You don’t have to be a chess player to be intrigued by the sidewalk sign below the Rain Tulip Gallery, hinting at the combination of art and board games that await visitors who climb up three floors.
Follow the golden and hot-pink arrows, and the door opens to free coffee and tea and Jette Vakkala, a Danish artist who has been crafting whimsical art pieces, including handcrafted pieces for ancient board games, for more than 30 years.
“I tried to make a sanctuary where people can step in and leave the rest of the world behind,” Vakkala said. “Eight out of 10 people who come up stay for over an hour.”
Her two-bedroom home at 3341 24th St. also serves as her studio and store, which seems to come from another era. She modeled it after the Parisian salons of the 1700s: Think opulence, crystal chandeliers, bright colors and flowers.
“In those days, people would come and sit and have wine and talk about art,” she said. “People open up like flowers, and we’re all blossoms.“
A prophetic dream and the 17th-century Dutch tulip virus inspired the gallery’s name. While the virus was harmless, it transformed the typically monochrome flowers into highly prized blossoms exploding with patterns. “Like my [game] pieces, there was only one of each tulip,” she said. “So you get a bulb, there will never be another flower like it.”
Vakkala lives off her art, yet has no website or online shop. The onetime dancer said she’s too old to say her age out loud, but claims some of her longest and most sophisticated conversations about art history have been with 18-year-olds.
The artist came to the United States at 21 to follow a boyfriend, and married him on the summer solstice when she was 22. She lost the man, but kept the country.
While traveling abroad, she had her first artistic epiphany. Standing transfixed in front of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Blue Church” in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, she had a revelation: She was going to be a painter.
“My brain froze and unlocked and froze and unlocked, like everything I ever knew was reprogramming itself to deal with this new reality,” she said. Much like the tulip virus, art is transformative.
Vakkala went home, cut short her manicured nails and never grew them long again. She found an inexpensive apartment — the one she still lives in — because she knew artists were poor.
Forever restless and insatiably curious, Vakkala has never stopped experimenting with her art. She’s been making her board game pieces for only about a year. Before that, she was creating puzzle paintings that had seven levels of mystery.
She also had a period when she was painting on glass, for which she’d buy the smallest paintbrushes possible and then trim them down to two hairs and use a magnifying glass to complete her work. She likes fans, puzzles and allegories.
She also likes dogs, and they’ve inspired many of her board games. Parisian pooches and Egyptian hounds perch as pieces on checkerboard tiles in her shop. The canine love comes from real life.
Vakkala’s dog, Goose, lived to be nearly 17 until she died last June. The artist was heartbroken over the loss of her Havanese, until two new dogs, Maltese mixes named Tulip and Violet, came into her life courtesy of a neighbor.
“They arrived in a banana box,” she said. “It was almost biblical.” When the black-and-white dogs run across her checkerboard painted floor, Vakkala likens it to an M.C. Escher painting.
Her recent fascination with board games came after learning about Irving Finkel’s groundbreaking work on the Royal Game of Ur. The British Museum curator was the first to translate the rules of the game from cuneiform. “Board games are hypnotic,” Vakkala said. “You’re held in time and space by this progression with a total stranger.”
In a sense, board games represent, in miniature, the ambience of her studio, which can seem leagues away from the frenzy frequently unfolding below on Mission and 24th streets. Games take art off the walls and put it into people’s hands while bringing them together for extended periods of time.
Rejection, people who have more talent, lack of fame or a following: None of that bothers Vakkala. She is grateful to get up every day and lose herself in her work, leaving the world a little more beautiful than it was before. Art is her oxygen.
“To end up with all these colors and shapes and images is a real privilege,” she said. “I mean, I could have become a lawyer.”
Rain Tulip Gallery is located at 3341 24th St. and open Thursday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. You can call ahead at 415-282-7797.
