the club. They sent me to Mexico, where I lived for six months, but I was a lifeguard, and I was like, “What am I doing in Mexico as a lifeguard? I thought I was teaching scuba diving.” So, I went back home, went back to university. Barry University in Miami was advertising for their dive underwater scuba diving professional program. I thought, “Well, I’m already doing this, so this could be awesome.” So, I moved from St. Louis back to Miami, and the rest is history.

Evan Snow: I did not know all of that, and that is interesting. One of the reasons I love doing this podcasting thing is because everybody has a different dotted-line path in life. There’s no one path. I always like to say, when we were growing up, they would say, “Do what the book says to do. You should go to school, get a job.” It wasn’t like that for me. I went to university for a long time, ended up getting my degree at Barry, but it wasn’t until I was working in the arts industry that I realized where my true passion was.

Jeremiah Heller: With my support system, which was my now wife but then girlfriend at the time, we got through it together. We worked together in the art gallery, and she was a huge help. We met at Barry University, and she got a six-month study abroad in Florence. So, I went along, and we were in Florence for six months. She got an internship at Palazzo Vecchio, doing the hidden passage tours. She learned where all the hidden passageways were, what paintings to pull out to reveal a secret passage, and got to take people all the way to the floating roof at the top. It was a great experience living in Italy.

Jeremiah Heller: It was great for both of us, and we realized we didn’t want to specialize in Renaissance art. We got a taste of it, but we really wanted to focus on our specialty, which was 1964 modern contemporary. I always had a strong interest in the urban contemporary market. When I started working for the gallery in Aventura, it was a key time in the art world because you had this huge crash that happened. With a crash, you get markets that get affected, and I got to see what markets held up—your major Blue Chip artists like Warhol, Haring, Lichtenstein, the major names that still dominate auction records today at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. But what emerged was this anti-system, anti-establishment movement, which made way for the urban contemporary, which was graffiti. It was around 2008-2009 when Banksy first came on the scene through Angelina Jolie at Barely Legal, and when Christina Aguilera bought his first painting for a million dollars. It really threw the main art world for a spin because it opened up this door for this new, young group of artists who were against the establishment, against the major galleries, against being represented, because they had this great new tool: the internet. They could build their own website, create an Instagram, build a following, and sell their own art directly. The supply systems were out there, the ability for them to order through Uline to get the tubes, and it was pretty reasonable and affordable for them to print their work or even do silk screen or original spray paint works on paper and do multiples. There was this whole new way for artists to make money.

Jeremiah Heller: So, in that time period, when I was buying for the other gallery, I really jumped into this particular field of interest. My gallery owner would say, “What are you doing? These artists are nobodies; they’re going nowhere. This is a waste of time.” And that was kind of the speech I got from 2010 to 2015. While I was buying stuff for him and that stuff was selling, and he was kind of seeing what I was doing, I was also buying for myself. I’d buy a couple of pieces here, a couple of pieces there, directly from the artist, and slowly built my collection over that decade while I was working. It was fun, it was cool. We got to meet a lot of these artists, and it was neat around 2015 when all of a sudden Wynwood Walls was at its peak. This new environment in Miami came and saw what we were doing. We took over the RC Cola factory, rebranded it, built this new huge convention center down here, and let it be a free art space, let anybody come in and paint and do walls and create. That’s all good and stuff until someone spends $20,000 on a mural, and then the next day it gets painted over, and they get upset. But you know, that’s the spirit of what happened in Wynwood; that’s how that area was built, how it was advertised.

Evan Snow: Interesting.

Jeremiah Heller: From that, it spun a whole cult following within the art market. You have some of these urban contemporary artists who have split from the urban contemporary world and gone on to become more of a blue chip, high commodity that you’ll see at major auctions. You’ve seen a whole other category created, or auction houses created, the urban art category, where they’ll just keep on selling a lot of the same stuff at auctions each and every month, but the category still exists.

