Litsa Spanos is an art consultant with an eye for custom designing spaces within homes, lobbies, corporations, hospitals, and restaurants. Her 27-year-old Cincinnati-based company, Art Design Consultants (ADC), assists residential, corporate, and commercial clients in finding artwork that reinforces their unique goals, missions, and brand identities.
“What we’re known for is creating spaces that are a reflection of the client,” says Spanos.
In contrast to a traditional fine arts gallery that focuses on select artists, ADC Fine Arts is constantly curating the widest variety of mediums, styles, and artists, which can be browsed in book form (the Blink Art Resource Guide), on the website, or in the physical gallery.
Spanos says she thrives on doing work that supports artists. The Blink Art Resource Guide, artfully designed in-house, is now in its sixth year of showcasing artists and connecting them directly to buyers.
“We print 10,000 copies and it goes out to people like us — designers, art dealers, art consultants, and galleries across the country.”
For someone who is in the business of transforming spaces, it seems fitting that Spanos would gravitate toward raw warehouse buildings.
It began with Pendleton Arts Center, the rehabbed warehouse in Over-the-Rhine that hosts six stories of artist studios. ADC operated from there for seventeen years.
“We loved it because we had all these amazing artists at our fingertips,” recalls Spanos. Though ADC curates work from all over the region, nation, and world, she says, the local connections remain strong. “I still work with many of the artists [from the Pendleton Arts Center.]”
Then, a yet-to-be-rehabbed warehouse building near Sawyer Point in the central business district caught her eye.
“It didn’t even have windows,” she recalls. “It was .. raw. [But] I had this vision. I thought, wow, this could be really cool for the operation. We could do our framing here. We could showcase artwork. We could have events where people could be inspired by the art that they see.”
For the past ten years, the ADC gallery and office has operated there on the fifth floor of what has become the multi-tenant Edge building, overlooking the riverfront and downtown.
She says their art-filled space has proved ideal for hosting clients and doing consultations. Alongside wall-mounted canvases and photographs, a generous array of textures and materials — glass, metals, fibers, and mixed media — exhibit the possibilities in an open, light-filled gallery.
After ten years there, Spanos and her team of ten are packing up and making their next move, relocating from the Edge down to street-level, first to the recently opened, new retail gallery in O’Bryonville and then to their main hub in the West End.
The 13,000-square foot West End facility on York Street — a refurbished warehouse — is scheduled to be ready by spring and will house an expanded gallery with even more artwork and a larger framing facility. In addition, it will allow ADC to pursue two brand new concepts — a co-working environment and a nonprofit inspirational space called Blink Scape.
Blink Scape will be a 20-foot square white cube within the York Street gallery, dedicated to conceptual art installations. Visitors of all ages will be able to experience full-immersion light shows, videos, music, and theater.
Like the gallery, it will be free and open to the public. ADC is enthusiastic about designing a public space for anyone to come be refreshed and inspired.
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