Piece by Piece: How to Collect Art Part II

John Nichols and Jackson Wheeler talking about ‘How to Collect Art” at the Museum of Ventura County on Saturday afternoon, January 26 for a capacity crowd of avid art lovers.  The Ventura County Star did a nice article.   Poets Phil Taggart and Marsha de la O were there along with photographers Lis Schwitters and Linda Peterson.  Lis asked if she could post my collecting tips on a web site.  I think she is going to post Jackson’s tips also.  We’ll trade links.  Here are the tips I passed out at the event.  I talked about the Slow Food movement and how I thought it applied to art collecting. Buy locally grown food, collect locally made art.  I’ll be working on developing the Slow Collecting Movement soon.  It is a movement that began right her in Ventura County in the mid-70s.  It is very big in Italy but has yet to really catch on in the place of its birth.  Jackson and I can not travel in Italy without being mobbed by avid Slow Collectors.  I guess no man is a prophet in his own county.   

 

21 Hot Collecting Tips For The New Millennium

“Collecting brings out that primitive instinct for the hunt in some of its devotees,

who stalk their prey with skill.” (Alicia Craig Faxon)

 

1.  Collect forward.  If you always look back on the art you could have bought­ in the past you might miss out on art you can collect today.

 

2.  If you collect works of art on paper have them matted to a standard frame size to avoid the cost of custom framing. (i.e. 11×14, 16×20, etc.)

 

3.  In buying older pieces try to examine them out of the frame.  The art just might be glued down to cardboard, drastically lowering the value.

 

4.  Carry a small magnifying glass.  Learn what a reproduction looks like and what halftone dots are. 

 

5.  Don’t go on Ebay after you have had a few glasses of wine.

 

6.  If you really want to collect art as an investment look at art that has a secondary market.  Can you resell it at auction?

 

7.  Rotate the art in your home.  Dedicate a closet or other space for the overflow.  Don’t let your art become wallpaper.

 

8.  Insist on all acid-free materials in framing.  Consider UV protective glass when needed.

 

9.  It is impossible to develop an encyclopedic collection so develop areas of interest or themes.  Concentrate on a particular medium or subject matter.  You can develop collections within your collection.

 

10.  Certain art styles go in and out of favor.  Remember Southwest?  Remember Dali lithographs?  Good local art can be timeless.

 

11.  Avoid “Special Occasion” art collecting.  If you only go out to buy art at the Christmas season your choices are going to be very limited.  Be on the lookout for what you like all year long and be ready to pounce.

 

12.  Have fun.

 

13.  Don’t worry about insurance or appraisals unless you want to.

 

14.  If you collect art of the quality that the Museum of Ventura County collects then you don’t have to worry what’s going to happen to all the art you collected after you die.  It can be donated to a museum.

 

15.  Join the Slow Collecting movement.  Contact me for details.

 

16.  Visit museums, visit galleries, visit artists’ studios.  See real art in person to develop your eye and taste.

 

17.  If you are a serious art collector try not to marry one. Two collectors in the same household can be dangerous.

 

18.  The time to buy art is when you see it.

 

19.  If your are an artist you can also be a collector.  Who do you think is going to buy your art if you don’t buy art?

 

20.  There is  “Rule of Three” in collecting.  Once you have 3 of anything you have a collection.  If you don’t want to start an owl collection then don’t buy that third one.

 

21.  Collecting art is really about the acquisition of skills not the acquisition of objects.  Each new piece of art you collect and live with over time aids in the quest to better appreciate and understand your own reality.  Make your art collecting a quest and not an obsession.

Piece by Piece: How to Collect Art

This year I was elected chair of the Fine Arts Committee of the Museum of Ventura County.  One of my photos is in the current exhibit which shows art the museum has collected since 2000.  31 artists are represented.  The museum is showing what it collects and encouraging individuals to also collect.  With that in mind local poet Jackson Wheeler and I were asked to talk about our collecting.  

From the museum newsletter, “On Saturday, January 26 at 2:00 p.m., meet two of Ventura County’s most intriguing private art collectors:  Jackson Wheeler and John Nichols.  They will bring pieces they treasure and share practical art collecting advice.”  The talk is titled Piece by Piece:  How to Collect Art.

Jackson and I were also asked to write short essays that were published in the exhibition catalog.  My essay follows.   

Collecting Thoughts

Hunting and gathering is in my genes.  My dad was a coin and stamp dealer so naturally I also collected coins and stamps.  I learned a lot of history and organizational skills.  When the jazz bug bit me I was 13 years old.  I left the coins and stamps behind and began to use my allowance and part time jobs to finance my record collecting.   I found the aesthetic experience of music much more powerful than the thrill of finding a buffalo nickel in change from the ice cream truck.  With records I was collecting the experience of the music and increasing my knowledge of the history and art of jazz. Also, there were all those big, wonderful 12 inch square album covers.  The first art I recall hanging on my teenage bedroom walls were some colorful abstract paintings used on the covers of Mose Allison’s records.

My mom eventually became concerned at how many records I was collecting.  One day she asked me, “What are you going to do when your tastes change?”  I knew from that moment on that I would need to take my own counsel when it came to what to collect and how much of it to collect.  In collecting jazz I needed to study the history of the medium and the style of the players and how that all fit into the context of the rest of society.  I made a lot of discoveries,  passed judgments and felt powerful emotions.  I learned that almost no one I knew had the slightest idea of what I was doing.  I ignored their rolled eyes and continued to listen to Charlie Parker, Mingus and Monk.  Incidentally, my taste in music has prevailed.  

