Downtown Art Gallery Is Feast For The Palate

SEATTLE

Team up a venerable real estate broker with a veteran artist and the result is an unusual new art gallery and country-kitchen restaurant in the heart of downtown.

In the deal, Christopher Bollen, a Bainbridge Island artist known best for his popular pen-and-ink drawings of local scenes, got his long-hoped-for street-level gallery at Third Avenue and Union Street.

And, Fred Weiss, a realty consultant and owner of the Joseph Vance Building, has a lively new tenant for the important corner spot in his renovated property.

"The basement was just an old carpenter shop we didn't need, and Bollen saw the potential for combining a kitchen there, with a gallery upstairs," Weiss said. The pleased landlord said at least 150 people a day have been visiting the gallery since it opened in late April. The street-level space previously was occupied by the Dutch Oven restaurant, which closed late last year.

"The opportunity to get a corner space downtown was exciting - there aren't many available - and, we're also helping the area turn around," said Bollen. The renovated building faces Third Avenue, newly spruced up in conjunction with the Metro bus tunnel underneath. A run-down block across the street is to be redeveloped by Prescott, a Seattle development company. A new Bartell Drug Store also has opened across the entrance in Weiss' building.

Bollen, a Seattle native who graduated from Queen Anne High School and, in 1965, from the University of Washington, has exhibited and sold his works for several years in galleries around the city - in Pioneer Square, in a waterfront retail pier, at Seattle Center and in Rainier Square. He prefers to sell his own work, rather than consign it to others.

He also likes the combination of food and art.

"I really wanted to be able to feed people when they buy a painting - he offers a free meal with a purchase - and have a cozy place to relax over a cup of coffee while they browse. And it's working," he said.

Susan's Country Kitchen, presided over by Bollen's wife, Susan, who cooks and serves the food, seats 10. It is open to the public for lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. weekdays, depending on each day's business. The menu, like the seating, is limited - fresh-baked bread, a choice of soup, fresh-baked dessert and coffee. The walls are covered with some of Bollen's originals and prints.

The couple's two children, Barrett, 3, and Natalie, 3 months, sometimes make appearances at the restaurant, particularly when there are baby-sitter problems. Bollen does his own matting and framing in a tiny space adjacent to the kitchen on the lower level.

The friendly, talkative artist is a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot with more than 600 missions in Vietnam. While there, he started cartooning - "some political ones got me into trouble," he recalls - and drawing scenes or buildings. He never attended art school.

Bollen met Weiss when, just out of the service, he applied for a job with Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate. Weiss was Coldwell's resident manager at the time. He didn't get the job when an aptitude test suggested, instead, that he pursue a career in art, but his friendship with Weiss continued.

About that time, in 1972, Bollen chose a neighborhood near the Seattle Tennis Club and knocked on doors offering to depict homes in framed drawings for $100 each. He sold eight that day. He had done the same thing while stationed in California.

Bollen's work made a hit with tourists and locals who liked his style of depicting well-known scenes, such as ferries, the waterfront and the city skyline.

He has branched into watercolors and is thinking of trying oils.

"But my philosophy is the same as ever," Bollen said. He likes commission work, but he caters to his customers' pocketbooks.

"I'll paint whatever a customer wants, within his budget. It doesn't do any good to offer things people can't afford."

To attract a varied market, he keeps plenty of prints in stock, along with his originals that can start at about $100 and go to more than $4,000.

And, his customers can nibble or sip while they decide whether to chose a soft view of the Olympics or a bright watercolor depicting beach-front homes and gardens, or just enjoy a homemade-style lunch in a comfortable setting.