Careful Hands Took Artists From Studios Into Boardrooms

Artech Inc.

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Headquarters: 169 Western Ave. W.

Business: Fine art services

Co-directors: Ann Obery and Mike Hascall

Employees: 37

Revenues 1989: $956,000

Major customers: Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Arts Commission, Safeco, Security Pacific Bank, private art collectors.

Major competitors: Exhibit A, exhibit and moving companies, museum or gallery in-house installers.

Strategy: To involve artists as employees and diversify services to offer clients one-stop shopping for art restoration, moving, handling, cleaning and installation.

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You've seen Artech's work; you just don't know it.

Remember that Russian silk damask shroud at the Moscow: Treasures and Traditions exhibit? Artech eased it into place with some white-glove handling.

And how about those totem poles at Victor Steinbrueck Park at the Pike Place Market. Ever wonder how they got there? Artech moved them there with a giant helicopter crane.

At this art-handling company, behind the scenes is more than a cliche.

Artech is an invisible hand behind Seattle art, offering customers a Medusa-head variety of services that range from gilding antique frames to scooping up giant sculptures or paintings and transporting them across the city or the world.

Artech has made packing, handling and installing precious works an art of its own, and after 13 years in the business, it has gained a national reputation with clients such as the Smithsonian Institution, Safeco Insurance, Security Pacific Bank and the Seattle Art Museum.

Creativity is a commodity at the company headquarters, where artists both own and run the business. The two directors are both artists. Ann Obery, director of administration, is a singer and Mike Hascall, director of operations, is a painter. Artists whose names are familiar in Seattle art circles - Jack Mackie, Paul Heald, Dyan Rey, Nick Fennel - are on the board, and others work on such projects as building specialized crates or cleaning paintings.

``Our strength,'' says Obery, ``is in not coming from a business background. We bring new ideas and are more creative at problem-solving than we might be.''

Artech began in 1977 as an arm of the And/Or Gallery. Artists were employed to install artwork for museums and private collectors and profits went into an endowment fund. After four years, the installation business was so successful a group of the artists bought it and incorporated as Artech.

Artists aren't known for their business sense, Obery admits wryly. ``Our banker is impressed that we're still here after 13 years,'' she says.

Artech has had two goals: to remain viable and to accommodate its unconventional staff of workers. Artech gives full benefits to artists who are employed there only four days a week, thereby giving them time to work at their art.

But Obery says the company's strategy is centered on involving employees in decisions. At staff meetings the directors review such inside information as income statements. ``We want to keep people as informed as possible about everything. It makes a difference when people know information, and it's amazing how the company pulls together.''

``Ann and I make decisions,'' Hascall adds, ``but we involve people so they are informed and take into account what the client needs are and the needs here. By assuming intelligence, we get ideas from the staff - and loyalty.''

The company gets something in return. ``We appreciate the sensitivity of the artists,'' says Gail Joice, Seattle Art Museum associate director for museum services. ``They are people familiar with the media and sensitive to the needs of different kinds of art.''

Three years ago, the company decided to get serious about itself as a business, Hascall says. Up to that point, marketing was strictly word-of-mouth, and all decisions went through the two directors.

``We decided to grow more quickly, so we upgraded middle management. And we got a computer and upgraded our accounting. Up to that point, we used the yellow pad method,'' Hascall says. This year, the company expects to break through its $1 million annual revenue goal.

Artech has an advisory committee made up of representatives from local businesses and the legal community to bring in outside viewpoints, Hascall says.

Artech is not a large company, but SAM's Joice says it is large enough to fill the museum's needs but ``small enough that we know their names and their abilities.''

Safeco Insurance Co., which uses Artech to hang corporate art work, says it likes the idea of supporting a company that hires young, emerging artists.

``With their eye, they can hang work at a certain height, sometimes one-eighth of an inch can make the difference in making something really lovely,'' says Julie Anderson, Safeco's art curator.

While art service companies in New York can afford to specialize, Hascall says Artech has to almost be everything to everybody.

A client asked if Artech cleaned paintings, and that service was added. Another said to bring framing into the mix, and five years ago Artech bought Denman Associates, a framing/gilding business owned by John Denman, a renowned antique frame gilder. Before he retired, Denman taught Artech employees the disappearing skill. The frame shop, called Artech/Denman and located at Fifth Avenue and Lenora Street, now brings in one-third of company's business.

Another one-third of the business is in installations and/or packing - such exhibits as the Moscow: Treasures and Traditions, Son of Heaven, Beyond Blue Mountains for the Washington State Arts Commission, Crossroads of Continents for Smithsonian Institution and corporate exhibits. Artech also handles the Seattle Arts Commission's rotating art exhibit that travels among public buildings, and handles exhibits for other area museums.

Those large exhibits require earthquake precautions, special mounts and fabricated hanging systems. To get the job for the Moscow Treasures and Traditions exhibit, Artech had to do what Hascall calls a ``show and tell'' for the Smithsonian before the institute would trust them with the pieces. The Smithsonian would have brought their own installers if Seattle hadn't had specialists here, Hascall said.

For the Moscow show, Artech worked on custom sculpture mounts for a month. The Soviet exhibitors were impressed, and Artech gave them a box of mount-making supplies to take back to the Soviet Union.

To move the Seattle Art Museum's Katherine White African art collection, Artech developed special climate-controlled crates.

``If Artech has a weakness,'' says Koryn Rolstad, owner of the industrial design company, Bannerworks, and a member of Artech's advisory board, ``it's in the idea of the community seeing the need for their function - it's an inherent weakness. A law firm says its contractor can hang a painting. They need to do a lot more education.''

Hascall agrees. ``Everybody thinks they can hang a painting,'' he laments. ``But there are reasons why somebody should do it for you.'' Often an artist's ``technology'' - the hanging mounts the artist puts on his or her own painting - isn't adequate, he says. ``It's frequently very innovative, but it might not stay on the wall.''

The company's large challenges are the logistical difficulties involved in, for example, moving a Harold Balasz mural from a residence. The mural was actually the entire side of the house, and Artech had to take the wall out, replace it with a new wall and then install the wall/mural in its new home: the parish hall at St. Mark's Cathedral. Another problem was a large sculpture belonging to a private collector. It had to be moved from a Washington Park yard and flown hanging from a helicopter to the Highlands.

Then there are the small challenges, the fragile glass art that Seattle has such a penchant for, porcelain figurines and dishes. Artech has experimented with how glass behaves in certain situations, Hascall says. A foam-in-place method blows foam in around a piece of glass art; another is a cavity pack, layers of foam carved out to fit a piece.

In the next five years, Obery and Hascall say, Artech will continue to grow, even if there is a recession. The art market, Hascall says, responds differently to a down economy. For example, if collectors stop buying, they decide to catalog collections, and that means more business for companies such as Artech.

``We are optimistic in a time when the economy is not,'' Hascall says.

Profile appears weekly in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.