The seeds of an art collector were  planted by coins and jazz.  They were then watered  by theater work in high school and then community theater and eventually by selling high fashion women’s shoes at Joseph Magnin all through college.  I married and moved from Ventura to the San Fernando Valley to complete school.  We had no money but for entertainment we started visiting galleries on La Cienega Blvd. on Monday nights.  I still don’t quite know how we did it but while I was still a college student and selling shoes, we  started buying art.  First it was a painting from a street fair.  Then it was a batik and then a lithograph.  

All that was over 35 years ago.  Massive amounts of art have been consumed since that time.  Now the most exciting additions to my collection are anonymous snapshots.  I still buy paintings, prints, photographs, folk art sculpture and books but nothing knocks me out like a great snapshot.   The snapshot.  I’m on a quest for the quotidian.  I’m following the way of the vernacular. 

Balloon and Bank on Main Street in Santa Paula

On Monday morning I came into work at the gallery about 7 am and was greeted by this photo op.

Dan Harding was photographing the balloon for a shot with the Clocktower in the background.  I chose to shoot from the other angle.  The balloon did not land but was brought to this site on a pickup and then inflated for the shot.  It was therered all the time.  I only had a short time to take photos and then it was deflated and moved to the Depot area for another shot.  I just saw a photo of the balloon at the depot on Flickr by someone else.  I gave the photo to Don Johnson at the Santa Paula Times and he will run it on Wed.   

 

After 30 Years I Finally Meet Lady Ostapeck

Back in the 70s I was a member of a group of photographers called the New Pictorialist Society.  Our mission was to save all the alternative photographic processes that were being lost.  We explored platinum and palladium, cyanotypes, bromoil transfer, gum bichromate, and even silver prints.  I became Curator of Exhibits and helped circulate portfolios of our members’ work and had an exhibit at the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard.  I joined the organization because I was a collector of Pictorialism.  I wanted to learn more about Pictorialism and I thought that membership in that organization would help me learn more about my collection.  I became hooked on the processes.  I had to learn to do them.  I eventually learned to make cyanotypes, platinum and palladium and gum bichromate.  All this helped me become the photographer I am today.  I met and went on photo trips with Warren Dowler, Ernie Theisen, Jim Cole, L. Murray Jamison and others.  I met enough of these photographers and collected enough photographs that I could eventually start my own gallery. 

   As I was circulating the photographs I came across the work of Lady Ostapeck.  You must visit her web site.  I added it to my Blogroll on the right.  She was so out of date.  She was so corny.  She was so primitive.  I loved her and I loved her work.  She dressed up people in clothing from her vast collection of vintage costumes.  She set a scene with pieces from her vast collection of props.  Then she asked that person to hold a pose for 20 seconds while she photographed them with her old camera with no shutter and a large sheet of film.   She would plant a thought in her subjects’ minds.  ”You are sitting by a window and looking at a knight riding a white horse up to your door.  He is riding with full armor on and his horse is white”.  The subject thought about that during the 20 second exposure.  She spent her early days as a negative retoucher so she came to know her craft.  

   After seeing her photographs it became my goal to visit her at her studio in Fly Creek, New York and have a portrait taken.  My wife Leslie and I had this as a life goal.  It was never to be.  One proposed trip to New York state might have included a pilgrimage to Fly Creek but that was not to be.  I thought about how I would like to be dressed and posed.  What I would I be thinking as I waited those 20 seconds to be exposed onto film.

   About four weeks ago I got a phone call from Lady Ostapeck.  ”Did I live anywhere near Venice, California?”  I figured that she must be coming out to my area for Photo LA.  That was right.  She would be at Photo LA and I told her about the Vernacular Show across the street from Photo LA.  I had a booth at the Vernacular Show.   She said she would visit me.

    I waited all day Saturday.  She finally showed up on Sunday afternoon.  She was with Nick from Troy, NY.  A great traveling pair.  Finally, after over 30 years I met Lady in person.  We had a great chin wag.  She was getting ready to turn 91.  I took her photo.  I took our photo.  I handed her my digital camera and asked her to take my picture.  I had always wanted to have my portrait taken by Lady Ostapeck of Fly Creek, New York.  She had never use a digital camera. Nick helped her to know to look at the little screen.  He thought that this photo was amazing.  Lady had always resisted digital and had never taken a digital photograph.  So…here we have it.  For the first time, a digital photograph by Lady Ostapeck and it is of John Nichols.  

    

Santa Monica Vernacular Show

On Jan. 12/13 I set up an 8 foot table at the first annual Vernacular Show at the Santa Monica airport.  We were across the street from PhotoLA.  I was selling snapshots, painted press photos from the 1940s, photos of ice boxes and a few dead bodies.  It was busy from 10 to 6 both days.  I hope it will occur again next year as I met a lot of old friends and new people who did not know about the John Nichols Gallery or Santa Paula.  I got seriously interested in the area of snapshots and vernacular about 10 years ago and have collected a lot of great material in the gallery that I now am able to take on the road.

Work- The Art of Labor – Photographs by John Nichols

In November and December 2007 John Nichols and Gail Pidduck exhibited their art at the John Nichols Gallery.  Here is one image titled Shovel in Greenhouse.

Work- The Art of Labor – Paintings by Gail Pidduck

“The Workbench” In November and December of 2007 Gail Pidduck and John Nichols exhibited work at the John Nichols Gallery.  Here is one of the images. 

Testing uploading of photos

Trying an image at 420 pixels wide. The Watchtower.

Hello world!

Jeremy, what have you gotten me into?  I’ll just screw around a bit to get familiar with the process.