Evan Snow: Interesting. That was right around the time, maybe 2014, when I first went to Wynwood and saw the profound impact of what it could do for that city, that community, and redevelopment. That was my foray into art. It’s amazing to see the transformation. Wynwood was a place where nobody would go, nobody even thought of going. Now look at what it’s become. It’s created the “Wynwood Effect,” which we are at a very interesting time here in Broward County with the arts, with Flagler Village’s FAT Village Art District just getting torn down to be developed into condos. So now it’s Flat Village.

Evan Snow: Nobody was living in those warehouses, so it technically didn’t really… let me not get into the g-word conversation, but it served a great purpose. What I like to take from the example of Wynwood is the power of the arts. The artists that were there in those inexpensive warehouses made it a destination initially, from the way I’m being told the story secondhand. Collectors who were real estate developers—the Jorge Pérez’s, the Moishe Mana’s, the Craig Robbins’, the Tony Goldman’s—they went to support the artists. Through that process of touring these art studios in these inexpensive warehouses that the artists could afford to have, it inevitably brought development, which unfortunately… yes, the same warehouse that my business partner used to chip in $100 a month to rent now sells for $40 million. It’s not a clear path, but the arts have the power to revitalize communities, as they have in Asheville, as they have in SoHo, as they have in Nashville, and many communities throughout the world. Thankfully, tying it back here to Hollywood, the arts do play a big part. We have a downtown Hollywood mural project, we have an ArtsPark, we have a great art and culture center with one of the best curators around in the area, Megan Kent. There are some things here, and I like to tell people on the art walk tours that we lead every third Saturday night of the month during the downtown Hollywood artwalk, which starts right here at Endtoend Gallery at 7:00 and 9:00. We talk about the importance of art because art can be storytelling, art can be history, art can be interior design, or it can be an investment.

Evan Snow: I would like it if you’d be so kind to share from your experience how you started with very humble beginnings—$150—and how art has had an impact on your life, your career, your family, and everything, and now Hollywood, because you have this beautiful gallery here. How were you able to start with very humble beginnings to build this space and some of the works that we’ll show here after that?

Jeremiah Heller: It literally started with watching what we were doing in the gallery in Aventura and kind of following my own interest in this new market that was building. My first piece that I bought was a Mr. Brainwash print. You know, you go to his website, you just had to be there right at the time, right there at 12:00 for the release. You could go and check out, you could buy directly from Brainwash. At the time, it was very inexpensive; it wasn’t a crazy cost. You weren’t spending thousands of dollars. It was very affordable, and we were getting paid an hourly wage, so we could take a $600-a-week paycheck, spend 25% of it, and get a nice art starter collection. We could afford that. So that’s kind of how it started. It went from one piece to three pieces, three pieces to five pieces, then we sold a piece, and then that sale just kind of spiraled. We never tried to take art money and use it for living expenses. We kept the art money separate. Anything that we sold in art, we tried to buy another piece of art. When a piece sells, it all goes back to buying more and more art. We don’t pull that draw out for ourselves, and that’s where a lot of people make that mistake in collecting. If you can avoid having to do that and just keep building inventory, the bigger your collection will grow, clearly.

Evan Snow: Are you at whatever level you feel comfortable sharing—at what level in terms of the artwork or in terms of the inventory, or whatever you feel comfortable sharing publicly, which you do, obviously, on the art walk tour? This is one of the top post-graffiti urban contemporary artists in the world. To what level has the collection grown?

Jeremiah Heller: When collecting, there are a lot of tips, and we’ll get into my 10 tips for collecting on November 10th.

Evan Snow: Yes, we will.

Jeremiah Heller: When we talk more there at NSU’s library, some key points when you’re buying are… I completely lost my train of thought, but like Ryan Travis Christian, for example, is a Chicago-based artist who has taken over the art world by storm since 2018 with the blossoming of this new modern contemporary movement that got kicked off. He has major representation, including Pace Gallery in New York City. He did a release with Pace, and he’s a young guy. His medium of choice is graphite, doing drawings. This is actually an edition of 10, where it’s a lot of satire, humor. Each one of these pieces had unique elements to it, so on this piece, the unique elements are the nose, the razor blade, the image to invade, and he kind of changed it out to give it that funny, dark twist to his pieces. But he does have that blue chip representation, he is doing museum shows, so that signals to collectors and buyers that this is an artist who’s young, emerging, but could definitely be a good long-term investment.

