ART BIZ | Ashawagh Hall 2018 Summer Space... Gone!

Ashawagh Hall is an art gallery and village center. Photo by JT Marlin 2016.

Ashawagh Hall is the center of Springs. It used to be owned by the Miller/Collins family, which lives across the road. They donated the original building to be used as a schoolhouse, with the understanding (they told me) that if the use of the building changed, the property could not be sold; instead, it would revert to the family.

The Springs School moved to larger quarters (!) and Ashawagh Hall now doubles as an art gallery and a village hall. I have frequently reviewed community events there, such as the award to the late Herb Field last year. 

I have also reviewed art shows at Ashawagh Hall, with an economic perspective, for example:

Search Results

Eternal Springs Hope (2016).

Hot Dots and Collage Credit (2016).

Meckseper and Troemel (2014). 

Ten Artworks Sold (2014).

Vito DeVito, East Hampton (2013).

Over the years I have figured out the system for allocating space in the gallery, which is that members of the Springs Improvement Society on May 15 call in to reserve space at the gallery for the following year at 8:00 a.m., and everyone else calls in at 10 a.m. The instructions for 2017 are still shown on the Ashawagh Hall website, although the space that would be allocated on May 15, 2017 is for 2018.

That system gives a little edge to long-term residents, members of the Society, and people who watch the calendar and the clock. A little quirky, but it seemed fair enough.

As I checked out this year's timing, I find that this year it has changed. Artists calling on May 15 will discover that all the 2018 summertime space was already allocated. It was done during the winter. A special discount was reportedly emailed (to all members? to a list of artists?) in February.

Sorry to be the bearer of this bad news if you were planning on something in 2018. If you think the change in the system is capricious, comment below or send me an email. 

R.I.P. | Sage of Springs, Herb Field (Updated Apr 27, 2017)

Apr 19, 2017 – Herbert E[dwards] (Herb) Field, the Sage of Springs, passed to his eternal reward yesterday at 92 years old, according to his pastor, Rev. Nancy Howarth.

A memorial service for Herb Field will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 20 at the Springs Community Presbyterian Church, at the intersection of Old Stone Highway and Springs Fireplace Road.

Herb Field's father and two uncles died tending their traps during the 1938 Hurricane when Herb was just 13. (His obituary, based on information from his son Thomas F. Field, was published in the East Hampton Star on April 27.)

Last year, he received a well-earned temporal award at an end-of-summer meeting of the Springs Community Advisory Council in Ashawagh Hall.

East Hampton Town Councilman Fred Overton presented him with a Proclamation testifying to his contributions to the Springs community. Overton's presentation was on behalf of East Hampton Town by its Supervisor, Larry Cantwell.

At the presentation, the crowd attending the meeting gave Herb a standing ovation for his contributions to his country and his community.

The Proclamation.

The citation, signed August 22, 2016 by Supervisor Cantwell, proclaimed that Herbert Edwards (Herb) Field was born at Franklin Farm on August 3, 1924 to Herbert Stone Field and his wife Abigail Rebecca, née Edwards.

Herb was the eldest of four sons. After the death of his father and uncles, he worked for Ferris Talmage to help support his mother and brothers. Talmage remained a lifetime mentor.

Herb enlisted at 17 in the U.S. Navy in April 1943. He served as a motor mechanic on board destroyer escorts.  He was sent on tours in the Pacific, Europe and the Americas. He was honorably discharged on December 18, 1945.

After his military service he managed Sylvester Prime’s farm on Shelter Island and then in 1949 moved to Morrisville, N.Y., where he purchased and managed two dairy farms covering 316 acres.

After 15 years upstate, he purchased the Baker and Baker dairy farm in Amagansett and lived there until his death.

Herb faithfully attended the Springs Community Presbyterian Church starting in the 1970s and sat consistently in the second row behind the organ donated by Robert Mulford.

For what must have been four decades he arrived an hour before the service every Sunday morning and started the coffee pot brewing, until one day not so long ago he announced he couldn't keep doing this any more.

