One fair down, one to go.

The Houston Fine Art Fair wrapped up its inaugural run Sunday night with director Fair Kaufman promising "we'll definitely be back next year" as organizers reported reaching their goal of 10,000 visitors and at least half the 80 participating galleries, including many Houston spaces, reported sales.

The Houston Fine Art Fair at the George R. Brown Convention Center.: (C) CatchLight Group. (PRNewsFoto/Houston Fine Art Fair, Michelle Watson)

With gallerists -- including Hiram Butler, who sold a rare Jasper Johns drawing on opening night -- understandably reluctant to report sales prices, no estimates of overall fair sales were immediately available, though Rick Friedman, president of organizer Hamptons Expo Group, said sales tallied "in the millions."

Among Houston galleries, Moody Gallery also enjoyed strong sales led by the purchase of Tower, a major Mary McCleary collage. Anya Tish Gallery secured multiple commissions and sales for sculptor William Cannings and light artist Adela Andea, and Barbara Davis Gallery sold a large recent painting by Los Angeles-based artist Gavin Perry, among other works.

For others, such as Gallery Sonja Roesch, the fair was more about networking and relationship building -- Roesch said she saw people she hadn't seen in 10 years -- and doing educational groundwork. Roesch was presenting paintings by Raimund Girke, an artist with an extensive museum and gallery exhibition history in Europe but none in the United States, so she hadn't expected to realize immediate sales of his works, some of which command six figures. (If you missed Roesch's booth or want to see a larger selection, Raimund Girke, 1930-2002: Investigating White continues through Oct. 29 at Gallery Sonja Roesch.)

Similarly, making contacts and educating collectors were the immediate payoffs of the fair for visiting exhibitor Louis Stern Fine Arts of West Hollywood, Calif., which focuses on renewing attention on important West Coast mid-20th-century abstract painters such as John McLaughlin, Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg.

Marie Chambers, the gallery's director, said museum collectors groups stopped by and expressed interest in some of the pieces on view, and she had many collectors thank her for introducing them to important but still underrecognized figures' work. As for whether the gallery's visit to the fair would end up paying off financially, "we won't know for a couple of months," she said, citing a Chicago art fair exhibit that didn't yield sales for months after the event.

Still, she said, interested potential buyers would do well to make up their minds quickly about the West Coast painters, whose reputations and prices are likely to skyrocket after this fall's upcoming Pacific Standard Time, a wave of exhibitions spearheaded by the J. Paul Getty Museum that explores Southern California's post-World War II rise as an art capital.

The fair seemed to leave both locals and visitors feeling good about Houston's own growth as an art center. Out-of-town visitors remarked on the engagement of the collector base and their visits to the Menil Collection and other institutions. And fears that the fair would drain away interest from other activities such as Museum District Day and opening receptions at galleries not participating in the fair seemed to be unfounded.

The quality of participating galleries -- a concern early on in the organizing process that prompted some Houston galleries to back a second fair, Texas Contemporary, slated for Oct. 20-23 at the George R. Brown Convention Center -- was also largely encouraging. Many of the galleries with a Latin American focus brought especially strong work, and Riva Yares Gallery of Santa Fe, N.M., and Scottsdale, Ariz., mounted a superb exhibition of Milton Avery paintings that was a major highlight.

Having attended last year's Art Basel Miami Beach fair and some of its satellites, I saw many works of comparable quality here, although I agree with Galveston Arts Center curator Clint Willour's take that the overall quality could have gone from "good" to "fabulous" if Friedman and Kaufman had edited about 15 galleries out of the mix.

Therein lines one of Texas Contemporary's chances to distinguish itself. The October fair, which was launched after Friedman's former director left to produce his own fairs in various cities where Hamptons Expo Group operates fairs, bills itself as a tighter selection, with just 55 participating venues. It also promises a more exclusively contemporary focus and programming themes along the lines of energy and sustainability.

Most Houston gallerists I talked two believe both fairs' sustainability stands a better chance if, in future years, they hit the George R. Brown the same weekend.