Blue Rain Gallery owner Leroy Garcia during a recent episode of his new podcast.
After 30 years in the art business, Blue Rain Gallery owner Leroy Garcia knows art and artists, which serves as a great foundation to the meaningful conversations he’s presenting on the gallery’s first podcast.
Blue Rain Gallery Podcast, which premiered in October 2020, features intimate sit-down interviews with artists as they reflect on their lives and the state of the arts. Guests on the show have so far included Western painters Hyrum Joe, Jim Vogel, Billy Schenck and Doug West, as well as other artists.
“I was never really a fan of podcasts before this,” Garcia admits from the gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I was more of an audiobook kind of person as I was on my commute. But I was aware of podcasts like Joe Rogan’s or, on the art side of things, Mark Sublette’s podcast. I just wanted to do my own thing; I wanted it to be very organic and allow my guests to talk about their history, to open up and explain their work.”
The gallery was an early adopter of Zoom programming during the beginning stages of the pandemic, and the podcast is another way Blue Rain can reach collectors and clients to help them to learn about the gallery’s artists. For Garcia, the podcast is also an opportunity to share its sliver of Santa Fe with a vast audience on the internet. “This summer we did a show inspired by the works of Oscar Berninghaus and we brought the opening into a live internet format. It took a lot of work to get it right and get it going, but the audience loved it,” he remembers. “And we had more than 500 people watching, which was more than we would have ever had in the gallery.”
The podcasts will release every other week. Episodes will be available through Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcasts providers, and video episodes will be available on Blue Rain’s growing YouTube channel.
In addition to podcast, Garcia has also announced the opening of his Blue Rain Print Shop, which will offer a variety of products—from suitcases and totes to coffee cups and phone cases—with designs by Blue Rain artists.
Artist Jim Vogel, left, in his studio with Leroy Garcia.
"HOT MIC: Blue Rain Gallery owner Leroy Garcia debuts new art podcast and YouTube channel." Western Art Collector Magazine, February 2021, p. 28.