Evan Snow: Wow, so much there. Let’s put this down before I drop it. I appreciate that. This is a great time to tell you that if you haven’t been to the art walk on the art walk tour, which does start here—we do the intro here—this is the greatest space, it’s the greatest collection. Jeremiah is one of the most knowledgeable, passionate, kind, courteous, down-to-earth gallerists I’ve ever met. I think most people ever meet. He’s super knowledgeable, super generous with his time and his insight, not just on this podcast, but if you come, he will tell you the appraisal of a work, viewpoints on a work, thoughts and ideas on collecting and the collection, and so on and so forth. It’s amazing, and I’m super grateful as an arts advocate and as someone that has had art change my life, to have you in our community holding the space physically and holding the knowledge that you share with your customers, patrons, and visitors. It’s a beautiful thing because you’ve helped so many people just on the tours alone that we’ve been doing now for the last couple of years, educating them about what you often introduce that a lot of people are not familiar with—auctions.

Jeremiah Heller: We specialize in museum-inducted, auction-tracked, and traded artists from all around the world, with an emphasis on modern contemporary and urban contemporary. We were kind of talking about the urban contemporary up to 2015, and then we had COVID happen. We had all these urban markets that were going to auction, getting recognized by major auction houses, starting to get picked up through major representation by institutionalized galleries in New York City, and then COVID hit. All of a sudden, like we experienced in 2008, these artists who were self-promoting, self-releasing, and anti-representation didn’t have access to the supply chain. They couldn’t get tubes, they couldn’t get paper, they couldn’t print, they couldn’t release, they couldn’t get their art out there as they were in the previous years. That’s when these mega-institutions, these mega-galleries that had endless amounts of money prior, started signing all these new waves of young artists and really took back control of that foothold that they lost from 2010 to COVID. They brought in artists like Ryan Travis Christian and many others that we have coming up at Red Dot for Art Basel.

Jeremiah Heller: Every single artist in that show is a red chip artist. Their prices have already gone up, and that’s a big thing. They’re alive, they’re young artists born after 1980, and they’re following the same tracks as some of these blue chip artists like Warhol, Haring, Koons, and other mega giants. It’s really got a lot of people wondering to see, but when you have Almine Rech and Anton Kern and these major galleries behind these artists, you definitely think there’s going to be longevity.

Evan Snow: It’s interesting that you triggered something. You mentioned the signaling, and it signals to collectors that these are signs. You’ve educated me so much just from listening to you and interacting with you about art as an investment, and how you intentionally acquire work with the goal of it appreciating as an investment.

Jeremiah Heller: The most important rule—rule number one when collecting art—is to buy what you like because there is no crystal ball. I have no crystal ball, and just because something’s hot now doesn’t mean that it’s going to stay hot over a period of time. But by the same token, something that might not be hot now could be the hottest thing 10 years from now, and you could sell it for what you paid for it, and then you just lost something that could be worth a fortune down the road. That’s always the gamble that you take when selling a piece.

Jeremiah Heller: There are certain rules that go along with collecting, especially the higher the ladder you climb. They expect you to hang on to the pieces. If you sell a piece, they expect you to let them know that you’re planning on putting it on the market. Sometimes it’s easier to buy from a collector directly, or we buy at auction, like in the case of the Auda here. This past summer, because of the war in Ukraine and all the rising tensions and everything with all the inflation talk, people haven’t been spending like they were during the pandemic when everyone was getting free money, working from home, and not going on vacation. People were finally looking around their houses and realized they had white walls everywhere, so they were putting pieces up. It was the opposite for our industry, whereas we are now feeling the post-effects, where people have decorated their homes, and now they are vacationing and traveling. The emphasis might not be so much on building out their collection; it’s more on lifestyle.

