JAVA Nov 19

Photo: Cole Seefus, @cseef
When he returned to the States, Gino and Sherri put their heads together to decide
where he should head next. “Obviously, I thought about New York,” he said.
“He could have gone nearly anywhere,” Sherri chimes in. “We have family in Paris,
Spain, Copenhagen. There were so many possibilities.” Gino takes up the story
again. “But I kept coming back to Phoenix and looking around. This is home. I grew
up here. I realized that I wanted to stay.”
So one evening while he was visiting Sherri at her new studio, he looked around at
all the space, then filled with overflow from her downsizing. “I realized that there’s
enough space here for two studios. And so I started helping Mom get rid of all that
extra stuff,” he said.
Soon the two Belassens were living and working together. They both say it’s a great
situation for them. In one way, ironing out their differences in work style led to
creating the gallery. Sherri likes long hours of solitude while she works. But Gino
loves being around people and making new friends. He quickly realized that the
growing crowds around the other galleries on Grand Avenue presented a chance to
build the community he’d wanted to find back when he was exploring moving to a
larger city with more opportunities for artists.
“I realized that we could be a part of building that culture right here. I want
that culture, and this is home, so why not figure out how to create the culture I
want?” But first he had to find a way to integrate the space and pull traffic from
Grand Avenue. Belhaus is located on McKinley, around the corner from the main
foot traffic on First and Third Fridays. So they built a couple of movable walls to
separate the gallery from their studios. Gino also knew that he wanted to bring in
an expert to run the coffee shop that he hoped would draw people in. So he went
on Instagram and looked for what he needed.
“I found Fio pretty quickly and Instagram-messaged him. He showed up here
within an hour. Before he left, we all felt like family,” he said.
“Yes,” laughed Sherri. “I call him my third kid.” To draw people in from the street,
Gino and Sherri installed strip LED lighting around the garage door. You can see
the bright lights from Grand Avenue when the gallery is open, but the lighting has
another, more community-oriented purpose.
10 JAVA
MAGAZINE