The Artistic Process
I’m what you might call an art idiot. I’ve never purchased an original piece; I don’t know how to pronounce curator (“CURE-a-tor?” “Cur-A-tor?”). But on this trip to New York City,I’m going to get a crash course in the art world and buy something incredible for my grandmother. Because I’m too much of an idiot to be intimidated.
© MALCOLM BROWN
I didn’t grow up appreciating art. Politics? Yes. Religion? Sure. But not art. My parents weren’t art aficionados, and though they took me to see the major museums when we traveled, I was usually more interested in spotting cute boys than masterpieces. I went to a state university (go Gators!) where I took not a single art class. And now that I’m all adult and a Mrs. and a mom, our Atlanta home is decorated in framed prints and mirrors. Mirrors make a 1930s bungalow appear bigger inside, you know.
But I wouldn’t be so humble as to say I’ve never been good at art myself. When I was growing up in Orlando, I took classes at a local art center, and my teacher once chose me to be a student judge at an art fair — hey hey! When I wrote stories (which was all the time), I often illustrated them with doodles that weren’t halfbad. I’m not sure why I didn’t pursue fine arts after the sixth grade, but I didn’t, which means I didn’t take after my grandmother.
In my hometown, Nana is considered an important figure in the arts. She sat on the boards of regional art centers, and, over the course of a few decades, collected nearly 30 original works, including a lithograph by Philip Pearlstein and a serigraph by Victor Vasarely. Her tastes aren’t anything like my friends’ grandmothers. You won’t find sweet, framed quotes hanging on her walls; instead, there are nudes and big white canvases with tiny shapes in the middle. She buys pieces because she loves them. And that love, it turns out, comes with a nice payoff — a recent appraisal valued her collection at more than $66,000, with some pieces having more than doubled in value since she bought them. Not bad for a granny.
So this year, I’m going to buy Nana a piece of art for Christmas. I’m going to learn everything I can about contemporary art in my quest to find something special to add to her collection. Nothing too expensive (I’m on a freelance writer’s budget, after all), nothing too big or heavy (I’m pregnant, and I’m not a masochist) and, above all, nothing too cutesy for her sophisticated tastes. I already have a New York City shopping trip on my calendar. While I’m there, I figure I’ll round up the art world, demand information, get the whole art-buying process figured out and fly home with a gorgeous piece for Nana tucked safely away in my carry-on. A one-of-a-kind gift. No problem, right?
Before I left for New York, I called up some artsy-smartsies and created a guide for myself to better understand the whole art-buying process and who’s who within it. I figured if I can’t look like an art guru (horn-rimmed glasses, tight ponytail, all-black wardrobe… not for me), I might as well be able to talk like one.
Robin Starr, an art historian and director of American and European works at Skinner Auctioneers & Appraisers in Boston, first explains to me what a dealer is — anyone who’s a middleman between an artist and a collector. Dealers may work on commission or retainer. A gallerist is a type of dealer who has a gallery retail space open to the public. Some gallerists cater to investment buyers, while others would be horrified at the idea of someone purchasing a piece just to flip it. (Though with the economy being what it is, there’s not a whole lot of “flipping” going on — as with the housing market, it’s a good time for buyers, not sellers. Lucky me.) Gallerists help artists get their work out in front of the public and, in exchange, they typically pocket half the sale price. Most of the artists I spoke with said they’d love to have a gallery represent them, but it’s like beauty queens hoping for crowns: the supply is way higher than the demand.
Next I call Allison Wade-Wermager, a New York artist and the friend of a friend who’s agreed to give me a few pointers as I plan my journey. This girl is what you’d call educated. BFA from Iowa State University, Master of Education from University of New Mexico, MFA from Cornell. She’s now a tenure-track assistant professor of photography at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, which means her finances are stable — but, she laments during our conversation, her own photography work is trembling from neglect. I ask her about the role that gallerists play in the art world, and she sighs. They’re important, she says, and she’d jump at the chance to have one show her work, but who has the time or stamina to seek their big break? “I don’t think a lot of galleries ever look at the submissions they receive,” she says. So what does she tell her college seniors hoping to become full-time artists when they graduate? “Be persistent, network… and maybe go to school and get another degree.”