Evan Snow: You’ve really educated me a lot on many things, including the market factors that I just wasn’t privy to because I’m not really on that side of the art, the transactional side of things. I’m more on the arts advocacy side of things. One thing you’ve really educated me a lot on, and you just mentioned it, and I’d like you to further elaborate on, is prints and editions of prints. Let’s just pretend that or assume that maybe they don’t know what a print is or an edition or limited edition. How would you frame that up, and why is it a good investment or even a good entry point for some people into collecting to start with prints?

Jeremiah Heller: It’s where I started collecting myself—in prints. Prints are almost easier for collectors to collect because if there’s a particular artist that you like—Auda, for example—and let’s say he does an edition of 50, he releases it for $500 for each print. To buy an original, you’re going to spend $25,000, so it’s more affordable, obviously, for a collector who wants to collect their work, wants to have a piece of theirs on their wall, to buy an edition. Editions are art. They are limited; they’re hand-signed by the artist. I typically prefer if it’s an edition of 150 or less because then it’s truly limited. If it’s over 150, it’s considered an edition multiple. Warhol, for example, most of his are editions of 200, but he had that philosophy that art is for everyone. He wanted to get his art to the masses, and that was back when his pieces were $2,000 to $5,000 each, not $50,000 to $100,000.

Jeremiah Heller: You can see great equity in prints. Look at Banksy. His prints from 2006 to 2008 were a few hundred pounds each, and those same unsigned Girl with Balloon prints were 150 pounds on release. At the peak of the market, they were $300,000, and it’s an edition of 600. It’s not limited; it’s an edition multiple. At the peak, they were selling for $300,000. Now, unfortunately, the same piece a few years later is down to $70,000. The Banksy market really got built up in a totally different way, but there is just too much out there for the market to support, and that’s why it’s important to buy limited. If there are editions of 35, editions of 50, editions of 75, you’re going to be in low quantities, which collectors are going to hang on to. There might be two, three, four, or five circulating on the market, but it’s going to be listed higher, guaranteed, than what you paid for on release.

Evan Snow: Interesting. Also interesting that just these two artists you mentioned—Auda and Banksy—I’ve known them as muralists, as public artists, street artists. I love Auda. There are at least two Auda murals in Palm Beach County, but I never would have thought that I’d have the ability to have an Auda piece of art in my house. But now, through prints, you can have an Auda. Without prints, also, I’m sure to pay him to do a mural, if you can even get him, is probably $100,000 starting.

Jeremiah Heller: Yeah, easily.

Evan Snow: So, it’s an interesting foray, as you mentioned. It worked for you; it worked for a lot of people to get into the market. One other last collecting point that I would love to grow in our community is this secondary art market—the resale market, especially with some of the local artists that we know, love, and want to support. How are you involved in the secondary art market? How can an aspiring collector, or even potentially an aspiring artist or arts advocate, get involved or further support or participate in the secondary art market?

Jeremiah Heller: The secondary art market means pieces that have been owned and are being resold. I can help if you already have a great collection and you’re looking to trim it down, you have too much. I can help you place it on Artsy, place it on our website, help market it, help sell it, and help find a buyer. A lot of it comes back to pricing. You have to make sure you’re not setting the market; you’re actually pricing it at a price point that someone is willing to pay.

Evan Snow: I appreciate that. When I go to New York, LA, Chicago, they talk about the secondary art market. These are true art markets, and we’re trying to do our best to make this an art market. We have some very talented artists between Hollywood and Zero Empty Spaces and some of the people that we know—Thiago. There is definitely potential for it. I think some of what we’ve been missing in Broward County and in Hollywood are the buyers and the collectors to participate in the secondary art market. I have some thoughts and ideas that we might hope to bring to the future, like framing an event, framing something to induce secondary art market transactions, to get people knowledgeable and conscious of the secondary art market. I have some art, unfortunately, that I have more art than I can put on my wall, so some of it is at my parents' house, some of it is in storage, so I would like to probably offload it because I don’t have a...

