You haunt gallery openings and art fairs, and you’re eager to get some art on your own walls. Unfortunately, you’re on a tight budget — not an art collectors’ “budget” of several thousand (or million!) dollars, but a regular Joe’s couple hundred bucks — and your taste is more Bacon or Banksy than Bed Bath & Beyond. What to do? You could save up for years to buy one expensive piece, or you could start small right now, collecting carefully selected, affordable works.
The Affordable Art Fair, running June 12–15 in New York, offers a place to start, with an unintimidating atmosphere and more than 70 international galleries offering pieces priced as low as $100. But even if you miss the fair, you can still surround yourself with cheap art that appears to be anything but. According to the art-world insiders ARTINFO chatted up, you just have to know where to look.
Here are some of their most useful tips and lots of places to start your search:
Thinking Outside the (White) Box
To start, “try to visit alternative art spaces and galleries that aren’t in Chelsea,” recommends Tricia Wimmer, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based Pink Elephant Projects gallery.
Some of the coolest finds and best prices will turn up where you might least expect. Pink Elephant Projects, for example, offers limited edition prints as low as $30. But to find them you’ll have to go where few galleries have gone before: the Clinton/Washington stop on the G train in the Clinton Hill neighborhood.
“We’re not about selling art in a museum setting or on white-box gallery walls,” Wimmer says. “We’re committed to showing underrepresented artists and giving people a hands-on experience of seeing art.”
You’re more likely to find bargains by frequenting dealers committed to supporting newer artists, a goal that goes hand-in-hand with off-the-beaten-path galleries. Small art blogs and Web sites with the same aim, such as Etsy.com, are also good places to look.
“It doesn’t have to cost $100,000 to be good,” says Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy, a site offering hundreds of thousands of artworks and other handmade items, many with a price tag of less than $100. “Our big goal is to enable people to make a living making things. There are probably artists on the site whose work will be very collectible in 10 years, but it’s more about what art should be about: surrounding yourself with work that you want to see and experience in your everyday life. It’s great to know you’re supporting the artists, too.”
Start Small
Another point to consider: Bigger isn’t always better. Smaller-scale artworks tend to make less of a dent in the wallet, but can still pack a punch on your wall.
“If you really like an artist, but the bigger pieces you see are out of your range, ask if there are any smaller works available,” says Cris McCall, director of the Hollywood, California-based Tinlark gallery, which specializes in affordable art and offers lots of diminutive pieces.
Says Wimmer, “Even a small original piece speaks louder than a giant poster from Target over the couch.”
Buy Direct
Of course, some of the best prices can be had by going straight to the source. Get to know the artist, and you’re more likely to get a deal, too.
“Find art walks and open studio events in your area where you’ll have the chance to meet artists and buy directly from them,” McCall says.
She also recommends MFA shows and school Web sites. “Graduating artists are affordable and keen to sell their work,” she says. “If you see a piece you like, call the school—they should be happy to pass along your information to the artist.”
Here are some other places to start building your collection:
The Affordable Art Fair, June 12-15
The Altman Building/Metropolitan Pavilion, 135 West 18th Street, Manhattan
aafnyc.com
The Affordable Art Fair runs in six cities throughout the year, but this is your only chance to catch it in the United States — other locations are Bristol, London, Sydney, Melbourne, and Amsterdam. The New York fair includes galleries from the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada, and South America, and lots of original artworks, many with price tags that won’t make you hyperventilate. It’s also a good place to familiarize yourself with a wide range of contemporary artists and dealers.
Pink Elephant Projects
64 Washington Ave., Brooklyn
pepgallery.com
Tricia Wimmer and Joe Weiner started exhibiting art from little-known artists out of their Fort Greene and Clinton Hill apartments in 2006, and they also created a Web site to showcase and sell those works. A year later, the site and their apartments were seeing so much action they decided to open a brick-and-mortar gallery. Pink Elephant Projects now mounts an exhibition about every five weeks and has participated in various art fairs, but it still retains the scrappy community feel it was founded with. It also still offers a variety of cool pieces starting as low as $30 (check out Jashar Awan’s limited-edition silkscreens) and features a section on its Web site called ArtMart that is dedicated to affordable art.
Charming Wall
191 West 4th Street, New York
charmingwall.com
This little gallery, standing alone amid the tattoo and novelty shops in New York’s West Village, offers a curated selection of quirky, wonderful, open-edition prints that never go above $80 — and that includes framing and matting, too! How does Charming Wall maintain such affordable prices? The owners are in the boutique printing business, so production costs are minimal, and the gallery maintains personal relationships with all its artists who approve each print, according to gallery director Katie McClenahan. The prints are available online, too, and the gallery also has a small monthly exhibition of original art priced anywhere from $50 to a few thousand per work. “We’re trying to get up-and-coming artists out there and provide affordable art for the masses,” McClenahan says. Less than a year old, Charming Wall has already attracted media attention from the likes of New York magazine and DailyCandy.
Etsy
etsy.com
Rob Kalin dropped out of art school and founded Etsy in 2005, with the goal of helping people make a living by making things. The result is an addictive online marketplace where you can buy anything from original artworks to handmade jewelry and clothing. According to Kalin, art is the third most popular category on the site and accounts for 10 percent of Etsy’s overall sales. “This is about the idea that art is a craft,” Kalin says. Etsy’s selection isn’t curated, so quality is hit or miss and it can be time-consuming to page through its thousands of offerings, but the site features some great finds, such as Valerie Galloway’s small hand-toned vintage-look original photographs with metal frames, which start at only $45.
Tinlark
6671 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, Calif.
tinlark.com
ARTINFO stumbled across this little gem during this year’s Armory week at the satellite fair Red Dot. “Carefully curated, affordable art — that’s what I do,” gallery director Cris McCall told us, and she has the prices — starting at $25! — and selection to prove it. If you can’t make it to Hollywood, look for Tinlark online or at smaller art fairs.
McCall recommends works by Drew Beckmeyer, Kirsten Tradowsky, Wesley Younie, Nathaniel Klein, and Nancy Baker Cahill, whose pieces sell in the $200 to $300 range. “Their pieces are compositionally exciting, super well executed, conceptually smart and funny,” she says.
Also keep your eyes open for Brooks Salzwedel’s haunting graphite, tape, and resin landscapes that start around $275, some of our favorite works at Red Dot.
Tiny Showcase
tinyshowcase.com
True to its name, the four-year-old Web site Tiny Showcase showcases prints that are, well, tiny. You can sign up for their newsletter and snatch up a limited-edition piece each Tuesday for minimal dough — from around $20 to $100 — but you have to be nimble; the works usually go within hours. Imagine covering an entire wall with these exquisite little pieces: Each one is printed with archival paper and ink, but the best part is that a percentage from each work sold goes to a charity of the artist’s choice. - By Jacquelyn Lewis
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