Kayo Gallery & Davina Pallone

Kayo Gallery is a pillar of Salt Lake City's art scene and Davina Pallone is a pillar of Kayo Gallery—Therefore, Pallone is a pillar of Salt Lake's art scene. Unfortunately, we are losing Pallone, as she is leaving Kayo and Salt Lake City this month.

Pallone has been with Kayo since 2005, when Kenny Riches started the gallery in the location that is now NoBrow Coffee at 300 South and 300 East. Starting Kayo at that spot had a tangible and lasting effect on the Salt Lake art scene and on the Broadway district.

"[Kayo] pulled the dying art scene (because of the property change on Pierpont) over to [300 South]. Kenny definitely had a hand in encouraging a lot of other young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses up and down this Broadway area where the rents were really affordable," Pallone says. One such young entrepreneur is Gentry Blackburn, the owner of Frosty Darling and an artist in her own right, who shares building space with Kayo.

Pallone's role in the gallery has changed substantially since its inception. In 2005, she was working with Kayo’s website, hanging the shows, creating the postcards and coordinating with the artists, most of which she did throughout her time with Kayo. However, when Kayo's ownership changed in 2007, from Kenny Riches to Shilo Jackson, Pallone began to play a larger creative role in the gallery and helped curate the shows. "[Before 2007] I mostly just drank wine with Shilo and Gentry," Pallone jokes, "and then [in 2008] I partnered and moved my studio from Poor Yorick to the back of the gallery, and Shilo and I tried to conceive of how to take the gallery from its freshman year to its junior year."

I visited Pallone at the gallery during her going-away sale on her last day, and found the gallery cluttered with boxes of art supplies, pieces of art, artsy accessories and random kitsch, all for sale at a discount. Their door was wide open to the sunny spring weather, with more for-sale items on their sidewalk. Although the art on the walls was top quality, the vibe was down-to-earth and homey. Homey-ness comes easy when you're putting on the gallery equivalent of a garage sale, but the Kayo prides themselves in maintaining an open, welcoming atmosphere even when hosting wine and cheese events. No hoyty-toytyness for Kayo, or for Pallone: a populist approach to the art gallery experience has always been part of their mission statement.

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Comments on this article

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Shilo Jackson

Good article, but it grossly underplays the key role Kenny Riches had in creating Kayo and making it a cutting edge space for art and the key role I had in purchasing Kayo from Kenny and keeping his vision for contemporary and progressive art going for Salt Lake. My primary goal is to keep kayo going and to continue to raise the bar for art shows in Salt Lake, promote local artists AND bring in new artists from around the world. If Kayo is important to you and you want to see it remain in existence, please purchase art from the gallery (you will be supporting not only Kayo, but artists as well) or donate a buck or two during stroll. If you don't buy things from local businesses, we will cease to exist.

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