Jeremiah Heller: That’s a common issue with most collectors, especially as collectors here in South Florida age. People begin to age out. They sell their three-bedroom houses or three-bedroom condos and move into a one-bedroom and downsize. They make their lives simpler, and we see that all the time down here in South Florida. But then, what do I do with all these pieces? What do I do with all this extra art that I now don’t have a place for? Has it gone up in value? Did I miss the selling point? Is there a huge amount of value now in these pieces? You can always call me, send me a text. I can take a look at what you have and usually tell you within minutes if you have something. Google is a tool. We just do a quick reverse image search, and then from there, it really breaks down.

Evan Snow: But it’s having the subscriptions, having paid the $1,200 to $1,500 to access the art database that year, so you can go and pull up every single auction result and see where the price sold, where the peak of this market is, and kind of forecast what’s going to happen. Norman Rockwell is a great example. Americana artist, well-known, household name. If you go into the Midwest, you see lithotypes in probably many people's homes. But unfortunately, even though he’s such a major name and his originals sell for a ton of money, you can get a signed lithotype for a couple hundred dollars. There has to be all the right dynamics in play. He’s a great example of art that’s known and accepted but has aged out. No one wants to have that early 1930s Americana style in their South Florida home.

Evan Snow: The one that comes to mind that people joke around a lot about, and he’s had success, and he’s made millions of dollars, is Brito. Brito is a South Florida artist; he’s right here in our ArtsPark in Hollywood, Florida. He’s got the Rothschild butterfly; he’s everywhere. Bright colors from Brazil, embodies all things that are Miami, but not for everybody anymore.

Jeremiah Heller: I gave a Brito bear to my stepmother and my sister back in 2012 for Christmas. They had no clue who it was; it just didn’t translate from St. Louis to Miami. It takes a while for some of these artists to make it to the Midwest, where you’ll still find Peter Lik galleries, and you’ll still find Thomas Kinkade galleries. Those are the types of things that you have to be wary of when you’re talking about editions and collectivity. Peter Lik editions of 900, 950—you get into these really big edition sizes with a really big primary price tag, and then you go back to resell it later, and you find yourself surprised. But if you’re educated, and if you get 10 tips on collecting, then you might not be so surprised.

Evan Snow: If you would like to learn more about this fascinating young man, get some inspiration, get some connection to the community, as I was able to do seven, almost eight years ago, we still host a free monthly breakfast lecture series, mini Ted Talk, every second Friday morning of the month inside, coincidentally, the Cotilla Gallery inside the Alvin Sherman Library on the second floor on the campus of NSU Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Florida, where my business partner is president of the board. We try to support and bring in new speakers and new events to bring in new traffic and audiences to the library, which is a beautiful space.

Jeremiah Heller: It’s a great space.

Evan Snow: It’s a great space. So, it’s a free event. The doors open at 8:30; the introductions and the talk start at 9:00. You’re out of there by 10:00. If you need something to tell your boss on why it’s okay for you to miss the first half of the morning of work one Friday morning a month, I have a long list of truthful things that you’ll be gaining insight and connections that you’ll bring back to your team, to your office, to your community, or whatever you serve. So that’s Creative Zen. It’s every second Friday morning. This month, it’s going to fall on November 10th. You can find out more on Choose954 and Creative Zen social media. We record and archive all the talks, so you can go back and listen to previous inspirations from brilliant speakers and brilliant artists that we’ve had participate previously.

Evan Snow: I have another event that I would invite you to right before Creative Zen. It would actually be good to come. The LA Lee YMCA, which is one of the newest and most beautiful YMCAs in Fort Lauderdale, has a Victory Black Box Theater, which used to be the host venue of Creative Zen for a period of time. They have a monthly art film community event where they ask people like myself and Andrew to curate and screen a film. I chose something—I don’t know if I asked you if you’ve seen this—but “Boom for Real.” It’s a documentary about Basquiat’s teenage years.

