London Gallery Owner Creates Beauty Wherever She Goes

Built in San Francisco, it is an 85-foot long, three-masted junk ship that has been on the water since 1975. And a rainforest project in Puerto Rico also came to fruition. “But nothing was really being done to study what was the ecology of the city,” Hawes said. The group considered other international cities, but they thought London offered a richer selection of cultures.

In 1978, they purchased the nineteenth-century former school, and after extensive renovation, including uprooting a tree growing inside, the October Gallery was born. Now it is a staple institution in the London arts scene. “It’s survived by the skin of its teeth until right now, which has been wonderful because we’re starting to sell lots of work. This has come after twenty-eight years. Lots of sweat equity,” Hawes said.

“When I first went to Paris when I was twenty, I saw Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin. I had not seen many paintings before. Ever—and I realized how important art was to me. They made me see things differently: they made me understand things differently. And I was also into [Charles] Baudelaire, and all that, but I understood for sure that one thing utmost in all of my interests was beauty—whether it was working on a farm or making beautiful buildings or artwork. Beauty was one of the dominant values for me. And not “pretty,” “beautiful” has some other qualities to it. It’s something that is piercing, it’s passionate, it’s individual—all those things.”

The group coined the term for the October Gallery’s aesthetic—“transvangarde.” These artists would be called avant-garde, except for its limits to western art, Hawes said. “Transvangarde is at least an attempt to make a definition of a word that would encourage the work of artists from all cultures who are working at the forefront of the new.” Even the moniker of the gallery has meaning. “October is the name because we would show both those who are in the October of their years, and in the southern hemisphere October is spring so we would also show those who are just starting,” Hawes said. “I’m kind of dedicated to that idea of letting the individual really manifest.”

It is evident in the trajectory of her life and the success of the October Gallery and its artists that Hawes lives this philosophy. Even her advice to aspiring artists is illustrative. “Reach down very deep into your inner most dreams and dare to dare. Dare to be completely different,” she said.