Each month, Patsy Kline headed to the local U-Haul lot where she plunked down a deposit for a 17-foot moving truck, promising to return it no later than noon the next day. Finally, a U-Haul employee asked, “Just how many times you gonna move, anyway?”
Patsy Kline wasn’t preoccupied with moving; she’s preoccupied with art. After shuttering her Gallery Ü Cleveland, located inside the Colonial Marketplace for three years, the Cleveland Institute of Art graduate suddenly found herself with art to show but no place to show it. So she took her act on the open road, exhibiting out of the back of a rented truck. And in so doing, Gallery ü became Gallery ühaul.
“When I made the decision to close Gallery ü, it was devastating,” Kline recalls. “I went from having a gallery space to having nothing. It felt like I was homeless. The
U-Haul project began as a commentary about those feelings.”
Gallery ühaul can be seen this summer as part of the Tremont ArtWalk, which is held on the second Friday of each month. The purpose of this mobile art gallery is not to sell art, says Kline, “but to bring people together to experience and question art.” Her interactive autobiographical installations have focused on such topics as “moving on” and Kline’s personal attachment to her matrimonial bed.
“I’m not the first person to put art in the back of a truck,” Kline admits, “but I have my personal story to go along with it. And the response has been phenomenal.”
Kline says that apart from the unconventional setting, little else has changed about the way she approaches art. It’s just that these days, instead of paying rent on a gallery, she’s paying mileage on a moving truck.
