The first Friday of 2026 will also be a goodbye party for a downtown staple. The Red Chair gallery is closing permanently around 8pm on Jan. 2 after the First Friday event. It opened in the historic O’Kane Building on NW Oregon Avenue in 2010 to support local artists who needed a location to show and sell their work. It was named after one of Mt. Bachelor’s earliest chairlifts. About 30 local artists sell their work and staff the gallery. Many of them have been a part of the journey since the first day.
Rita Neely Dunlavy originally opened the gallery with five other owners. As they moved on, Dunlavy bought them out, eventually running the store herself since 2018. She’s now in her 80s and says it feels like the right time to retire.
“I think it’s been a great run. Bend has been very, very good to us. The best way I could try to describe this when my friends or my family ask me, ‘What were you thinking? Why are you doing this?’ It just feels bittersweet. It feels like the right thing to do at the right time.”
Dunlavy says January is generally a slow time, so she decided to close at the end of the holiday season to leave on a high note.
“There is no plan. It’s just trying to do the best for the artists and if they get out while they’re on top and don’t have to go through a quiet season, trying to find a new home for themselves, I think they’re better off.”
Dunlavy plans to keep the Red Chair gallery website active for the next year with a link to each artist so customers can find them.
“I love the gallery and I love the artists and it breaks my heart,” she says. “It’s very bittersweet because we’re doing very well. Going out when you’re doing well, to me, is more favorable than something happening in the next year.”
Dunlavy expects most of the gallery artists to attend January’s First Friday to say goodbye to each other and mingle with the public. She says running the gallery seven days a week can be exhausting.
“My plans are the freedom from plans,” she chuckles.
Red Chair gallery
Final First Friday Jan. 2
103 NW Oregon Ave., Bend
redchairgallerybend.com/
This article appears in the Source January 1, 2026.
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