The paradox of getting started Collecting art Part One by Duane Snider

Guest Writer

Part One:

The paradox of getting started Collecting art

in Portland

by Duane Snider

the Loral and Hardy Trees

by Michael Orwick

12x24 oils on canvas

SOLD

Collectors, gallery owners and artists will tell you that Portland is one of the best places in North America to buy and collect art.
The Portland art scene abounds with original art in the broadest range of styles, genres and prices. Legions of talented and committed artists choose to live in the area for its natural beauty and the diversity of a thriving culture.
Michael Kenna, the internationally renowned California photographer, just moved here from San Francisco because it's allowed him to dramatically cut his housing and studio costs. He's far from alone. And it's an abundance of such talent that provides Portland with a market of fine art to please every imaginable taste with prices that can easily fit into most budgets.
As a collector, I believe art should be an easy sell to the locals in this highly accessible, culturally rich scene. But it's not.
Local gallery owners tell me close to 60 percent of the art they sell goes to people who don't live here. They come from places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Miami – even Seattle and Tacoma.
Why? Because we have the quality and diversity of most big cities along with some of the best prices in the country.
My collecting history started in 1982 when a friend opened an art gallery in an old remodeled house. She invited me to stop by and look around. She said it wasn't like most of those pretentious downtown galleries. "It's in a house that's easy to just hang out in," she said.
At the time I was barely above the poverty line and had never thought about spending more than $30 for a poster to tack on the wall. So when I finally visited my friend's gallery, I wasn't expecting anything special to happen.
I ambled through this unusual combination of art gallery, craft gallery and jewelry shop. The character of the old house was the core concept for the gallery's design and the place offered a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere.
Drifting past a kaleidoscopic array of paintings, sculptures, jewelry, clay pots and plates, my senses tingled. I don't think I had ever been in an art gallery before. A painting hanging above the front window of the gallery grabbed my attention.
Time stopped.
Rendered in the atmospheric translucence of watercolor was the most beautiful flower I could ever remember seeing. The central image was a white iris with purple highlights and nearly photographic clarity flanked by softly focused foliage. Everything I thought I knew about art changed in a moment. I understood the virtue of a unique, handmade object.
This painting was more than just an image, more than simply an object of beauty. It was also a symbol of something much greater. I stood motionless.
"You know," a voice from behind suddenly said, "we have a very easy layaway plan."
I was hooked.
That moment turned into one of those life-altering experiences forever etched in my mind. The feeling was like my first sunset at the beach, my first taste of ice cream, my first kiss from a beautiful girl and my first symphony concert. Once bitten, forever smitten.
"Foolish Pleasure," by Kirk Lybecker (watercolor with airbrush). [Photo by Todd Leninger with artist's consent]
The painting, by Kirk Lybecker, was priced at $450 – a huge sum to me at that time, but my desire for the piece overwhelmed me.
I feared my wife, Linda, would think I was crazy if I suggested buying something as useless as a painting. But her passion for drawing and painting went all the way back to her childhood.
To my surprise, she loved the idea. We scraped together $100 to put down and paid $60 to $100 a month until it was paid off. Then we bought another painting by the same artist.
Well, 22 years later, we have more than 80 works by at least 50 different artists adorning our modest southeast Portland home.
The help I received buying that first piece was truly fortunate and necessary. I needed guidance through the barriers that block many people from making their first art purchase. Looking back, I understand that the first piece was the most difficult to buy.
I thought I couldn't afford fine art. I needed justification for spending that much money on an object of such subjective value. I feared I didn't have the knowledge or experience to make good judgments about what I wanted. I felt intimidated by the abstract nature of what constituted quality art.
People with art savvy know that the work shown in Portland galleries and artists' studios holds up well to art sold anywhere else in the nation. I learned this as I continued to buy more art and built relationships with gallery owners, artists and other collectors.
I became a regular at many gallery openings and previews. I started meeting visitors from all around the country who came here to take in the galleries with the intention of buying. Talking with many of these visiting art lovers gave me a window into the art markets of other cities. The more I learned, the more I came to appreciate the opportunities Portland offered for collecting great art on a modest budget.
Portland has art for almost anyone willing to take the time to look.
Some galleries cater to people with a taste for decorative and representational work. Others are geared toward contemporary themes like abstract, conceptual, minimal and other statement-oriented work. Regionally prominent and nationally known artists show here as well as emerging talent from all over the country.
High quality, broad diversity and abundant supply result in a market much larger than one might expect from a town this size. All collectors love great values; Portland has them in spades. Locally, the value issue doesn't receive much attention. It's just taken for granted by those familiar with the scene.
Many established Portland galleries spend time and money building clientele in markets outside our region. The top-tier galleries buy advertising in high-profile art publications to promote their best known and most talented artists. Ads from Portland galleries appear regularly in ArtNews, Art In America and Art & Antiques.
The Portland art scene has a national reputation as a destination art market and brings in substantial amounts of money from people coming here to buy. Unfortunately, relatively few local residents take advantage of this opportunity.
For years the local gallery community has debated the reasons for this situation.
Some say Portland (and, to some extent, the rest of Oregon) is anti-business. For example, Nike is the only Fortune 500 company in the state, so there are few highly compensated corporate executives here to solicit. Some say the money here is old money and these materially blessed community members do spend on art, but there's only so much from this group to go around. Still others just throw up their hands and say, the locals just don't get it.
A recent article in the Oregonian by D.K. Row mentioned that many local galleries have grown tired of expending energy on First Thursday. Frustration grows as, month after month, thousands of people attend these events but very little gets sold at openings. These events have succeeded in raising the awareness of the local community to the presence of an art scene, but that's just one of many steps needed to cultivate new collectors.
From my years of collecting and nurturing my knowledge of art in the Portland market, I see a need for some new strategies. The barriers I had to overcome when I bought my first piece also hold back many others from making their first art purchase.
This might be a good time for taking a fearless inventory on just what these barriers might be.