When I first came to Springs in 1981 as a seasonal visitor, I started singing in the Springs Church choir and was invited, faute de mieux, to join "The Men of Springs," a church-related activity. My wife Alice Tepper Marlin was dubious about this. It sounded macho. Who knew what sinister plans these local deer-hunters, who probably looked askance at seasonal families "from away", might not be up to?

Herb Field with Tina Piette and
me, next to Ashawagh Hall. Photo
by Dr Carter Dodge.

Then we found out that the principal public activity of the Men of Springs was to cook and serve a community chicken dinner with no apparent female support. Her attitude to the group mellowed.

So I was a seasonal participant in the program, but over time the number of men who composed the Men of Springs dwindled, lost to illness or death or retirement to a place where they could get assisted living — or unassisted living — at an affordable price.

In time, the remaining men could not keep up the tradition of the annual chicken dinner. The event was continued, like so much else, through the devotion of the hard-working women of the church.

Herb was, I think, the last of the Men of Springs who were there when I arrived in Springs 36 years ago.

Herb earned the title of Sage of Springs because he knew more about the history of Springs than anyone else alive. He commented as an aside that he remembered when Supervisor Cantwell was "in short pants."

Over the years Herb told me more truly funny stories than I can count. He had a keen understanding of farming, canning, clamming, milling and human nature and he communicated it with his dry Bonacker humor, of which he was acutely aware and proud.

For example, during the period of my Men of Springs membership, I was in the kitchen, and everyone there was highly aware that I was a city guy out of my element in the Springs culture, which for centuries was built on faith, farm, fish and family. I came in for a lot of teasing as the country bumpkins enjoyed showing the city slicker how little he knew about what was important.

At one point they explained to me that how nutritious the food was, and that the delicious ginger gravy they were serving with the chicken had no sugar or flour in it.

I was amazed. How could they do that? They swore on the bible they added no sugar or flour. But I saw a glint in Herb's eye, and I demanded that he tell me, based on my rights as a fully vested seasonal member of the Men of Springs,  what the ingredients were.

Herb with Dr Dodge.
Photo by JT Marlin.

He said: "Well now, we have the juice left over from the chicken and we filter out any skin and the heavy fat. We cook it all in a pan and stir in some green onions and celery, and some garlic, about 4 minutes..."

"And...?"

"We add some pepper, thyme and sage..."

"And... what else?" I demanded, getting a little impatient.

I learned over time to look for the signal that Herb was about to deliver the punch line to his story, which he loved doing. He would become super-serious.

"Then, well now, you know, for every quart of gravy," he said, "we mix in five ginger-snap cookies."

After God created Herb, He threw away the mold.

To subscribe to this blog, or its comments, or to search its contents or to forward this post using G+, see the options at top right.

ART BIZ | Eternal Springs Hope

Frank Sofo, "Bicycle at Main Beach," East Hampton.
Photo by JT Marlin, by permission of the artist.

June 19, 2016–Last month's 92nd Street Y exhibit at Ashawagh Hall (in Springs, N.Y.–Town of East Hampton) was a huge success, with one art work selling for $1,800, and one artist selling $3,400 worth of art.

By comparison, the Plein Air Exhibition this weekend was a washout.

Only four items sold out of about 75 on the walls and tables. I was responsible for one of the four purchases. The median price of the three paintings sold was $200.

So red dots were prominently absent, even in the middle of the second day. This commercial failure cannot be sloughed off as resulting from a lack of effort by the artists:

• The exhibit was kicked off with a big opening party, attracting, says one person who was there, 200 people.
• The artist collective had 30 participants, allowing for a wide range of landscape interpretations.
• Organizers sent out press releases and posted notices of the exhibit.
• It's an annual event, so one would expect repeat interest, which is a big plus.
• Substantial publicity was focused on the plein air painting of connected artists at Pussy's Pond, the Farmer's Market, the Springs Library, the Blacksmith's Shop, the General Store, Gerard Drive, Maidstone Beach, Home Sweet Home and the Pollock/Krasner House.
• The show was staffed at all times, and refreshments were on hand.

