Art that sells

Holiday Treasures art center exhibit offers accessible art

 

By Steve Arney
sarney@pantagraph.com

At the McLean County Arts Center, the walls, floor displays and jewelry cases are again lined with artwork as the holiday gift season brings buyers and the work of 90 artists to the center's biggest sale of the year.

This is the place for work that is accessible.

The experimental works, art that pushes edges and exceeds them, the stuff that might leave the traditional viewer scratching his head, is left for other places -- or, certainly, other times. The art center has been known to defy boundaries on occasion, but not in November and December at Holiday Treasures.

"This isn't a show to push aesthetic boundaries," noted Doug Johnson, the executive director for the arts center. But Holiday Treasures is, he added, a place where beautiful works in multiple media and style will be appreciated and purchased.

Within the show, there is some dabbling with experimentation. Gladys Tietz Mercier's digitally manipulated photographs comes to mind.

But this is the type of show where the work is intended for a living room wall or a bedroom stand in a typical home -- art that can be wrapped and placed under a tree. It is priced that way and designed to sell.

Kendra Johnson, no relation to Doug, used to study at Illinois State University and work for its University Galleries. This summer, following graduation, she became project coordinator for the McLean County Arts Center.

She notices a vast difference in working with students, who are eager to dare, and non-student artists.

"Some of the work (at the art center) is more traditional. You see more landscape," she said. At ISU, she was among students who were "first finding their own voices. I think the community artists have found their way."

With a $300,000 operating budget, the art center gets a vital push through Holiday Treasures.

Johnson said the arts center will make $20,000 to $35,000, after expenses, through commissions. The artists price their own work; prior sales and the size of the work are major factors in pricing. The arts center gets a 40 percent commission.

The work collectively might be called "accessible," as it stresses a narrative -- a locally inspired landscape, perhaps, that evokes a sense of place and an emotion of a season -- and emphasizes artist technique and mastery, Johnson said. And the show serves as a primer to the talents of Central Illinois artists who make up about two-thirds of those displaying work.

A few of the pieces at Holiday Treasure cost $1,000. That's the maximum in this show -- yet it doesn't begin to approach more expensive fine arts. Most pieces are far less. Some work is $100 and under.

A popular locally-based artist, like Michael Dubina, will submit smaller pieces or pieces that diverge from his typical style.

Dubina put a 13-by-15 inch landscape into the show for $1,000, but he also submitted examples from his ongoing series of landscapes drawn on the inside of matchbooks and mounted, matches still intact. These drawings/sculptures cost $200.

Another illustration: Tracey Frugoli submitted one of the show's bigger pieces, a $1,000 landscape, but submitted smaller paintings at half that price.

Yet another source of bargains are the pieces by emerging artists.

Among Doug Johnson's favorite pieces at this year's Holiday Treasures are ceramics by Joe Madrigal, an Illinois State University graduate student. Because he isn't well-established, the pieces are priced at $250.

Within the show are purely decorative pieces, including much of the glass and ceramic work. But there also are pieces with utility: Wooden boxes, glass picture frames, vases, jewelry and wearable fibers.

This year, there are new twists to the annual sale:

• Artists were given data on sales from the prior year to help them set prices.

• The arts center moved away from the "salon" style of display, in which artwork is piled onto the wall, one piece above another. The center adopted a traditional display format of paintings spread along walls -- and not one above or below another unless they are part of a series. "This allows you to focus in one work at a time," Kendra Johnson said.

• Unlike prior shows, the Armstrong Gallery, a smaller gallery, is incorporated into Holiday Treasures until mid-December. Normally, a second show appears in the Armstrong Gallery during the show. The extra space allows better display of individual pieces. This continues until Dec. 15, when the Armstrong Gallery will be used for a ceramics exhibit by Tyler Lotz.

As in prior years, the arts center allows buyers to take pieces with them at the time of sale. Different pieces replace them. Therefore, the show continually changes.

 

Holiday Treasures