Jeremiah Heller: I saw that. That looks like an amazing documentary.

Evan Snow: It is. The reason why it’s relevant, and the reason why—I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you—I was so moved by “Radiant Child,” which was not the first Basquiat documentary, but it was one of the great Basquiat documentaries. When I first saw it, I watched it 11 times in 10 days, and I was just so blown away by how they framed, in that documentary, how New York City at that time, the late ’70s, was burning down. It was dead people in the streets, and it was a shithole. It’s outlined in the documentary.

Jeremiah Heller: Apocalyptic. People thought it was apocalyptic, period. Even Keith Haring did his Apocalypse series, and it was about—they thought it was the end of times in that era, in the late ’90s. They lost Warhol, they lost Basquiat, then Haring died, and all the people that were connected to him passed away. Studio 54, just everybody who made that world what it was, minus a few.

Evan Snow: Correct. But the documentary shows the crew that did make it: the Keith Harings, Kenny Scharf, Andy Warhol. The one guy that’s in there a lot is Fab Five Freddy. Then there’s Glenn Close, the Canal Zone, a lot of that context. It really shows how the arts helped revitalize Manhattan, SoHo, and you think… So that was “Radiant Child.” Then “Boom for Real,” which is what we’re going to be showing on Wednesday, November 8th at 6:00 at the Victory Black Box Theater at LA Lee YMCA in Fort Lauderdale. “Boom for Real” is about Basquiat’s teenage years, which is more in the ’70s. It really highlights and shows—the opening scene is a wrecking ball in black and white going through New York City and knocking down a building as the buildings were burning down. The opening monologue is Gerald Ford, the president, saying, “We are not going to bail Manhattan out. We’re going to let it burn down.” And you think about it: 50 years ago, they were going to let Manhattan…

Jeremiah Heller: It’s crazy.

Evan Snow: So, when I put that into context, as to where we live in a place that’s beautiful, where there’s no shortage of money or disposable income, we just need a little bit more support for the arts. We just need to foster some more art collectors. We just need to create more platforms and further more platforms like Zero Empty Spaces to support more artists. Like, our problems aren’t really that bad here in Broward County.

Jeremiah Heller: No, and you know, it’s great that we have these programs that you offer—the Downtown Hollywood ArtWalk, which we do the third Saturday of each month. Each and every month, we have a new show for the Downtown Hollywood ArtWalk. This is the time of year that you want to join our mailing list. Visit Endtoend Gallery and join our mailing list because we send out free tickets each and every year to Red Dot down at the Mana Convention Center in the heart of Wynwood. It’s Red Dot Spectrum. It’s a great fine art show where you get to see some secondary market dealers at Red Dot mixed in with a lot of emerging talent. When local artists ask, “Where can I go to highlight and showcase?” there’s no better fair than Spectrum for a young emerging artist because booth space is affordable, they have a lot of different options, and it’s a great way to get your name out there.

Jeremiah Heller: In addition, during Art Basel week, we are taking over the SLS Hotel in South Beach and Hyde Beach. We’re doing a takeover with Atomik, the famed Miami legend Atomik. We have a 20-foot mural going on in front of their brass doors, right there in front of the building, as a permanent activation. Bruno with Metro Signs has partnered with us. He’s going to be doing a massive Atomik for the bottom of the pool, some window wraps, and of course, Atomik is going to be painting the duck on December 8th between 7:00 and 10:00. If you would like to attend that event, let me know, and we can get you some ticket information.

Evan Snow: I will be there, which is also cool because Red Dot is usually a $50 ticket. It allows the people of Hollywood and our past clients to come to a show and see at Red Dot—it’s just like being at the other shows where it’s got the 12-foot walls, the big installations, and it’s just a great show, easy to get in, easy to get out. There’s parking right there at the Mana, where you’re not fighting to get on the beach, you’re not sitting in traffic for three hours trying to get across 395. But we do it every year.

