Arom Gallery 

www.arom.us

AROM is a not-for-profit gallery and digital art space by and for artists.

Our Story

In August of 2024, I travelled to Budapest, Hungary on a three month internship grant from the Oberlin Center for Russian, Central Asian, and Eastern European Studies. I had applied to the grant with the plan to intern at a print shop in Budapest that I had been in contact with. Upon arriving, I discovered that this internship was no longer an option for me, and I was unsure what to do next.

Luckily, my friend and fellow artist Wade Burleson was also in Hungary after receiving the same grant, and when we saw a small commercial storefront for rent in District V, we knew what we had to do. Thus, Arom Gallery was born.

In no time, Arom Gallery had grown from a small boarded up store for rent to a beautiful gallery space. In three months, we put on four shows, highlighting the work of 25+ local and international artists. We held school trips for students to visit the space, organized visits for local artists, and were able to meet a few of the artists in our shows in person. At the same time, Wade was working at BPzines and I had found another internship at Art Quarter Budapest's ProjectSpace gallery, and we were learning a lot from our internships that we applied to Arom, and shared with each other.

Wade and I wore many hats: curators, programming coordinators, social media managers, photographers, copywriters, marketers, installation technicians, gallery attendants, website designers and more. I'm especially proud of the photography and editing of the shows, and my skills in Photoshop and Lightroom improved a lot during this experience.

While our physical space in Budapest closed at the end of those three months when our visas ran out, the gallery is far from over. We're still growing our mail art archive, and are looking for physical space in the states for the future.