Even though she finished the night in the red, Richards believed that from a career standpoint her show had been a success. If selling her paintings through the gallery would cost a hefty chunk of the proceeds, that was just part of the dance young artists had to do, and Richards wanted to prove to other gallery owners that she was a viable commodity, one who could make them money. She wanted to show the art world she would conduct herself professionally. "A lot of artists will pull works and then [later] sell them out of their car to someone who saw it at the gallery," says one local artist/gallerist. "[Selling through the gallery] was an honorable thing."
"Both of [the buyers] thought they were doing the right thing by buying through the gallery," Richards says. They believed they had helped Richards be the center of her very own event. They couldn't have known what more than a dozen other artists had already found out: that even a full six months after the August showing, Richards would not see a dime of the two-thousand-plus the gallery was contractually obligated to pay.
"It makes me sick," says a collector who bought one of Richards's paintings and wished to remain anonymous. "It makes me feel as if I have received stolen merchandise. It's especially bad because these people work so hard and they struggle so desperately to make it. For them to be taken advantage of is especially egregious in my mind."
Thirty days passed. Nothing. Richards started pressuring Powell-Prera and Bernstein with texts and e-mails, messages that were courteous at first. Summer burned out into winter, and still nothing, aside from promises and excuses: "We don't have it right now," "We're trying to work on some jobs," "We've got a couple of sales coming through."
Powell-Prera and Bernstein also frequently dealt Richards what they apparently believe is their trump card: Paul Bernstein had a stroke and is in the hospital. Everyone involved with H Gallery has heard that one. Indeed, Paul's stroke was also the first thing out of Sandy Bernstein's mouth when she finally spoke to the Press, more than a week after we first started attempting to contact her and Powell-Prera.
"We're not selfish, greedy, money-hungry people," she said. "I am sitting here in a hospital room right now talking to you." After speaking to us for about ten minutes, Bernstein set a date for the following day. She would come to the Press and bring Powell-Prera and the two of them would clear up all of this, she said. The next day she consulted a lawyer and clammed up.
Like several of the artists who spoke to the Press, Richards was sympathetic at first, but she says that Powell-Prera and Bernstein soon graduated to other excuses, like "We're gonna sell the insurance we have on the building just to pay you guys" and "The co-op is broke." Eventually, the correspondence turned vicious on both sides, with Richards becoming increasingly insistent on getting her money and Powell-Prera resorting to blame-the-victim vilification.
By then, Richards's sympathy over Paul Bernstein's stroke had completely dried up. She says she confronted the mother and daughter in the gallery and angrily told them that their problems had no bearing on the financial matter at stake. "I don't come to you and whine about being fucked over by a gallery," she says. "I don't tell you that I have a kid and don't get child support. I don't tell you those things and try to guilt you into paying what is rightfully mine."
Richards says she was called ungrateful and Powell-Prera told her she regretted ever doing a show for her, evidently forgetting that Richards had paid for pretty much every aspect of it. "She said, 'If I'd have known then what I know now, I wouldn't have done the show.' Why not? You took seven grand off [painter Jason Ransom and me] in a three-month period? More than a hundred percent profit? Sounds like a good deal to me."
Bernstein is adept at blaming those who claim to be her victims. She and her daughter both present themselves as humble servants to the Houston art community, generous incubators of talent who only want to give local artists a leg up. Powell-Prera posts a lot on Facebook about overcoming the "negative energy" of those around her. (There seems to be a lot of it in her world.) They claim to be perpetually surprised at what they see as ingratitude from the artists they have not paid.