Special thanks again go out to Duane Snider the art counselor

http://www.theartcounselor.com/index.html

To see some of the artwork and the article in its original context please visit

http://theartcounselor.com/articleseven.html

You Probably Know More About Art Than You Realize

by Duane Snider

Open up an issue of ArtNews or Art In America and you find endless jargon, obscure references, and highly subjective criticism. For anyone outside the elite group of market makers, the initial response to this kind of material is "What the hell is this?". Many critics in local newspapers are just as bad, regardless of the purity of their intent.

Sun Fall by michael Orwick

oils on canvas 11x14 SOLD

It always starts the same, like a reoccurring dream. A casual conversation with a very casual acquaintance or a complete stranger turns to the subject of owning original art. I mention my decades of collecting and ask if they own any art. All too often the answer is "No, that's not thing. I really don't know anything about art and I wouldn't know what to buy".
In a recent repeat of the scenario I tried a different follow up than my stock comeback of "Oh, you should think about buying some because it will change the way you look at art and the world." Instead, I made a pitch I've recently been thinking about. I said "you probably know more about art than you realize."
"Ok," she said, "I'm listening, what do you mean?" The hook was set, now I had to give her a clear and convincing argument to back up my brash statement. I began to deliver a brief outline on why she knew more about art than she gave herself credit for.
For starters we live in a society and culture that is awash with an endless stream of art in all possible mediums and styles. It is almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning, turn on the TV, the internet, or open a newspaper and not see some form of artistic expression.
This exposure shapes our perceptions of art which in turn shapes and molds our understanding of artistic imagery. In very classic terms this is what the philosophers, historians, and art critics might refer to as plastic experience.
In the academic world, the visual arts of painting, sculpture, and fine prints are called the plastic arts. In this context, plastic refers to the capacity for shaping and molding a medium. Traditionally, classic use of the phrase refers to sculptural mediums like clay, marble and glass. By the mid-twentieth century the meaning had expanded to include painting and fine prints. An examination of the plastic nature inherent if various mediums offers an excellent starting point for viewing and responding to art.
The Artist shapes and manipulates a medium to capture an idea, a message, or an insight for the purpose of finding a connection between the inner self and the environment. After completion of a piece the artist may offer the work for viewing by others.
With the display of a work of art comes the inevitable audience response and interpretation. Simply looking at works of art produces a reaction and response from the viewer.
The active viewer tries to find an inner connection with a piece of art during the viewing in a manner that correlates with the connection the artist strives for during the act of creation. The passive viewer will also react to art, but with a lower level of interest and commitment.
Regardless of the individual level of interest, the observer responds and in the process adds layer upon layer of context for interpreting art on a personal level. We all do it whether we choose to focus our attention or not.
When I frame art appreciation in this way, people who tell me they don't know or understand art get curious and engaged in the idea of viewing and responding to art. They think that maybe their view of art might have as much validity as anyone else's view, and of course, it does.
I remember noticing art at a very young age. A thick catalogue of Currier & Ives reproductions, the life-like painting of Glenn Miller on the cover of an album of glass 78 speed records, and the paint-by-numbers still life and landscape pictures my mother had hanging on the walls all had an impact on how I viewed artist imagery.