When I mention Wade-Wermager’s thoughts to another gallerist — Meg Harrington, co-owner of Huff Harrington Fine Art in Atlanta — she agrees that the road to artistic success can be treacherously steep. But, she reminds me, dealers and gallerists aren’t the only ones with the power to give artists a lift. In fact, curators (people who gather art for museums or institutions) may be able to propel them even higher. “To an artist, being selected for a museum exhibit is a huge boon — it’s sort of the pinnacle,” she says. And while most artists with works on display in museums have gallery representation, it’s not a given or a requirement.
Another heavyweight in the art world is the critic. Ah, the power of the pen. While a glowing review can skyrocket an artist’s career, everyone I asked said even a negative review can be beneficial — just like with B-list celebs, all press is good press.
Then, of course, there are collectors — the people with a love for art and the dough to buy it. Some hire “advisors” to scour the market for pieces that might work for them; others choose everything themselves. Serious collectors are a coddled bunch. For example, Bridgette Mayer, owner of Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia, tells me that she gives her top collectors sneak peeks of her new exhibits so they can snatch the best pieces first. “We definitely take care of them,” she says.
I’ve landed in New York. My guide is tucked inside my purse and my scribble notebook is in my hand. I’m standing on West 24th Street in Chelsea, the capital of contemporary art. As little as I know about the art world, I understand this much: I’m not going to be able to afford a blasted thing around here. I’m just trying to get a sense of context before I start earnestly hunting for Nana’s gift.
I step inside Barbara Gladstone, a chic gallery if there ever was one. Lofty ceilings, pristine white walls, cracked cement floors that echo with every step. In business since 1979, Gladstone has established her gallery as one of New York’s premier, and the giant Lari Pittman paintings hanging on her walls dazzle me with their kaleidoscopic effects. “How much is this piece?” I ask staffer Caroline Luce out of curiosity, pointing at one entitled Assembly. “I can’t really say,” she replies. New York galleries are notoriously hush-hush about their prices being public information, and I’m guessing the fact I’m scribbling in my notebook isn’t helping.
I nod, click-clack my way to the exit and head a block up the street to Gagosian, one of the most esteemed galleries in the world. Unlike at Gladstone, where I was the only visitor, the entryway to this place is logjammed with people. When I make my way inside, I understand why. Looming before me is a 75-foot-tall, curving maze of steel by Richard Serra. Sweeping around the space, sometimes at perilous angles, it’s a jaw-dropping behemoth whose price tag the Gagosian staff declined to share with the likes of me.
Hoping to edge a bit closer to my price point (full disclosure: It’s no more than $300), I walk to Mixed Greens, an anti-gallery-turned-gallery whose owners used to only sell online, then opened a traditional space to give their artists visibility among Chelsea’s upper crust. Shockingly, Mixed Greens lists their prices online, which range from a few hundred dollars to well into the six figures. “The art world doesn’t like transparency; it’s always been somewhat elitist,” art director Steven Sergiovanni tells me. “We’re trying to break that down.” What a relief. I browse the gallery for Nana’s gift, but nothing in my price range calls my name. (As hip as Nana is, I’m not quite sure she’s hip enough for a spray paint collage.) That’s OK — I still have time.
