It’s a sleepy Thursday afternoon and Amanda Robinson is sitting inside a dark Gallery5, the celebrated arts venue she founded in 2005, excited to talk about her latest endeavor: a proposed annual event called the Richmond Renaissance Faire. “We’d want to highlight Richmond artisans, and make it Richmond-centric,” she says. “Make it a multicultural experience, we’d have bike jousting… a turkey leg tent.”

It’s telling that this tireless nonprofit leader, baker, artist, and amateur archer would be eager to talk about her new idea—not her old idea—which is celebrating a momentous 20th anniversary this month with a series of free events and happenings [the actual anniversary was April 15). “That’s how I operate,” she says with a smile.

The Gallery5 celebrations include a birthday fundraiser this Friday, April 18 that will feature live music, WRIR 97.3 DJs, arts-focused raffle prizes, and one big ‘ole birthday cake.

Constructed in 1883, it had already been a long, strange trip for this space, the former Steamer Company No. 5, when the freaks moved in.

“Gallery5 was like the old west when it started in 2005,” says Parker Galore, who has been planning and assisting with events since the beginning. “It was definitely D.I.Y.”

Although Gallery5 would become synonymous with First Fridays, he says that it formed as a reaction against Richmond’s “established” art world. “Artists and performers would be hosting these events in people’s houses, or illegally, in some building. We had all of this energy, we needed a space to fit it all,” he recalls.

Enter Robinson, whose father owned this historic Jackson Ward firehouse and had once operated a museum there. Robinson originally wanted to use the space to build a printmaking hub, not unlike what Studio Two Three would later do.

“But we had all these artists,” she says. “All of this art.”

Gallery5 was an immediate hit—”we had over a thousand people at our opening,” she still marvels—and quickly gained attention for edgy, button-pushing exhibits like “I Dream of Richmond” and “Repressed,” as well as circus-like spectacles such as “Carnival of Five Fires,” which still happens every October.

But after eight years of establishing the gallery as a cultural hotspot, often coming in number two behind the VMFA in local best of polls, Robinson left to start a cake shop, Sweet Fix. She returned to the 5 in 2023, determined to put the space’s finances (which have never been great) in order.

“I think she felt that there was unfinished business,” says board member Ash Moore. “Or she was entering into a period in her life where she missed that creative outlet and the access to that creative community.”

In the following interview, the idea lady explains how all of this happened, why she left and returned, and where Richmond’s favorite underground space goes from here.

Style Weekly: When did you first encounter this place?

Amanda Robinson: Born here, buddy, I’ve been in this building my entire life. My sister and I had our nursery upstairs and I used to teach fire safety classes here, when my parents were running the Virginia Fire and Police Museum. My dad had resigned from the [museum] board at some point and the organization went under and they lost the building. The city took the building and then my dad got an injunction against them. And when he got the building back, it was like a half a million dollars worth of debt that had been wrapped up.

Where were you when all of this was happening?

This is exactly the time I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design. I did not plan to come back to Richmond. I didn’t really have any connections to Richmond. I wanted to move to New Mexico and, you know, teach art therapy. That was my plan. So in the first years of Gallery5, Tom Robinson, my dad, owned the building.

So who owns the building now?

Bruce Vanderbilt. I love the guy. He cares strongly for the mission of this organization and preserving history. He’s had ample opportunity to sell this building and turn it into condos or breweries. He’s been confronted with it many times.

When was the first time you said, ‘Hey, I think I have an idea for this space’?

I had started a T-shirt company with my ex-boyfriend. And we were traveling the country after I graduated college, with the Warped Tour. We were doing this, like, dumb punk rock political type of T-shirt company; and the tour was over, and I came back to Richmond to visit my mom and my aunt. I remember a fight my mom and dad had about the building happened just like the day prior. And I just had this epiphany. Like I just… I felt drawn to it. That’s the first time I’ve ever felt like that in my life. And that’s kind of the feeling that I’ve been riding for 20-some years. I get this idea and I run with it.

You recently celebrated the anniversary with a special event involving RVA Mag. Was that like a homecoming of sorts? 

I never thought that we would have an opportunity to partner with RVA Mag again. This is an organization that documented so much of our first few years. I just thought that this would be a great time to come back and party together, and showcase all the things that have happened, not just with us at Gallery5, but in Richmond over the course of the past 20 years. It was a really nice night, and it made me feel nostalgic. The first months of this anniversary is about highlighting the organizations that kind of started together. So RVA Mag is this month, and WRIR 97.3 is in May. We’re hosting their 20th anniversary fundraiser and housing an exhibition that showcases the artists who designed WRIR T-shirts.

How is today’s Gallery5 different from the one 20 years ago?

Well, back then, I was 22 years old with absolutely no business experience. I knew nothing about managing a nonprofit, much less the way a nonprofit board of directors should work, even less what city taxes look like. But I’m very happy to have been as naive as I was. It was an asset, because I took risks that I probably couldn’t take now, you know, and we were able to put us on the map for the exhibitions and the programs that we brought to Richmond. Like literally put us on the map, you know, nationally.

Like in 2009, when the Gallery was prominently featured in a New York Times travel piece on Richmond. 

I’m grateful for that. But at the same time, to survive, you have to be a sustainable organization, getting grants and partnering with corporations you may or may not be totally aligned with. And you have to build a strong board. That’s been the biggest thing these past few years, building working committees and ensuring that our board of directors have set roles and responsibilities.

What makes this setup different from what was before? 

