What started as a casual conversation between Talent residents and artists Bruce Bayard and Ron Hodgdon has since become the region’s newest art gallery, based in the historic Malmgren Garage.

Sitting at Café Soleil while sipping coffee within view of the garage one day, Bayard made a remark about the property being an ideal location for an art gallery — and the rest is history.

“We decided that if we weren’t going to talk each other out of this, then we better do it together,” Bayard said recently.

Originally built in 1924, the Malmgren Garage was heavily burned in the 2020 Almeda Fire. But like the resilient residents of Talent, the building remained, its outer walls still standing.

“This building has a long history in the arts,” Hodgdon said, noting that a pottery supply store, foundry and Chinese artifact storage space were each housed at the property over the last 100 years.

Bayard, Hodgdon and eight of the original owners teamed up to lease the property, each chipping in to invest in the new business.

“We were bound and determined that it should not become another Kwik-E-Mart or something like that,” Hodgdon said.

The Talent Gallery had its grand opening June 28 with hundreds of attendees and an appearance from Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood.

“The grand opening was a madhouse; there were tons of people here, and we were really expecting a lot of people but maybe not that many,” Bayard said.

“We had between 400 and 500 people that night,” said Dave Leibowitz, one of the gallery’s owners.

The Malmgren Garage offers an abundance of natural light, snaking halls and ample space to showcase a variety of artwork.

“It’s a very intimate space, actually, even with the number of people we had on the opening night … It holds a tremendous amount of people in little intimate group settings as you go through here,” said Hodgdon, who was the primary designer of the building’s interior layout.

Currently, the gallery showcases the work of the 10 original owners, as well as nine other artist members.

“We’re really pleased with the diversity of the artists that we have here and the media that we’re representing; we’ve got printmaking, painting, collage, photography, sculpture, ceramics,” Bayard said.

The gallery also hosts a weekly artist talk series that features the artists whose work is currently on display discussing their techniques and answering questions.

The artist talk series is scheduled for noon every Sunday, though times and dates could change.

“If we can create a solid foundation here of history of paying the rent, making sales and getting a real solid grounding here, we can then open it to even more art opportunities for people in the area,” Bayard said. “We realize that there are a lot of artists in the valley that aren’t represented here, and we’re doing our best to create as many opportunities for as many artists as we can.”

“We also have in mind that we would like to do exhibits featuring artists that aren’t members here, guest artists,” Bayard added.

Another aspect that organizers of The Talent Gallery would like to expand on is collaborating with organizations in the community such as next-door neighbor Talent Maker City, as well as local senior living centers to expand their reach and draw more visitors to the town.

“There are some people in those communities that actually have a hard time getting out, so we’ve talked about potentially sending our artists to their facility and have art talks there,” Bayard said of collaborating with senior living facilities.

“We’re also adding to the reasons to come to Talent,” Bayard added.

The owners have many ideas for expanding the gallery’s reach, as well as providing more opportunities to artists in the Rogue Valley.

One of those ideas involves bringing out youth to chalk paint on the sidewalk in front of the Malmgren Garage, said co-owner Ann DiSalvo.

Another idea is to establish a miniature show, challenging the gallery artists to constrict their creativity to a small scale, Bayard said.

“Everybody’s going to have their own skill set and their own idea of how to engage the community,” Leibowitz said.

To learn more about the gallery and view works currently for sale, visit thetalentgallery.art.

For updates on the new business, check out The Talent Gallery’s Instagram account.