Paulina Petkoski: Art and Fashion in Motor City

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Art-O-Log. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode with Hannah Stednik. Today, I'm really excited to share an interview with someone whose gallery I've personally visited and have loved. They're currently working at the intersection between art and fashion as a gallerist, community leader and stylist, so I think this is going to be a really valuable interview to a lot of people.

Polina Petkoski is a social entrepreneur, curator, gallerist, designer and arts advocate. She's the owner and director of Playground Detroit, an art gallery and creative talent agency in Detroit, michigan. She's also an adjunct professor at the College for Creative Studies in the fashion design department. Petkoski holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and an Associate's degree in International Fashion Design from the Polly Moda Institute in Florence, italy. She's also an alumna of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses in Detroit. In 2023, she was selected as a CultureSource Creator of Culture awardee and curatorial committee member for Detroit Month of Design 2023.

Paulina, welcome to the Art-O-Log. Hi, thanks for having me. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey so far, from your BA at FIT to Playground today? Yeah, the journey has definitely not been a single line. I went to FIT in New York City and I got my bachelor's and associates in fashion design and international fashion design and I worked in the industry in New York and then I worked for a few different big brands. I did a lot of different things styling and such and then in 2012, I had an idea to start Playground Detroit, which at the time was a very different concept than what it is today. But essentially it was the idea to bring Detroit creatives and arts and culture to New York City and showcase them to a wider audience. And I was doing that while I was working full-time and eventually, a couple years later, decided to move back to Detroit, which is my hometown, and began to work on developing the idea more from a passion project and like a side hustle to a full-time organization and business, and moved back to Detroit in 2014 and opened up the commercial gallery space in 2017.

How do you find working in Detroit compared to New York and what's the art scene like there? They're very different. In New York you obviously have a lot of the larger museums and institutions and large galleries that work with blue chip artists. There's so much arts and culture there, it's just palpable, and in Detroit it's much more of a DIY scene. So there's a lot of people doing their own thing, starting their own organizations, really bootstrapping and doing things from the ground up. But the culture and the enthusiasm for arts and culture in Detroit is also really vibrant and it's a smaller group of people that I think are working really hard collaboratively to make positive impact in the city and showcase the dynamic talent that we have here. But it's a lot of self-representation and it's a lot more DIY in the spirit and ethos, as opposed to New York that has really a robust market and an audience that's more sophisticated overall, but the talent here, I think, is equal or better.

Can you tell me more about the early days at Playground and how you scaled it up from a pop-up space to a permanent gallery in Detroit? When we started doing exhibitions in Detroit in 2014-2015, we actually took over a bedroom and a loft space and started using that as our exhibition space and quickly realized 200 people coming up to a loft. That's a residential building. The space and the people didn't really make too much sense after the first couple times. So we started looking for other spaces that were commercial use and went through a program called the Motor City Match, which was from the city of Detroit and helped business owners or aspiring business owners, pair themselves with building owners. So we started going through that process and decided to make a formal business plan and then really went through this whole fundraising journey to get a commercial storefront and do a renovation for that. So that was in 2016 and 2017. And there was also a very large Kickstarter that we crowdfunded to get half of the funds that we needed to build out the space, which was a big lift. The space, which was a big lift, but it did also show that there was a lot of support from the community, which felt really good to have that behind us. And then did the interior renovation and opened in 2017. And the building's from 1877. So it's just a really cool way to use a space that had not been used formally for a very long time but has this history to it, and just to know that we're part of that history in the space is really, I think, nice for me.

From the original business plan, has what Playground has become stayed pretty much the same? No, I would say we're like on Playground 4.0. It's pivoted and evolved over the years and really it's a response to the needs in the community and continually trying to retool it to make it serve that purpose. So back in New York, it was a series of pop-up events exhibitions, film screenings, music, dj sets that we were helping book at different places. Those all still happen at the gallery now, actually. But we also work as a creative talent agency, so helping artists find projects and jobs and, you know, brand partnerships or whatever you may. That's a good fit. That's part of the business plan and a lot of the stuff that we started with in 2012 plan and a lot of the stuff that we started with in 2012 was like Facebook and Instagram and trying to promote ourselves because we didn't necessarily have press and media attention. So that's always been a part of our gallery and the platform that Playground is. So it's always been a what I would say like a URL and an IRL place that we're sharing things digitally. But obviously that's just standard.