Frank Sofo, caught in the act of painting outside
Ashawagh Hall, Springs, N.Y.

Yet the total take from the sales of paintings was $550. Ashawagh Hall costs $600 to rent for two days and there were the costs of refreshments and publicity in mounting the show. At most three of the 30 artists covered any of their costs.

I talked about the economics of the exhibit with someone who sold two of the four items that were not homeward bound this weekend–Frank Sofo.

He is a competent artist who has illustrated the covers of a dozen or more reissued Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. He has written and illustrated several of his own books for children. His plein air sketch of a bicycle on Main Beach is shown at the top of this post, with Red Dot.

Veronica sees Vincent in the starry sky. Illustration
by Frank Sofo from Vincent & Veronica. Photo
by JT Marlin, by permission of the artist.

He was offering for sale a couple of his books. I bought one about Vincent van Gogh, who is related by marriage to my late artist mother, Hilda van Stockum–Vincent's brother Theo worked for a while at the van Stockum bookstore in the Hague. Sofo's invention is that Vincent had a cat named Veronica who loved her master and when he dies–SPOILER ALERT–is consoled by the fact that she sees his face in the sky.

So why was the 92nd Street Y show so successful in selling while the Plein Air show was not?

I suggested to Sofo these possibilities:

• The 200 people who came to the opening party maybe didn't suspect that the artists want to sell their art and that's why they were invited?
• Buyers are timid about buying right away
• Buyers want to take time to make a decision, and a weekend is too short?
• It takes more than a weekend to get reviews and then be open for post-review sales?
• The organizers or beneficiary of the exhibition are entitled to a cut and the artists foolishly decide to avoid paying the cut (or split the difference with the buyer) by selling after the show?
• The art is over-priced? (Not in this case.)
• Not enough publicity? (Seems not the case here.)
• Not enough personal word-of-mouth?
• Artists are not sending their best work to this exhibit?

I would be interested in what you, dear reader, think might be the explanation.

I understand that some people consider art a hobby and they are happy to exhibit without selling. But art is also a profession and if artists are to be compensated as professionals they need functioning marketplaces. Galleries are great, but artist-organized exhibitions are places where artists can get their work directly in front of the public. If the public doesn't buy, it's just sad.

In response to my comments on the exhibition, Frank sent me an email, which I have his permission to quote. He said:

My own feeling about the art market is that since 2008 when the economy crashed the art market was affected badly, and hasn't yet recovered. Buying art has always been a luxury purchase for most people, and in our present economy more so. That of course does not account for the success of the 92nd St NY show. In my own case it has become harder to sell art these days. I was more successful 10 years ago.

It is true that in 2015, world sales of art were down 7 percent from 2014, to $63.8 billion. The number of art transaction decreased to 38.1 million, a 2 percent contraction. Sotheby’s reported a 2015 fourth-quarter loss of $11.2 million and predicted a significant drop in world sales in the first half of 2016.

But in the USA, $27.3 billion of art was sold in 2015, a 4 percent increase over 2014–a smaller increase, certainly, than the 10 percent growth recorded in 2014, but good news given that every other major art center declined. The USA was responsible for a 43 percent share of total sales of art by value in 2015, more than double the share of its next-biggest rival, the UK, where sales contracted by 9 percent to $13.5 billion for a 21 percent stake in the global art trade.

So if the art business seems slow in the USA, don't move somewhere else–because actually the United States is better off than the rest of the world. (And what will happen in the UK if it exits the European Union on Thursday?)

