The art of business, the business of art

ZEN LEN likes feng shui, but doesn't like to be categorized.

As an artist, Leonard Bazemore works in wood and clay - and watercolor, oil and acrylic, too.

Before his ascent into art, he built his bankroll as a real estate agent - and real estate remains a key in his strategy for success in the art world.

It seems contradictory. Commerce and art are usually mutually exclusive, but not for Zen Len.

When he was about 10, he delivered newspapers and bought himself sneakers. "My friends wanted to know how," he says. "I told them I had a job. They wanted in," so Bazemore subcontracted routes to them, pocketing a percentage.

"I was creative," he says with a grin.

He opened his boutique Bazemore Gallery on bustling Main Street in booming Manayunk two years ago, with a plan.

Using his real-estate smarts, he got the property at a good price, rehabbed the building, and now the two rental apartments above the gallery pay the mortgage. That makes the gallery free to him, and that means he can show artists he likes, like Noel Miles, whose Philadelphia watercolor cityscapes were hanging when I visited.

Bazemore owns four commercial properties on Main Street, and in January he plans to open a juice bar, the Juice Merchant, across from his gallery. The Malcolm Forbes of Main Street?

To Bazemore, money is a means to an end, not an end. Manayunk, he says, is "a historical, quaint town" that happens to be closer than Center City to the Penn Valley home he shares with his wife, Teresa, the president of Radian Guaranty, a private mortgage-insurance firm.

In between the world of business and the world of art, Bazemore interned for a while with artist Perry Milou at his Galleria 1903, right on Rittenhouse Square.

Now a resident of Lawrenceville, N.J., Milou says that Bazemore "was trying to get his feet wet in the art world."

Milou recalls that at lunchtime Bazemore would take a cart, attach one of Milou's large oil paintings and wheel it around the Square.

"He used to bring people back to the gallery and make sales," says Milou. "Guerrilla marketing at its best."

Milou remembers that time with affection. "He had great enthusiasm, he's a positive person, a wonderful father, a bright light to be around," he says of Bazemore.

A Norristown native, father of three, Bazemore got his start handling real estate in Center City and the Main Line. His timing was good, before the housing bubble burst. The money in his pocket financed trips to England, France, Germany and Spain, where he visited art museums and galleries, but also paid close attention to the cuisine, music and wine, the essence of which he incorporates into his world. The 45-year-old businessman/artist absorbs what's around him.

His most meaningful overseas experience came during three weeks in China, where he met feng shui master Wang Xun, who guided Bazemore in creating balance with the use of color, materials and placement. Bazemore's pretty laid-back, and the China experience gave him a deeper understanding, made him even more mellow, and eventually resulted in the nickname Zen Len.

Just for fun, I asked Bazemore to define feng shui for me in 25 words or less. It took him a minute, but he came up with "energy exchange in a space."

I think of it as, "My girlfriend lets me watch football while she goes shopping," that's an exchange, but I'm probably off base.

Bazemore's favorite music is house. Mine is car. Doesn't matter. Believe what you want, feel what you will, just don't run down anyone else.

Did that sound a little Zen to you?

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky

Blog: ph.ly/Byko

Columns: ph.ly/StuBykofsky