Longstreet Gallery owners Chris Kelly, left, and Keith MacLelland, an associate professor and alumnus of Lesley. All photos courtesy: Longstreet Gallery
It’s hard to find a fine art gallery in Cape Cod that doesn’t display paintings of seascapes, sailboats and seashells, which is exactly why you won’t find much in the way of traditional nautically themed artwork at Longstreet Gallery. Its owners, Chris Kelly and Lesley Illustration Associate Professor Keith MacLelland ’08, wanted something different for their new business.
“We’re trying to bring work that you don’t usually see here,” says MacLelland. “Not your cookie cutter coastal work.”
MacLelland and Kelly, a brand and design professional, had talked about starting their own gallery for years. Of course, when they signed the lease for the building on Jan. 7, they had no idea that their opening would coincide with a pandemic. At the time, the pair were only concerned about transforming the well-worn space into an eye-catching gallery and studio.
By turns a realtor’s office, thrift store and plumbing rental shop, the building required five months of construction, including the removal of an illegal bathtub that “drained to nowhere,” before welcoming guests.
While they sanded, painted and installed, MacLelland and Kelly dreamed up names for the gallery, landing on a famous World War II Liberty ship, the SS James Longstreet. Off the coast of Cape Cod, the Longstreet was scuttled by the US Navy in 1945 for use in arial bombing exercises through 1970. Longstreet also calls to mind US 6, the historic thoroughfare that runs the length of the Cape and passes by the gallery’s doors in Eastham, Massachusetts.
Keeping it contemporary
Longstreet may be named for an old ship, but the gallery’s focus is contemporary art, in keeping with the work and interests of MacLelland and Kelly.
The artists in Longstreet, in fact, may have never shown in a gallery before. Lesley alumna and illustrator Monique Aimee ’14, who has 20,000 Instagram followers and more than 60,000 on TikTok, showed her first piece at Longstreet’s Labor Day show along with 39 other artists. In October and November, Longstreet hosted Aimee for a solo show featuring some paintings, yes, but also enamel pins, prints, and chainstitched badges. Aimee spent part of the opening creating custom work for visitors on her chainstitch machine.
“It bucks the norm of the kind of work that you would see in a traditional gallery and certainly the kind of work you would see out here,” MacLelland says.
He and Kelly are pulling from their network of artistic friends to fill the gallery’s walls, including Lesley graduate Adam O’Day and faculty Kate Castelli.
The artwork in the gallery also has a lower price point than many in the area. There are prints as pocket friendly as $20, with original pieces up to $3,600.
“We’re really selling stuff that is of the time and accessible,” says Kelly.
The hope is that they can start people on the road to becoming art collectors while also bringing artists to the Cape who might not normally show their work there.
Both owners also house their studios on site, giving visitors a peek into their processes and lending a more casual feel to the space.
“Going to a gallery can be really intimidating, so we’re trying to take that intimidation factor out of it,” says MacLelland.
COVID restrictions limit the gallery’s occupancy to eight people at a time, and wine and cheese are out for now, but that hasn’t dampened visitors or sales, says MacLelland. For one recent opening, gallery goers brought their own snacks and tailgated outside in socially distanced pods while a firepit kept them warm.
All of the artwork is also available for sale on the gallery’s website.
In the after times
MacLelland and Kelly are looking forward to the gallery’s post-COVID future and how they can become ingrained in the community. They have dreams of hosting art classes and workshops, live artist events, and markets as well as extending the art outside with murals and sculptures on the property.
“We’re looking at this as a long game,” says MacLelland.