From Mixed Greens, I take the subway to Christie’s in Rockefeller Plaza. They’re holding a photography auction today, and since their auctions are free and open to the public, I’m curious to see what it’s like. From the elegant lobby, a red-carpeted flight of stairs leads to the auction room, where I survey the landscape. People dressed in business attire sit in rows facing the front, while Christie’s workers man booths on either side of the room, whispering the auction’s happenings to clients over the phone. Up front, Director of 20th Century Decorative Art and Photographs Philippe Garner shows photographs for sale on a large screen and juggles bids from the audience, the phone whisperers, online bidders and absentee bidders who submitted their offers ahead of time. With his silver hair and British accent, Garner is exactly how I pictured a Christie’s auctioneer, and the prices he names are also what I imagined — the lowest bid of the day starts at $1,375. At one point, a private collector snatches up a set of five Ansel Adams photographs for $242,500. Sorry, Nana, couldn’t hack that one for you.
The day is growing late, but I still want to go to the Lower East Side and experience a few gallery openings. Home to more than 60 art venues, this part of town is where the hipsters hang out, and I figure I might as well take my pregnant, Southern self and try to fit in. But I need a guide to help me navigate these foreign waters: Enter Alli Miller. Miller has never known what it’s like to be an artist when the economy was booming, she tells me as we sip coffee in the heart of “LES.” (See? I’m even picking up the lingo.) She studied art at The Cooper Union in New York, graduated in 2008 and formed an artist collective called DADDY with some of her classmates. From Day One, they’ve all had day jobs — Miller is a graphic designer — and worked on their art in a Brooklyn studio at night. Their shtick is making functional objects (a pedestal, for example) for nontraditional functions (sitting, in the case of said pedestal); they’ve shown their work everywhere from abandoned hotels to grain mills, pricing them from $20 to $2,000. DADDY has lofty goals: Its members want to quit their 9-to-5s, be a part of the greater artistic dialogue, open a museum. But for now, they work vampire hours and subsist on caffeine and packaged soup. “I’m trying to put under-eye circles into fashion,” Miller laughs.
After we drain our cups, she takes me to two openings — one at White Box, the other at DODGEgallery. The scruffy attendees drink wine (ah, I remember those days), stand in circles and talk about the pieces, which range from a sculpture made of globs of paint to an oil portrait of Chairman Mao. At DODGE, I’m able to snag a price sheet from an office desk, where I’m dismayed to see there’s nothing even remotely within my range. Clearly these hipster artists aren’t going hungry. But I refuse to slow down — I will find something.
Over the next few days, I hustle the streets of New York — hobnobbing with gallerists, grabbing lunch with artists — asking everyone the same question: Where does a first-time collector on a budget (i.e. moi) find good art? To my great relief, their suggestions are plentiful: art fairs, nonprofit benefits, street-art booths, galleries selling the works of emerging artists. They also suggest visiting neighborhoods where lots of artists live (Tribeca, the West Village, DUMBO), knocking on doors and asking what they have for sale. Several of these artist “colonies” hold studio tours a few times a year, and it’s a great time to find a deal.
Which brings me to my next inevitable question: How do I know whether something’s a deal? My naïveté makes me pretty easy to take advantage of. Jim Hedges, a New Yorkbased financial advisor to the art world, says he assesses the value of a piece by looking at whether the artist is represented by a leading gallery, collected by top museums, has work that has sold well at auction and also whether the work is indicative of the artist’s style.
Unfortunately, for the emerging artists I may be able to afford, it’s a lot harder to judge. But everyone I ask says the most reliable equation I can follow is “time plus materials equals price.” The longer something took to make/the larger it is/the more expensive the material, the more it’s gonna cost me. And there’s really no telling whether a piece will one day pay for itself. “Go with what you love,” Sergiovanni advises me. “We all hope work will increase in value, but with emerging artists you do take a chance.”
Craig Anthony Miller is glad some people decided to take a chance on him; he remembers the years before anyone did. I meet him in his Brooklyn studio, and he leans back into his couch as he tells me his story. From 1996 to 2006, if you walked along West Broadway in the heart of SoHo, you’d pass him doing his best to sell his paintings. The self-described “urban expressionist” sold his works — which fuse the styles of graphic art and graffiti — for as low as $25. A handful of locals who liked his stuff asked him to do pop-up shows in their bars, restaurants and hair salons, and he always obliged. “I’d show in a bathroom if I was invited to,” he laughs. By the end of 2006, he’d saved enough money to rent a studio in DUMBO, a Brooklyn neighborhood popular with emerging artists. He just hoped to sell enough paintings to cover his overhead; he didn’t dare dream he would become the area’s brightest star.
