Whitespace Gallery Owner Turns Carriage House Into Gallery

Susan Bridges got her start in art with an art history degree. Instead of going the seemingly only route of becoming an art history teacher, she went into advertising.

During her advertising stint, she was a mediator between artists and accounts. Now in the Atlanta art world, she is one of the mediators between artists and the public as the owner of Whitespace Gallery.

“Prior to opening the space, I did pop-up shows for about 15 years, before people were doing that,” says Bridges.

She generally kept her pop-up shows to Atlanta’s Westside. One featured a show with a Cistercian monk in an underground parking lot. Another was at a U-Haul storage building. 

As developers moved into the spaces she used for the shows, she had to make a change if she was going to continue hosting artists’ work. Therefore, after one persistent artist asked her to just clean out her “garage,” she went forward with a full renovation.

“This was originally an 1893 carriage house that I converted in 2006,” she says. “[The first gallery was previously] the stables, where the horses were kept. The other is where the carriages were parked. It’s the original floor, original ceilings.”

Instead of avant-garde, Bridges brings art that she likes by artists with whom she connects.

“I wouldn’t say the work is edgy,” she says. “I think the work I present is interesting. It makes people think.”

Across the backyard patio, she has another space, Whitespec, which is more of a project space for undergraduate and graduate fine art students to display their work for their degree programs.

Pete Schulte’s work is currently on display. If you visit, look out for the piece that mimics the shape of the gallery.