Pandemonium owner closing gallery as ‘Painting with Jane’ YouTube career grows
After four years of owning and operating Pandemonium Art Gallery in downtown Ogden, Jane Font is closing the location so she can focus on her making painting videos full time. Font started making "Painting with Jane" YouTube videos as a small spinoff from the gallery in 2014. Since then, the channel has grown to more than 100,000 subscribers from all around the world.
Magnets from local artist Vanessa Colunga line the wall at Pandemonium Art Gallery on Tuesday, May 23, 2017.
After four years of owning and operating Pandemonium Art Gallery in downtown Ogden, Jane Font is closing the location so she can focus on making painting videos full time. Font started making "Painting with Jane" YouTube videos as a small spinoff from the gallery in 2014. Since then, the channel has grown to more than 100,000 subscribers from all around the world.
Jane Font rings up an order on her computer at Pandemonium Art Gallery on Tuesday, May 23, 2017. After nearly four years in downtown Ogden, Font is closing Pandemonium so she can focus on making painting videos full time. Her YouTube channel, "Painting with Jane," has more than 100,000 subscribers from around the world. Pandemonium has been a home for unusual and non-traditional art.
OGDEN — One of Ogden’s most unique spaces will be closing its doors for good this summer.
But Jane Font, owner of the soon to be shuttered Pandemonium Art Gallery on Historic 25th Street, said the closing shouldn’t be seen as a sad affair.
Since 2013, the gallery has showcased “offbeat, experimental and obscure” works of art, one of the few if not only places in Ogden to do so. The space will close July 29.
Font says she’s closing her business not due to lack of success, but to begin narrowing her focus on another artistic pursuit.
About a year ago, Font launched a YouTube painting tutorial channel, “Painting with Jane.” She decided to do it on a whim, she said, mostly as a supplement to the gallery — but was astonished when her first video quickly racked up 1,000 views.
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“I just put this video up, with no expectations,” she said. “But I was pretty shocked to see it had 1,000 views, so I kept putting new stuff up.”
Today, her channel is closing in on 110,000 subscribers. A step-by-step tutorial showing viewers how to paint a midnight raven has racked up more than one million views.
People from all over the world tune in, Font says. The United States and Canada are her two best markets, India — which she has no explanation for — is third.
Using the YouTube channel as a springboard, Font created a signature line of paint brushes she says she can barely keep in stock.
She sells merchandise like T-shirts, aprons, buttons, stickers and mugs. Later this year, she will host a painting retreat at the Courtyard Marriott in Ogden, bringing in several hundred visitors from all over the country.
“I wasn’t expecting it to have this kind of success,” she said. “It just kind of blossomed.”
She’s had so much success that she no longer has the time to keep the gallery open. She’ll rent a non-public space in Ogden after Pandemonium closes, allowing her to dedicate her working life to painting and developing the videos and her business, undisturbed.
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That means she’ll have time to produce more full-length videos. The videos, which Font said stand alone and don’t require sequential viewing, range from 15 or 20 minutes to 90 minutes. She said it typically takes a full, 40-hour work week to produce one video.
“I try to explain techniques as though I’ve never explained it before,” she said. “Each video is its own individual lesson.”
Font says a friend has expressed interest in buying her gallery, but other than that, she has no inklings of what will become of her space after she leaves. She said she’ll remain an active member of the Ogden City Arts Advisory Board and continue to contribute to the local art scene.
She’ll also continue to design cover art for books produced by her husband.
Vince Font owns a grassroots micropublishing company called “Glass Spider Publishing,” which aims to get local authors in print. Vince Font described his wife as a natural teacher with a unique presentation style and a desire to improve every day.
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The pair says they’ll both miss the public art gallery, but as Vince Font put it, “to get to the next step on the ladder, you have to let go of the rung you’re on.”
Ogden’s art scene is “a seed just starting to germinate,” Jane Font said, and other artists and spaces will step in to fill Pandemonium’s void on 25th Street. While she waits for that to happen, she’ll reflect on four years there with satisfaction.
“The last four years have been the best of my life,” she said. “The first year was tough. Almost every day, someone would open the door, put one foot in and then walk back out. We had that non-traditional art that has subjects the community might not be used to, but we wanted people to realize and appreciate different types of art. I think we did that and I’m proud of that.”
You can reach reporter Mitch Shaw at mishaw@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @mitchshaw23 or like him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mitchshaw.standardexaminer/.