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"DENBY IS ATTRACTED TO PHOTOGRAPHY. HE SAYS I LIKE 'BIZARRE' WORKS ON PAPER, BUT WE BOTH LOVE PAINTING AND SMALL SCULPTURE." — Kerry Inman 77 Above: Robyn O'Neil graphite on paper above the bed. Left, a suite of drawings by El Salvadoran talent Walterio Iraheta. The latter was acquired at an MFAH Latin American Experience Gala Auction. Left: The living room corner offers an ode to geometry and color, with works on the right wall (from top) by Cary Smith (Fredericks & Freiser, NYC), Inman's Carl Suddath, and Andrew Masullo (Texas Gallery, Houston). Italian lamp, circa 1940s, on a 1920s Gilbert Rohde side table, a find at Lawndale Design Fair. Inman. In 1996, at a routine business meet- ing, amidst discussion of seismic data and oil-and-gas-field forecasts, Inman met the love of her life: geophysicist Denby Auble, whose parallel path to hers and interest in creative endeavors — in his case, music — made for the perfect match. The new millennium saw changes both on the home and gallery front, laying the groundwork for a rich partnership and marriage, coinciding with the increasing importance of Inman Gallery in the Texas visual world. The gallerist stepped up in a leadership role — serving on boards such as the Art League, contributing funding towards MFAH and CAMH exhibitions and acquisitions, developing a new gallery district, and coaxing the Texas Contempo- rary Art Fair to town and serving as one of its first advisors. A key year was 2001. "We had outgrown our little gallery at 1114 Barkdull," Inman says. "I used to profess that it wasn't the space, it was how we treated our artists that mattered. But then I began to realize that our gallery space wasn't ambitious enough. We did need more space to encourage the artists to think more ambitiously. Addition- ally, there were some artists whose work we were interested in that wouldn't fit through the front door at Barkdull. So I talked to my friend [gallerist] Doug Lawing, and he graciously sublet his space [downtown, on Travis] to me for two seasons. We initially planned on moving into 4411 Montrose but then found Isabella Court, and that suited the gallery better. It took awhile to build out the new gallery, but we moved to 3901 Main Street in July 2004, with an exhibition that included a site-specific mural by Darren Waterston." The new Main Street address allied with Inman's vision: "I have always wanted to be a catalyst, to help artists stretch, try new things, experiment," Inman says. The gallery's current footprint, an impressive 4,000 square feet after an expansion in 2011, makes Inman the anchor tenant for the Spanish Revival-style Isabella Court gallery complex, as well as one of Houston's most seminal galleries. Blocks away from Isabella Court sits the 23,000-square-foot Bermac Arts building, a seven-figure project Inman undertook in 2013 to create more studio space for Houston's rich talent pool. Bermac is cur- rently home to the Core Fellows while the new Glassell building is being readied, as well as the nonprofit Community Artists Collective led by Michelle Barnes. On the domestic front, big changes were also afoot. Inman and Auble were living in Piney Point, in a tremendous home Auble had purchased in 1996, after relocating from London, and were ready to move closer in. "We originally planned to tear down 1114 Barkdull and build a gallery on the first floor with living quarters on the second and third," Inman says. "But several circumstances prevented this. Additionally, as we were assessing the Barkdull building, several contractors said, 'Hey, this house has great bones — shiplap construction.' They encouraged us to remodel rather than tear down." The brick structure turned gallery was indeed handsome. Dating from 1925, it has 2,500 square feet configured into a simple salt box. Positioned on a lot enveloped in tropical foliage, it had not functioned as a house in decades. "Since the 1970s, it had been commercial spaces," Inman says. "People used to come into the gallery and say, 'Hey I went to cooking school here!' It was also a hair salon in the '80s — we found the purple walls when renovating." Promisingly, a 1,400-square-foot garage apartment anchored one corner of the backyard. Inman and Auble took the plunge and returned the solidly built structure to its original purpose — a residence. Inman recalls the year-and-half ordeal of over- seeing construction, running dual careers each in geology and art or music fields, and being squeezed into the garage apartment with a large dog while the reno project pro- gressed: "We decided to renovate the garage apartment first and move in there while the main house was being done. It was a challenge to live there with a 70-pound dog for almost 18 months! June 2003, it rained every day. Just before that, the contractors had jack-hammered out the concrete in the backyard (it had been a parking lot) and built walkways for us. But the dog didn't use the walkways, so we had a bucket of water next to the door and had to wash (continued on page 94)