As a child I read countless issues of various comic books. They became an early addiction. Over the years I've seen my fascination with comics validated as they evolved into the present day graphic novel. Graphic stories defiantly shaped my appreciation of the entertainment potential art offers.
Consider the common thread most of us have with these kinds of experiences. We shape and mold our interpretation of art by integrating these visual experiences into our personal spheres of awareness. The process of growing an appreciation of art is as plastic as the act of creating art.
So, the question is, why do so many people believe they know so little about art? There are no easy answers. However, religious, cultural and corporate special interest groups have designs on controlling what people believe they know about art.
In the USA, corporate marketing groups manipulate the public's perception of art. The people who sell the high end original art only target the top eight to ten percent of the population for marketing their merchandize.
The big money interests in American art want to keep firm control of the market. The easiest control method is to confuse the issues and obscure any process that might help the public understand why art is relevant and important to our lives.
Most of what is written about art today is meant only for people in the cultural trades, that is, those in cultural institutions or in the business of selling art. Of course the high end collectors are part of that group, they drive the market. In the securities business the operative term is "Market Makers".
Open up an issue of ArtNews or Art In America and you find endless jargon, obscure references, and highly subjective criticism. For anyone outside the elite group of market makers, the initial response to this kind of material is "What the hell is this?". Many critics in local newspapers are just as bad, regardless of the purity of their intent.
It's no wonder people don't believe they can understand, or have an interest in original fine art. The kind of dialogue that nurtures or validates the esthetic context most of us acquire from everyday experience is conspicuous only by its absence, and is missing from the general public discourse on art.
Instead the public gets this incessant subtext of "Don't trust your instinct you developed with experience, let us tell you what you should consider relevant. We'll tell you what to buy". That's the message for the art market's target audience. For the rest of the public get a message like "If you don't get it, get lost".
Even culturally savvy people get conned by sharp salespeople. Gullibility is not a measure of how much or how little people understand about the various artistic manifestations that hold meaning for them.
That understanding is about the connections made between a lifetime of visual imagery and personal identity. It requires the effort necessary for developing a sense or personal curiosity and a desire to follow that path wherever it leads.
As for the art business, even some people in the trade don't completely understand the significance of the role they play in guiding people on that path.
If we gave the general public just a little more basic information about what constitutes original art and then left them alone to discover personal meaning and relevance, I believe more people would recognize the cheap imitations and demand the genuine article.
The "plastic arts" is an archaic term that offers some insights into contemporary dilemma of understanding art in the context of the culture we live in. The artist shapes and molds a chosen medium to communicate ideas. The perception, response, and understanding of the viewer is shaped and molded by life's visual smorgasbord and by external forces intended to influence the process. Free will and internal awareness guide us to the meaning and relevance that art offers to all who take the time to look and reflect.
It's all very plastic.

Special thanks to Duane Snider
The Art Counselor
http://www.theartcounselor.com/

All the best,

Michael Orwick

www.michaelorwick.com