Other ART BIZ stories:

• Alec Baldwin Claims Art Sale Switch (Updated Aug. 20 ... (Was Baldwin betrayed by Bleckner and/or Boone?)
• 100 Priciest Art Sales at Auction
• Hot Dots and Collage Credit
• Vincent van Gogh's P&L
• Aug. 11–Pollock Died 60 Years Ago
• Brigid Marlin in NYC
• Some contemporary art is overpriced. | London Phillips ...
• "Hope", Museum of Visionary Art - Yanni ... 
• Eternal Springs Hope

To subscribe to this blog, or its comments, or to search its contents or to forward this post using G+, see the options at top right.

ART BIZ | Hot Dots and Collage Credit (Updated July 2, 2016)

Red-Hot Dot: Sheila Wolper, Enigma (1915), $1,800. One of
nine collagists from NYC exhibiting at Ashawagh Hall. All
photos by JT Marlin, taken with permission of the artists.

May 23, 2016–I was alerted by a friend, Ellen Rautenberg, that an unusual show was on its way to Ashawagh Hall in Springs, the hamlet northeast of East Hampton, N.Y.

Ashawagh Hall uses the old native-American term for a place where roads come together.

• It's where Old Stone Highway from Amagansett meets Springs Fireplace Road from the village of East Hampton.

• It's also where the 92nd Street Y in New York meets East Hampton.

Nine Ladies Lancing

If the art work on the walls at this exhibit could talk about the experiences incorporated in them, we would get an earful.

The nine women exhibiting have put mixed media to work sending messages. These mature women put the challenges, tribulations and joys of their lives into their art. 

Some of the collagists' techniques were startling, even puzzling. For example, I wondered how Judy Kaplan got that deep-black effect on her collages. (I will reveal her secret below.) I wondered whether there was a special kind of glue for doing collages. (Yes, there is.)

Some of the themes were challenging. What do we make of the various objects selected to surround a human face or faces? What messages are we supposed to get, and how does that differ in some cases from the messages we are actually getting getting? 

First, I will pick out a few of the artists, and then I will make a general comment on the overall effect of the exhibit and make some notes on the contradictory pressures faced by artists.

There is a strong unity to the show provided by the idea of these women creating art as their next act, better than the one(s) before. The show is titled "nextactART". If you want to reach the artists, their gmail address is the title of their show. 

Hot Red Dots

I have earned my living as an economist, so my interest in art starts with the marketplace. How is art sold? Why do people buy it? What is the purpose of galleries and exhibitions? Why do some artists get more for their work? When I go to Ashawagh Hall shows, as I have for 35 years, these questions pique me.

Recently I have had the impression of an uptick in what artists exhibiting in Ashawagh Hall are asking, and getting, for their work. I attribute the rising prices to the greater ability of artists to reach buyers through social media, without the intervention of an impossibly small number of gatekeepers. (Update, June 20: On the other hand, the latest plein air exhibit at Ashawagh Hall only sold three paintings out of about 75 items for sale. The improved sales are in selected genres!)

My bias in looking at art is toward the artists that have the red dots on their work, indicating they are hot–i.e., someone has purchased the art. This standard is considered crude, even unfair, by artists in my family, but that's how appraisers of houses and art make their estimates–sales records are the way we value houses, and so it is with the art that goes on our walls. However:

• Being able to create art that sells is not for everyone. If you are obsessed with painting things that people don't get joy looking at, no one can say you are wrong or are necessarily a bad artist. And, who knows, you may be able to change public opinion. Think of what E. B. White did to rehabilitate spiders in the face of widespread arachnophobia. Think of what the moneyed buyers of the art of Jackson Pollock (who lived and painted a short walk up the road from Ashawagh Hall) did, after many years, to silence scoffers at his paint-throwing artistry. 
• Some well-off artists trade purchases of one another's art. Maybe it is unfair because it depends on who you know. But if friends won't buy your art, who in the heartless world beyond can be relied on to do so? Vincent van Gogh's art-dealer brother bought all the art that Vincent produced. It wasn't charity; it was an investment. How much Theo was willing to pay his brother for his art materials and other expenses established enough of a value to enable his painting.

Here are three artists that were selling for good prices at Ashawagh Hall.