At this point, when you were getting the word out about the gallery, was it mostly through word of mouth or were you using social media, those sorts of things, before the press came? Yeah, no, it was definitely a lot of social media and word of mouth. Just being in New York, there was a big network of people that we were connected to in the arts and fashion scene and we even started a ride share group on Facebook, which is, I think, is still honestly active, where there was just a lot of crossover between people who lived in New York and Detroit or people from Detroit who moved to New York. So a lot of people made friends that way back in the early days, just like grabbing a ride and being like, hey, is anybody going out this day or this day? But, yeah, I think our website we have an online blog that we started in 2012 that really helped us share positive news stories and inspiring events and things that were happening and artist profiles and stuff like that, because really just at that time, it was just like so much negative media nationally and that's all that people knew about Detroit and not only was that dramatic and a little, it was only part of the story. There was really always a group of people, certainly before me, but during the time that I was growing up, I had a lot of friends who were doing DIY venues and just really cool stuff here that reminded me a lot of like Williamsburg and Bushwick at the time when I was living in New York too, so I felt like there was some kindred spirits between both cities.

What do you think Detroit has that New York too. So I felt like there was some kindred spirits between both cities. What do you think Detroit has that New York doesn't Space and time, but New York has an audience and market. So I think that's often what I talk about is like both serve different purposes. What's the collector base like in Detroit? What are they usually looking for? That's a good question. I think there is a collector base here, but it's certainly, you know, there's just a lot of people here, blue collar town. They're into sports and cars, and so I think you just find that it's not necessarily the majority of people who are thinking about art and collecting, but the people who are here are dedicated, and I think there's a lot of interest in supporting Black artists, particularly in the city, and I think there's also a really big interest in emerging artists and supporting young talent, which is really the space that we've always been in, since we started.

What do you look for in an artist that you're going to represent? I look for authenticity, dedication, drive, passion and motivation to really pursue a career. Certainly, I know that most people are creative and can be hobby artists and, you know, do stuff on the side for fun but I'm really looking for artists that are very serious and dedicated to the work that they're doing and also that they have a unique perspective and that they have a message that they want to share. Typically, that's something inspiring or powerful or uplifting. The name Playground I think part of the brand is like it should be fun. Honestly, I don't love to focus on not to say that we don't focus on important topics or serious topics, but I think, like dark things and things that are a bit more heavy are less interest in terms of programming at the gallery, just because I feel like the world is already chaotic and crazy and I feel like art can really provide a place that's a little bit of a reprieve from that and hopefully uplifts and empowers people, is always the goal.

From the exhibition's standpoint yeah, what's your process for finding artists? Standpoint yeah, what's your process for finding artists? We have a lot of creative institutions here. I'm also an adjunct professor at the College for Creative Studies and I have been doing studio critiques with students at the Cranbrook Academy, and so those two places produce a lot of great talent. But we also work with artists that are self-taught and people that are really just starting to show a lot of energy and excitement around what they're doing. And then a lot of people do reach out to us. A lot of people are visible on social media, are visible on social media, so just keeping in touch with people who are active and really trying to make a name for themselves. And we also have an Emerging Artist Fellowship Program, which we started in 2019. And this is an open call application, so we will open that up to the public once a year and receive hundreds of submissions and then we will look at those with a jury to review them and select. Sometimes it's been three artists or five artists. It's evolved over the years, but that's also a really good way to just open it up and see what comes in, because sometimes it's hard to know your blind spots when people through your network and things like that, but ultimately you know there's always new talent that you just might not know of.

What does a typical day in the gallery look like for you? There's not too many typical days in the gallery. Honestly. There's always something else going on and at the gallery, I think setting up for exhibitions, install, working with assistants and interns to do a lot of our social media marketing, greeting people that come in and really just being a creative hub for the community, being a resource, and also we host private events and event rentals. Sometimes we'll have all sorts of things we're planning, I think, a dinner coming up this summer, which is exciting because we haven't done a lot of dinner after the pandemic again since then and studio visits, which are always very fun and exciting, but yeah, it's a lot of running around. Some of it's definitely not super glamorous but yeah, it's always evolving and I think that I would not be very happy if I was in a place that was the same thing every day.

