Black artists are extra popular in the world of fine art galleries.
A gallery in the West Adams District is working to make their work more accessible enough to the very people they portray.
Terrell Tilford and Darryl Wash have been collecting, curating and selling fine art for many years.
They can cite, chapter and verse about the artists and their techniques and in their Band of Vices gallery, the subject matter for many of those artists is pretty clear.
Get Southern California news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC LA newsletters.
"People who've been unseen, unheard, unrecognized," Tilford said.
Persons of color depicted in bold and vibrant color by artists of color but as the cliché says, "there's more here than meets the eye."
They could've opened this gallery anywhere like the Arts District in downtown LA or West LA but they chose to do it here for a very specific reason.
Wash says, artists of this caliber, through no fault of their own after often disconnected from persons of color who may live in a neighborhood like West Adams.
Their work is displayed on Rodeo Drive or in Santa Monica which is fine but are not reaching a wide audience.
"They're not seen by the very same people who are their subject matter, which is a little ironic," Wash said.
In fact, both men have personally experienced the disconnect even now, as respected collectors with the means to buy pieces worth thousands of dollars.
"You walk into space and people never speak to you," Tilford said.
They hope to change that with Band of Vices they encourage everyone to walk in, even those who may not be able to afford anything yet.
"For us, it's not about the transaction, it's about the relationship," Tilford said.
the gallery's mission statement says it "embraces love" and what better way to express that than to bring Black faces, Black stories and subject matter to a community of color's doorstep.
