Cheers to local art

With Kelly Knowlton and Katy Eagleston, owners of Mainline Art Bar

To my sensibilities, Mainline is one of the more comfortable spaces to drink in town. Just to set the scene, the owners and I are sitting in one of the many “living room” setups on mid-century furniture, art is everywhere the eye rests and large interior plants provide fresh oxygen. There’s saxophone-heavy jazz playing and I have a cold beer. I think, “Well, if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

The Tulsa Voice: So, Kelly, you own an electrical and lighting company? How did you get into that?

Kelly Knowlton: Oh, I kind of found a niche installing fans early on. I was the person who would do the job that nobody else could do, or would do, you know? When people would want a fan installed on the first floor of a two-story home, I was the guy who’d go upstairs, move the bed out of the way, pull their rug back, cut a hole in the floor, install a box, fish the wire over a wall, and get them electricity to where they wanted it. I cost a little more, but I could get the job done.

TTV: When other people said no, you said yes.

KK: That’s exactly right. I’ve been that way all of my life.

TTV: I need to talk about this space. When I first heard that you guys were starting this place and I became aware of the concept, I was excited. My next question was, “Where? What part of town?” When I found out that it was going to be here, I was concerned. When I think of bars on the first floors of chain hotels, I think, “Large box of a room/bar made of goofy material/bad lighting.” But this place is amazing. Who’s the inspiration for this space?

Katy Eagleston: We were sitting in our living room, and I think I was kind of pestering him and saying, “You know, we don’t really go out much anymore.” And he said, “Well, why would we? We have all of this art on the walls; we have all of our plants and wine—why would we want to leave our house?” So, when this space came up [for lease] we both decided that we wanted the bar to feel like our living room, to be an extension of our living room. So, that’s kind of the space you’re in when you’re here.

KK: I always wanted to have an art gallery, and Katy not only knows art, but she has spent a lot of time managing bars and people, so the concept just seems like a perfect fit.

TTV: Who’s the plant lover? Because, for me, that is the thing that really throws this space over the top. I think it’s something a lot of business owners miss. Plants are life, and they bring that into the space.

KE: Kelly’s the plant lover. I like plants, but I used to have to have a sign on my front door that I would see before I left the house that read, “Water your plants, you murderess.” I love them, but I neglect them. But Kelly loves his babies.

KK: I just hate it when one is sick or one dies, it just makes me feel awful. I feel like it’s my fault. I just love them and I always have. They make places seem more alive and healthy.

TTV: Yeah, it’s a nice little symbiotic relationship we have.

KE: We’ll be out of town hunting and gathering, and he’ll see a plant at some shop and try to get the owner to let him buy it. And maybe a few months later, we come into that shop again and he’s still trying to buy that plant. And then after a year or so, we’ll go in and the owner will say, “Here, I want you to have this.”

TTV: So you have two distinct gallery spaces. One is for local artists’ current exhibitions. The other space, which rotates, do you own that art?

KK: No. I mean, some of it I do. Some of it comes on loan from other collectors that I know who lend it to me purely for exhibition—to get the art in front of as many people as possible so that they can enjoy it.

KE: I might add that they have loaned this art very generously and graciously. We’re not selling it, so it doesn’t really behoove them at all to have it here other than the fact that they want people to appreciate it and see great Oklahoma art.

KK: My focus for collecting art for the last couple of decades has been on art professors from the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma art and artists are as good as any other art that you can find from any other part of this country, but because we are a flyover state, our artists have not been acknowledged to the degree that others might have been. So that’s what we’re focusing on with this space. We want this to be a place where people can come and learn and get an introduction to some really amazing work that was created literally in their own back yard.

TTV: Why ‘Mainline’?

KK: Well, we’re on Main Street. You know, we just kicked around some ideas and usually when Katy and I agree on something, something that hits both of us the right way, we just file it away and move on.

KE: When you have two people involved in something and they each have their own vision and you’re trying to communicate that to each other, sometimes it’s so difficult. So we’ve found that when a decision comes fairly easy and it works, we just take that and move on. Mainline, it’s Main Street, the word line kind of evokes trains and that art deco feel of the depot, lines are a basic structure of art, you know, art is an addiction, so it’s simple and it works on a lot of levels.

KK: Even the font, the “Mainline” font was inspiring to us. And you’ll notice that the design of our logo has lines running above and below the name and those lines are colored in the colors of the rainbow. This is a conscious effort to relay the feeling that everyone is welcome here. We love everyone and we want them to come here and enjoy this space and feel welcome to enjoy art, have a drink and have a good time.

KK: We feel like there’s something here for everyone. It’s a comfortable place to enjoy music and art and that attracts a wide range of people. We’re happy about that.

TTV: Do you ever worry about the combination of expensive art and people drinking alcohol?

KE: [Laughs] Well, some of the people who have loaned us art to display have. But, you know, something amazing happens here. We respect people and we trust them, and in return that trust and respect has been given back to us. People seem to want to be respectful of this place because they want it to continue to be here for them. The people that come here don’t come here to get fucked up and fall down all over the place, they come here to enjoy what we try to provide for them and we couldn’t be more pleased about that.

KK: Also, the art is placed in such a way that it’s accessible to the eye, but also we’ve put some obstacles in the way. You know, you’re probably going to have to run into some furniture before you would knock over some art.

TTV: Can you remember the first piece of art that you were drawn to?

KK: Well, first let me say that I think everything is art. I think people are art. I think plants are art. I think furniture is art. Wood, concrete, metal—I see art in everything. But the first real piece of art that moved me, the piece that people would recognize as art —I was at an estate sale in Wagoner, Oklahoma, and there was a Brummett Echohawk piece stacked up in a closet behind some other things, it was a nude of a woman, his first wife, I believe, and she is tying up her hair with a ribbon and it just captivated me. I think they wanted like $300 for it. I took a chance and bought it. 

KE: I was three and a half years into a double major of Business Marketing and Accounting and took the required Art History 101 type elective and it changed my life immediately. After that first class, I called my parents and told them I was changing my major, and they were kind of taken back by that. They just wanted me to have a degree where I could get a good job and everything, you know? But I just told them, “I can’t do it. I have to do this now.” I had finally found, looking at these slides of art, so many clues as to culture and history and religion and the artists themselves—you can’t even count the ways that you can look at a piece of art. It was like I had finally found something that had my attention and could not be exhausted.

TTV: Hey Mom and Dad, it totally worked out.

KE: It did.