Alongside the gallery, you also work as a fashion consultant and a stylist. Can you tell me more about this side of your career and how you got started there? Yeah, so, as I mentioned going to FIT, I also studied at the Polimoda Institute in Florence, italy, for a year, so I have a lot of experience in fashion and design, and specifically with a focus on sustainability and sustainable fashion design. So when I moved back to Detroit, I knew that a job wasn't necessarily waiting here for me that I would be essentially going into an entrepreneurial path, and because of my experience being a stylist not just with individuals on photo shoots and editorial and music videos and runway backstage stuff like that I started understanding that the market here was limited and people that had that kind of experience that I have. And so working with the clients personally aside from designing the clothes and being more removed from like where they end up, was more interesting to me. So I started working with clients one-on-one, so that's like CEOs, doctors, engineers, people you know in life changes that maybe be like going from like college to their first job or having your first baby or even transitioning things like that. I'll work with people and that's really rewarding for me because working in the industry you are so removed from everything, but here I get to share my insights and knowledge with people and get to see how that impacts them in their own lives. It's really rewarding.

How do you see art and fashion coming together right now? I've seen art and fashion come together now for quite a bit and I think the fashion industry is starting to really realize that it's more about the culture and I think for a long time for example, hip hop artists and other artists that were really leading the fashion trends on the streets were not always being included in the industry specifically. And now when you see Pharrell being appointed to Louis Vuitton and all these things, there's a merging of a realization that they don't exist separately. They are all very reflective of one another and that fashion and art for me they've always been hand in hand, like when we did market research when I was working in the fashion industry we would go to the new museum shows, we would go to galleries, we would look at the color palettes that artists were using and kind of just getting a pulse of what the cultural atmosphere was. So to me I never really seen them as separate and I think just more and more formally you're seeing them come together. Even with Maria Grazia from Dior who just I mean, every season she did a collaboration where an artist did the runway show and collaborated on the collections with her and specifically female artists, which I think was really awesome on her part. But I think you're just going to see it more and more collide.

Where do you see Playground going in the future? I see Playground really representing Detroit outside of Detroit and being able to be more visible on a national and an international lens, and this year we've done a future fair, which is in New York. It's an art fair. We'll be going to the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in July and I'm really excited to share the artists that I've been working with a bigger audience and really help to elevate and continue to grow their careers. I'm also interested in really enabling and supporting more of an omni-channel approach, which has always been a part of the company, but I think just really leveraging forms like YouTube and TikTok and more experiential things that create a seamless experience between digital and the physical space and the artist's work and the city, and how do all those things work together to inspire and show people the talent that we have in the city?

What advice would you have for artists looking for representation? I would say really have a good idea of what your goals are and be dedicated and take the time to understand your own perspective and narrative. Be consistent, but obviously continue to evolve and grow and don't let the things that you see as challenges deter you from those long-term goals. Just figure out what the steps are that you need to take to do that and continue to pursue them and use your imagination and be creative. I mean certainly, even just with tools like AI and ChatGPT, they can help you to create, you know, a strategic framework and a roadmap and a business plan and all of the things that maybe aren't intuitively part of being very creative. There are now so many more resources that never existed before, so I think the possibilities are really they're really wide open.

And what about for people who want to start a gallery? What advice would you give to them? I think about it twice. I'm just kidding. No, seriously.

I think having a gallery is an incredibly difficult business to be in and I think when I started Playground over 10 years ago, I would have thought over time, it would have just gotten easier. You're in it, it's evolving, it's growing, but I don't think that's been the case, especially with going through a pandemic and all of the other political things and economic factors that are happening. I think it's very difficult to encourage people to understand the value of art when there are immediate concerns in terms of housing and food and all these other things that are very important to and making it inclusive and accessible. And those things are important, and there was an article I just read it was a report from the art industry saying that even from two years ago till today that a large percent of gallery owners said it was harder to run the business than it was just two years ago. I think you're finding a lot of instability in the market at different levels, but I think, generally speaking, the focus on emerging artists is a growing interest and it's also for a segment of younger collectors who are starting to be able to afford to support and purchase art, as opposed to what I think the industry traditionally has been led by, which is older collectors, more established artists and that higher end of the market. We've seen a decline for that for the past couple of years as well. So I think there's some reorientation and shifts that are happening, but navigating it is all very live wire, if you will. It's just like hard to make those kinds of predictions on what people are interested in and what they're willing to collect and support financially.

But with the curatorial side of the gallery, that's not. Of course we want to sell art. That's important. But the focus is to showcase great art and great artists and sometimes they're not necessarily as commercially viable as someone who just wants to be a commercial artist or artwork that you could find in like a Marshalls or Ikea or something. It's a bit more challenging when you're really trying to showcase brilliant minds and innovative ideas and push boundaries. It's not always easily digestible, it's not for everyone all the time. Yeah, paulina, thank you so much for being on the artilogue today. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you or playground any of your social links? So we are on instagram and twitter at play detroit and we're also on Facebook and Artsy, so definitely follow us and check us out on there. All right, thanks so much. Thank you.