Sheila Wolper

This is, incredibly, Sheila Wolper's first show, and she took in $3,400 for three works of collage art. 

The art work that leads off this post above was Enigma (2015), commanding $1,800. The red dot was there on the first day. 

Sheila Wolper, Fragments (2015).

I would call Enigma a "Face-Plus" collage. The idea seems to be that you put a face on the canvas board or whatever and you surround it with images–in this case, hints of the men and women in the person's life, fantasies, aspirations and the large mixed textures of daily life. 

This Face+ approach of putting a face amidst associated images is used elsewhere in the show. It's a truly brilliant way of starting an art career, because each art work is different but organizes itself. 

All of these Face+ artworks are connected by the common thread of an easily understood set of rules of the game. What was Gilbert Stuart's Lansdowne portrait of George Washington if not the General surrounded by objects that were meaningful to him, like the inkwell featuring his coat of arms?

Two other collages by Wolper are more like puzzles. They sold for $800 each. Fragments (2015) above has pieces of maps and photographs cut up into an 8x7 checkerboard with enough information to connect each square with another one. It's like a CrossPic puzzle, something to hang in a waiting room to keep clients occupied while they wait to be called. 

Sheila Wolper's Artist Card. Stork
with children (too many?).

The nine artists have clearly been prepped to prepared a promotional sheet and business card announcing their status as artists. 

Wolper's card is appealing. On one side of her card is a collage called Transport, a large stork bringing children. The tragedy is that the stork has so many children to carry that at first sight a couple of them are falling off at the front end.

But no, those are faces of older people. Are young people pushing out older ones? Is the message that the planet can't carry us all? Whoever buys the painting presumably will have the last word on how to interpret it, unless Sheila Wolper goes public with her intent. 

My late mother, Hilda van Stockum, who made a good living during her long life as an artist and illustrator, several times refused to sell a painting to someone who wanted to buy it for the wrong reasons. For example, she wouldn't sell a portrait of one of her children because the wannabe buyer said it reminded him of someone else. 

But by and large, if someone buys a painting, they have bought the right to decide what the art means, unless the artist contradicts them. 

(Interestingly, in the United States and subscribers to copyright conventions, the owner of art does not own the right to control how the art is reproduced, unless this right is specifically sold to the buyer independently. So when a museum takes a picture of a piece of art by my mother, they own the photography but to reproduce the art they ask for permission from me, as my mother's executor, to reproduce the art. I have obtained permission from the artists whose art I have photographed for the specific right to reproduce their art on my blog.)

Judy Taylor

Judy Taylor, No Problem. (Also, No Date.)

Judy Taylor is another artist who sold several of her art works at the show. I mentioned that she achieved an impressively deep black background on her collages and I promised to explain it. 

An example titled No Problem is at right. Her art uses a process called dye sublimation on aluminum. The advantage of the technique is that no framing is needed. However, there is in fact a problem or two:

• The aluminum may dent if dropped.
• Someone has to be hired to produce the final products for sale. You have to find this person. Taylor found someone in a photo shop who moonlights doing these sublimations.
• If it costs $100 per piece of art (an educated guess), one-third of the $300 for this collage goes to producing the final item for sale.
• This piece of art was one of a set of eight. So if it cost $100 per item to produce, the artist has to lay out $800.

Judy Taylor writes on her collages. That breaks down the silos of writing and art. It's one of the short-cuts available in collage–if the message isn't coming across right, just write it on the piece of art. 

Taylor's artist's card says: "We need two lives to get it right." That seems to be a reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald and the feasibility of second acts. People think Fitzgerald said there are no second acts but in fact he argued against that statement.

Ronnie Grill

Ronnie Grill's artist's card has a 631 number on it, which suggests she is the local connection for the NYC artists. She does interesting things photographically and also does traditional collages.

Grill is the only one in the show with art work that is traditionally shown in Ashawagh Hall, i.e., scenes of bays and rivers. