(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Vita Brevis Fine Art is a local gallery specializing in portraiture for children and families. Their website’s review page is filled with glowing five-star reviews. But one local woman has a different story to tell.
After responding to an ad on Facebook, Michelle Gallegos was contacted by a woman at Vita Brevis Fine Art. She called FOX21 after her interaction with the gallery, to tell us she’d been the victim of a scam.
The woman at the gallery told Gallegos that she’d won an 18″ print of her daughter as a fairy in one of their garden photoshoots. It was supposedly worth $2500. “She was like, ‘Hey, you applied for this and you won!'” Gallegos said. “And I said, “Wow, I’ve never won anything. That’s pretty cool.”
“She called me all excited about it,” Gallegos continued. “Then she explained I’d have to put down $250 to hold the appointment—which is obviously a red flag.”
Gallegos decided to wait on the offer. She hung up the phone and called her sister, who told her not to do anything yet. “She said, Don’t pay for anything until I do my due diligence,” Gallegos said. “And then she sends me that post from Reddit.”
The Reddit post her sister found contained posts by scores of people who had claimed they had been scammed by the same gallery—and their stories all sounded very similar to the experience Gallegos had.
“It was almost, like, embarrassing that I had won,” Gallegos said.
The Vita Brevis Fine Art website includes a cancellation policy that reads: We block out our studio and staff for two hours for every appointment; this is why we collect a $250 session reservation fee for all portrait sessions. This policy is to ensure that we are booking serious and committed clients. The fee is fully refundable on the day of your session as long as you show up for your appointment.
The name “Vita Brevis” is half of the Latin phrase ars longa, vita brevis, which can be translated as “life is short, art is forever” or “skilfulness takes time and life is short.”
We have reached out to the gallery for a comment and are waiting to hear back.