Jeremiah Heller: We do it every year. You know how that Friday is going to be with the Atomik. It starts at 7:00. I still haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to make it from Wynwood over to South Beach on Friday, but they have that Uber plane now…

Evan Snow: The seaplane?

Jeremiah Heller: I don’t know if they’re bringing it back this year.

Evan Snow: I was hoping they had a water taxi.

Jeremiah Heller: I think they also have a water taxi.

Evan Snow: We’re going to have to look into that because transportation is a problem, but free tickets help, free art walk tour, free consultations.

Jeremiah Heller: We didn’t even talk about comics.

Evan Snow: Oh, yeah.

Jeremiah Heller: I own a comic book store.

Evan Snow: Which some of you have seen if you’ve come for our tours. We opened up a Cards and Comics store at 6780 Pines Boulevard. We are not your typical comic book store where you come in and do subscriptions. We are back-issue only, so if you’re looking for a 1963 Avengers #1 or looking for that ASM #129 first appearance of the Punisher, or those early Fantastic Fours, we have them all. We have over 200 CGCs, 3,000 raw comics, toys, rare, expensive sports cards—all in Pembroke Pines, just right down on the other end of Hollywood Boulevard.

Evan Snow: Last question we like to ask: What do you like the most about living in the 954?

Jeremiah Heller: It was always a dream of my wife and I to open up a gallery here in downtown Hollywood. We used to go to Chocolatte for years. We used to drive up from Aventura, go up there for Sunday breakfast—that was our thing. The dream was always to open a fine art gallery here in downtown Hollywood.

Evan Snow: Amen.

Jeremiah Heller: It’s been fun. We’ve been out here for four years now.

Evan Snow: Beautiful. From humble beginnings, a couple of blocks away over to here, Harrison Street, the site of the art walk. So we’re here in downtown Hollywood, just west of the ArtsPark, just east of Dixie, just south of Hollywood Boulevard. A lot of great stuff coming to Hollywood. I’m excited to bring back Art Hollywood, which was something we launched last year during what was previously Fort Lauderdale Art and Design Week. We just rebranded and relaunched it as Lauderdale Art Week—LAW—which we’re very excited for. The Public Service Announcement campaign will be, “People are going to have to support the arts because it’s the LAW—Lauderdale Art Week.” You can find out more at lauderdaleartweek.com. Still doing the art walk tour every third Saturday, still doing Creative Zen every second Friday morning of the month. Tons of great stuff. If you want to find out more, log on to Choose954. I’m an open book at evansnow13. He’s a very nice guy. We’re very lucky and fortunate to have you here in the community. Hope you can join us on November 10th at NSU. NSU also has some other great stuff coming on. They’ve brought astronauts and authors and Julia Quinn—phenomenal. Kudos to my business partner Andrew Martineau and the whole Circle of Friends board at the Alvin Sherman Library, who are doing some really great stuff in our community.

Evan Snow: I think we are going to put together that secondary art market event—something to foster more collectors, more buyers, more sales, more transactions, more support for the arts. We just don’t like sitting still or being bored. Oh, last one—stay tuned. We are very excited to launch e-commerce for artists through Zero Empty Spaces and make it available because not every artist can get on Artsy or Saatchi. It’s expensive.

Jeremiah Heller: Most people don’t understand how much it costs to be on Artsy, to be on Saatchi, to be on First Dibs. It’s a monthly subscription, and they take a percentage of the sale on top of it. It’s like bringing in a secondary partner, which, you know, that’s a…

Evan Snow: But they do offer buyer and seller protections, which is key, especially when selling and shipping $20,000 to $30,000 to $40,000 items around the world. It’s nice to have some type of protection, especially when you’re shipping internationally. You don’t get any from FedEx.

Jeremiah Heller: Amen.

Evan Snow: We’re going to have more information on that. Stay tuned. Appreciate you tuning in. Thank you for your support. We hope to see you on the 10th. Hope to see you down here in Hollywood. And you have a great rest of your day.