Sherry Lovett, who as owner of The Art Store on Bridge Road devoted 25 years to teaching people that when they set about making their homes beautiful they should think about putting original art on their walls, died Wednesday at Hospice House after a battle with lung cancer. She was 65.

"She was like the Gertrude Stein of the West Virginia art world," said artist Ellie Schaul, the store's gallery director and a close personal friend. "Gertrude Stein was a great patron of art and artists. And if she said an artist was good, then all of a sudden that artist was good."

Lovett ran a thriving framing business that helped keep the sale-of-art business going during the many lean years when she worked to build a clientele of art lovers.

"What she did here she didn't do for profit," Schaul said. "In a bad year, she wouldn't take a salary. She did it because she wanted the artists to make money. She kept the doors open so that the artists could show their work."

Lovett saw herself as a teacher who could help people enrich their lives by appreciating art, Schaul said.

Lovett talked up all the artists she represented, but she relentlessly promoted a few. One was the late abstract artist June Kilgore, whose estate the store now represents, and whose bold use of color and form Lovett constantly extolled.

Another was David Riffle and his quirky take on West Virginia. 

"She promoted him because she believed in who he was as a truly West Virginia artist," Schaul said. "There wasn't a person who came in The Art Store whom she didn't talk to about David Riffle." 

Lovett grew up in Beckley, where her father ran a contracting business. While attending Morris Harvey College, she worked as assistant to the Diamond department store's display manager. Later she did displays for Embee's, where she married her boss and had to stop working.

Sherry Lovett, who as owner of The Art Store on Bridge Road devoted 25 years to teaching people that when they set about making their homes beautiful they should think about putting original art on their walls, died Wednesday at Hospice House after a battle with lung cancer. She was 65.

"She was like the Gertrude Stein of the West Virginia art world," said artist Ellie Schaul, the store's gallery director and a close personal friend. "Gertrude Stein was a great patron of art and artists. And if she said an artist was good, then all of a sudden that artist was good."

Lovett ran a thriving framing business that helped keep the sale-of-art business going during the many lean years when she worked to build a clientele of art lovers.

"What she did here she didn't do for profit," Schaul said. "In a bad year, she wouldn't take a salary. She did it because she wanted the artists to make money. She kept the doors open so that the artists could show their work."

Lovett saw herself as a teacher who could help people enrich their lives by appreciating art, Schaul said.

Lovett talked up all the artists she represented, but she relentlessly promoted a few. One was the late abstract artist June Kilgore, whose estate the store now represents, and whose bold use of color and form Lovett constantly extolled.

Another was David Riffle and his quirky take on West Virginia. 

"She promoted him because she believed in who he was as a truly West Virginia artist," Schaul said. "There wasn't a person who came in The Art Store whom she didn't talk to about David Riffle." 

Lovett grew up in Beckley, where her father ran a contracting business. While attending Morris Harvey College, she worked as assistant to the Diamond department store's display manager. Later she did displays for Embee's, where she married her boss and had to stop working.

In 1972, she opened her Bridge Road store, selling art supplies and doing custom framing. In 1983, she dropped art supplies, hired Schaul as gallery director and devoted herself to the showing and selling of art.

In 1978, she divorced her first husband, and two years later married her second. "I've been blessed with husbands willing to support me," she once said. "You don't get in the art business to earn a living. You do it because you love it. They've tolerated that, so I never had to totally support myself from the store."

People often leaned on Lovett and her artists to donate works for art auctions, and Lovett resisted as best she could. She complained that charitable groups sent her best customers to make such requests.

"She wanted to make sure no one took us for granted," said longtime friend and watercolor painter Helen Chilton. "She put us up on a pedestal. She was always trying to make people understand that just because we had a talent, they shouldn't take advantage of us."

Lovett retired at the end of 2007, selling the store to Lisa Fischer-Casto. She was in apparent good health then, but by late February doctors found the cancer had returned and spread to her brain. 

Lovett was a gregarious person who enjoyed talking about art to both affluent customers with much wall space to fill and those who just wandered into the store for a peek, Chilton said.

"She spoke for all of us artists who are by nature introverted in our speaking," Chilton said. "I have been to many, many communities large and small and I have never run across another place like The Art Store. And The Art Store was Sherry."

To contact staff writer Bob Schwarz, use e-mail or call 348-1249.