Meet Jay T. Jax

We recently connected with Jay T. Jax and have shared our conversation below.

Jay, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I was 19 years old living in Buffalo, NY when my father lost his leg in a work related accident. After he recovered, he decided to move the family to Florida since he was having a difficult time getting around in the wintertime on the ice and snow with his new prosthetic limb. At that time I was a department head at one of western New York’s largest supermarkets and was being “prepared” to be a manager, so after careful consideration, I decided to stay behind.

As you can imagine my new life situation had several challenges to overcome, and then someone gave me a card that read:

“Whatever You Vividly Imagine
Ardently desire
Sincerely believe
And enthusiastically act upon
Must inevitably come to pass”
Paul J. Meyer

That was to become my mantra for the rest of my life. Imagine it, desire it, believe it, and most importantly act upon it and you will make it happen. I still have that card today and it hangs in my bathroom where I see it every morning.

I became the manager of that store and since then I have managed a restaurant, a print shop (my own business for 35+ years) and now, the Art Machine Gallery.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Art Machine Gallery is located in Sawyer Yards, a five building campus spanning 55+ acres of artist studios in the Washington Avenue Arts District; a State recognized Cultural District which boasts the highest concentration of working artist studios in the country. Three hundred and fifty studios with more than 400 artists! The Silos is one of the buildings within this creative campus, home to Art Machine Gallery. Fifteen resident artists call each other family within the gallery, directed/curated by me.

My mission as a gallery director is to promote emerging visual artists from Houston and the surrounding area. This is my way of using the skills I have learned in advertising and marketing, and to give something back to the art community. The most exciting thing for me is to promote new emerging artists. Many come to me who have never shown their work anywhere and you should see their faces when I tell them that they have been accepted as a resident artist! It’s better than your Birthday and Christmas all rolled into one!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Working in print advertising, you learn that the first time you send an advertisement to a potential customer they just throw it away. The second time you send it, they might glance at it then throw it away. The third time you send it they might think “there might be something to this” and finally read it. And after all that, they teach you that you will get 3 to 5 percent return on your investment. For example as a postcard mailer, you would need to get someone to design it on the computer, then have it printed, then buy a mailing list, then print out the labels and buy the postage. That would cost a minimum of $1,000 and remember, the first two attempts go in the trash! Now multiply that by three and you can see the costs add up pretty fast. Not only that, most people give up too early and do not send it out the 2nd or 3rd time and get nothing in return.

As an alternative, advertising the gallery on Social Media thru Facebook, Instagram and Google I can easily reach 10,000 people for $20. It’s the cheapest form of advertising known to man and consistently using it has brought us to be nominated in the Houston Chronicle’s “Best of the Best” competition in the art gallery category. The gallery won 2nd Place last year and I hope to be in 1st Place in 2023! Winner to be announced July 20th at their Awards Gala.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
I can add a bit of a love story here, as my business partner and co-founder Barbara happens to be my wife. We met by chance when she arrived in Houston from Louisiana for a New Year’s Eve party. It was shortly after I started my business and we have been partners ever since. I have to say that no man ever had a better life partner, working toward the same goals at the same place for all these years! The strong camaraderie and love between us was evident from the start and we were off on an adventure in business as well as life. With decades of experiences under our belt, there was already a strong business model in place to support the founding and evolution of Art Machine Gallery. Onward and Upward!

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