Director of Pulse
WHITEWALL: Day two of Pulse in Miami, how are things going?
HELEN ALLEN: It’s been good. Galleries are not reporting sell out booths in the first hours of opening as they have in the past but there were strong sales on Tuesday night, yesterday was a little bit quiet, but today there’s a good crowd.
WW: I hear you bring your daughter around with you quite a bit. How old is she and is she here now?
HA: She’s 2 and a half and she left today – I mean, someone’s flying with her [laughs]. She’s very mature for her age. The first pulse that I did was when I was pregnant with her so she’s been present. It’s more difficult now, obviously when you can strap ‘em to you and carry them around. Now that she’s two and a half she’s a little bit of an imp. There’s a dog sculpture at one of the booths and she’s like, “Mommy, I’m gonna sit on the dog!” [laughs]
WW: There are over twenty satellite fairs this year. How do you make sure Pulse continues to stand out?
HA: I think because it’s been around for a while along with NADA and SCOPE it’s on people’s agenda. Something that I’ve been hearing a lot over the past few days is that it feels familial – it’s open, very friendly, there’s a sense of comradery and we have an excellent team. The exhibitors then feel more at ease and that trickles down to every single person that walks in. If we can make our exhibitors feel happy then regardless of the economic climate, they know that they’re being looked at to the best of our abilities.
WW: I noticed several installations walking around. How do you decide upon a theme?
HA: In New York we had kind of an architectural theme. Here we had a curator by the name of Claire Breukel curated the installations for us. There’s the water hose in the café by Justin Cooper, a great time bubble as you walk in by Norbert Brunner, and we have an 18 ft. Styrobot by Michael A. Salter. There are a lot of really fun pieces and Claire, in terms of placement, made sure that the art lead people in and around the fair and got them engaged with the work directly.
WW: You work with Kaikai Kiki here on GEISAI – they seem like a fun group to work with.
HA: It is fun. They’re also really organized – which is great working in Miami where people are more relaxed than they are in New York. If you’re used to getting things done immediately, you just can’t do that here. With them it takes the edge of. They say, “Give me this, this, this, and we’re done.”
WW: Pulse is now in Miami and in New York. Are you looking at all to expand to another city?
HA: Not at the moment. We had been in London last year and when our venue changed we decided there wasn’t a space that was appropriate for our show. So we’re focusing on expanding and getting stronger here and eventually, never say no, but I’m not going to do anything until 2010 at least.
