Gage Academy of Art Should Lose It’s Non-Profit Status.

Brett Holverstott (L.) Andrew Conru (R.) 

Seattle Atelier name taken and promoted as a grass roots art revival by a neo-nazi, his adoring flunky and some shameless local painters (all of whom come from Gage Academy of Art).

Name stolen. Promoted as theirs.

Tenaya Sims of Gage Academy of Art.

“Artistic Facilitator” along with several other teachers from Gage informally run it.

Read the article about their delusional revolution in Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, July/August 2025 issue.

“My greatest curatorial achievement…was inspired by Andrew Conru's vision.” -Brett Holverstott

Holverstott has described Conru as a “cultural visionary.” 

Since I started informing artists about Andrew Conru, Brett Holverstott of Figure Ground Art Advisors has been publishing that I am a “paranoid schizophrenic”, a medical slur, a false claim meant to discredit me.

Brett Holverstott has exhibited a pattern of targeting and attacking me and my business over a period of years.

My school opened on October 9, 2014

After Brett Holverstott had been actively involved in trying to erase my business for months, even designing parts of the new Seattle Atelier, he then also went out of his way to pretend that their SA opened on the anniversary of mine, in an attempt to confuse search engines.

A couple years ago Brett Holverstott left a review of my business on Facebook in which he claimed that I had prank called him posing as a journalist and I never did. I’ve never spoken to him in my life, he’s never met me. That was literally the first time I had heard from him. I had years worth of great reviews and had to remove the entire section because of it. He has, of course, never patronized my business but he did that damage with the same nauseating amount of entitlement with which he does everything else.

A couple weeks later someone whom I have never contacted even once tried to drag me into court for harassment and I think the two incidents are connected. I believe they might have worked together to do that.

There was once a strong connection to publishing in Seattle’s academic art scene and it poisoned it with shallow, fame-whoring douchebags who are also beginner-level academic art students. That is Holverstott.

It’s also the largest industry location for digital (game) art in the americas which creates a lot of space for illustration locally. 

Full of billionaires who want to platform-ize everything and also a very new city, still growing its deeply rooted art traditions. A perfectly unfortunate place for their pompous, rich, retarditaire, corporate douchebaggery.

That is what I fell prey to as soon as I trusted any of them. I stay in Seattle because my wife of 25 years is chronically ill and her work here gives her the benefits which keep her alive. She means everything to me so I stay by her side no matter what, even if it has meant becoming the entertainment for some of the pacific northwest’s richest and most pretentious sadists.

All or most of this is being done to provide Holverstott with a gallery to run [the only way he can do it is with a Conru provided parachute and safety net] and the close support from Gage is so he can glean from Gage to support the notion that’s been cooked up about a figurative art renaissance (culled from passed-over faculty work and student drying racks locally and by stalking international artists online.) First they get the marketing parts rolling and figure the rest out on the fly.

What sublime sophistication.

Holverstott was educated (never an art major of any kind) in Eugene, Oregon and actively attempts to destroy my career with lies and name calling because that will help him.

That will help him because of the close involvement of Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. The 501c3 which has used its donor’s money to put in many hours of work to destroy my LLC, Seattle Atelier, since I opened it in 2014 and now goes even further by using a local, slack jawed wanna-be to try to destroy my career as a  “paranoid schizophrenic” painter. 

Link to My Seattle Atelier Facebook

Link to My Seattle Atelier Instagram