In 2007, a popular DUMBO gastropub called reBar asked him to create a mural for its wall, and soon after, Pedro’s Restaurant down the street commissioned him to cover its entire exterior with his art. “From there, it started to snowball,” Miller says. He spearheaded an artist collective that painted a huge mural on Water Street, one of the area’s main thoroughfares. Then, in the same neighborhood, he opened his very own art store, reInspire Brooklyn. He sells his paintings for a little more than he used to, and now he has a new kind of client — collectors. “People seem to be interested in what I’m doing and where I’m heading,” he tells me.
On the advice of a family friend who heard about my hunt, I make an appointment to visit an artist named Melodie Provenzano in her Harlem studio. “When I was 3, I won a coloring contest,” Provenzano tells me as we sip juice on her sofa. “That sealed my fate.” After she graduated high school upstate in Valatie, NY, she moved to the city to earn her BFA at Parsons School of Design. She found work painting window displays for Saks Fifth Avenue, eventually catching the eye (and the payroll) of design powerhouses like Hermes and Donna Karan. All the while, she came home at night and set up intricate still-life scenes to sketch or paint.
In 2008, 12 years after she finished college, Michael Lyons Wier, owner of the prestigious Lyons Wier Gallery, deemed Provenzano a fresh talent and signed on to represent her. Next year, she’ll unveil a solo show at his gallery’s new location across the street from the Gagosian. “It’s a big deal for me,” Provenzano says, smiling broadly.
And this, dear readers, is where I officially turn in my dunce hat and buy my first original piece. As I walk around Provenzano’s studio, I spot a pencil drawing of a little girl lying down, holding a rabbit. Something about her expression is sweet, but also sad. “That’s a figurine I drew on very cool colored paper [artist] James Siena gave me to play with,” Provenzano says. “I like objects that have an inherent personality.” I nod and continue walking around, looking at her other works. But as if pulled by some invisible tether, I return to the drawing. “Would you sell this?” I ask her, holding my breath. She says she will, and names a price I can actually afford. Without hesitation, I write her a check, and she carefully wraps the drawing for me. “This makes me so happy!” she says as she folds tissue around it. “It’s like the little girl in the picture is going to college.”
Perhaps I’ll give her and her rabbit an education in politics. Or religion. Or mommyhood. But I’ll never forget that it was she who gave me my very first diploma in art education.
Reader Comments
- Allison, You'll need to come see the art galleries and artists in the mountains of NC sometime. You won't believe the talent closer to your home.
(Posted on 01 Dec 2011)
- What a great story! Interesting, informative ... I am slammed at work today, and skimmed the first few paragraphs with every intention of finishing it later - but I couldn't stop reading without knowing if she found something for her grandma!! Glad she did :-)
Juliet Pennington from North Attleboro, Mass. (Posted on 02 Dec 2011)
- Excellent! I could practically hear Allison telling this story in her beautiful, comfortably southern voice, but even better, I - an art idiot myself - learned so much! Thank you, Allison and AirTran/Go Magazine. (Posted on 02 Dec 2011)
- This woman is a great writer.... really funny....
(Posted on 13 Dec 2011)
- Hey....great story and soo, sooo true. Wonderful to hear from and Orlando person!!!
Susan, Winter Park, FL (Posted on 13 Dec 2011)
- As a pencil artist, I'm really glad to see that there are people who do appreciate this medium! (Posted on 05 Jan 2012)
- Fellow art idiot here, but an art lover, too. The art I own was being shown in an eatery in SLO, Ca. Those images stayed in my mind for six months until I could make a purchase. So glad I did.
(Posted on 07 Jan 2012)