We are a working board. We have about seven of us serving as executive directors. Jameson Babb [chief of staff for State Senator Lashrecse Aird] has been a major part in getting our space financially sound, getting everything in order with taxes and with the city. And Ash Moore is just so immersed in local nonprofit organizations, knows everything about everything that’s happening in the city, and has been so pivotal in helping to build new relationships, but also in getting grants. Ash has been responsible for getting about $70,000 in grants and funding for Gallery5 this past year.

Parker Galore has been here from the beginning, bringing the Carnival of Five Fires and so many other things.

I had met Parker on social media through MySpace when I was still in college. Then he reached out to me because he heard about me opening the space as an art gallery, and he wanted to come and interview me for the first issue for RVA Mag. When he came and he met me, we just clicked, you know, we’re both artsy folks, but both country folks, right? Yeah, we have very similar, not always PC personalities and we just really meshed. I couldn’t really get rid of him after that [laughs].

Would it be safe to say that he was your bridge to the Richmond art world?

He was, yes. While I did all of the curating and all the administrative work and pretty much, you know, marketing and everything else that went into it, he helped to bring the artists to me. Because I had been out of Richmond for so long that I wasn’t aware of the movers and shakers and people doing this and that, but he was. So he was able to say, ‘Alright, these are really good artists. I’m gonna suggest these folks.’ So it really allowed us to have content and to have artists and to fill up the space and have an audience right out the gate. Yeah, we had that audience. So I credit him for so much of this [early growth]; he was like the ringleader those initial years.

Why did you leave in 2012 to go make cakes?

I think it was a mix of burnout and not feeling valued because I was the one who didn’t get paid. Plus I had a freaking kid, I needed to be a mom. I think I just needed something that was a little bit more slow going so that I could raise my kid. And the ego thing, I wanted to get away from all of it. I mean, I couldn’t go to a coffee shop in Richmond without having someone come up and say, ‘Hey, can I get a show at the gallery?’ And every time I checked my email, ‘Hey, can I get a show, can I get a show?’

Did you maintain a connection to the place when you left?

I didn’t, I did not look back at all. And that is mind blowing to me because I am so OCD and I’m really controlling with certain things. But I did not look back, and I didn’t even want to visit the place. I’m very grateful for the people that stepped up, like Nick Crider. Nick put a lot of blood, sweat and tears in the place. He came at a time when the building was in really bad shape, a state of disrepair. And it’s very unfortunate that he couldn’t just focus on running the space and creating programs because he always brought interesting programs. But he was literally like, patching roofs every day.

How did the place change?

I think it represented a younger audience. I mean, it was a little bit more edgy, a little bit more punk. It was a little bit more, you know, queer, and just everything. It started to represent an entirely new generation, which I think represents Richmond.

When did Prabir Mehta enter the story?

Prabir [Mehta] came in after year one. He came in as a musician first and performed at our first Halloween party. At the time, we were borrowing a PA and didn’t have a stage. And there wasn’t much organization to the music. Prabir is the reason that we turned into a reputable music venue in Richmond. And again, like Nick, he just put a lot of his own money and his resources and time into this space to keep it going, post-COVID. The cost of the rent had just skyrocketed. And there wasn’t grant funding coming in at that time, there wasn’t any strategic plan. There wasn’t any plan for larger fundraising.

In 2019, your dad sold the building and the gallery lost the upstairs space. Give me the pros and cons of that.

The pro is that, for the first time, we are ADA compliant, which means we’ve been able to receive certain grants. Most of our programming existed upstairs, which is not ADA compliant and I worry it will never be because it’s a historic building. The other positive is that it takes a fraction of the time to curate the space and hang an exhibition. At one point I was curating four exhibition spaces every month. So curating and installing a fraction of the space is much easier, and it makes it so that the cream is rising to the top.

But the cons are, well, we don’t have a kitchen now. And we’re not capable of doing the type of exhibitions I would really like to see. We’d have more workshops, classes, and a residency program. We’re just really limited. We used to be able to rent our space out for weddings, private events, which we still can, but we’re not offering as much to people. So there’s a lot of downside to not having it. We don’t have office space. My dream is to buy the building back and reclaim the upstairs again. Bruce knows all about this.

So why did you come back in 2023? 

When Prabir left, I knew that this place needed a mama, or a papa, you know? Whether it was me or someone else, it needed that. So I felt inclined to come back against the wishes of my husband [artist Bizhan Khodabandeh] and my family. They were like, ‘Don’t do it. It’s not your responsibility.’ Prabir also warned me about coming back, and tried to give me advice or understanding of where they were financially. I just felt drawn to doing it. It just felt like the natural thing to do.

What do you see as Gallery5’s influence within the community?

We have been a hub. We’ve given people opportunities that they probably wouldn’t have elsewhere. We’ve launched many initiatives and have been the platform for so many nonprofit organizations that were emerging: Richmond Comedy Coalition, Art on Wheels … I mean, looking at Coalition Theater [and] to see the space we gave to All The Saints Theater [Company] before the Halloween parades existed, you know? We were the space that embraced them and allowed them to grow.

There’s just so many local poetry groups and arts groups and musicians… this was the venue that gave them wings to fly. And I think that that is our mission: The purpose we serve in the community is giving opportunities for new and emerging artists to grow and to thrive.

Gallery5’s Birthday Party Fundraiser takes place on Friday, April 18 at 7 p.m. There will be live performances, retro carnival games, raffle prizes, and performances by Houdan the Mystic, Museum District, WRIR and more. Plus a big birthday cake. $20. Members get in free. gallery5arts.org 200 W. Marshall St.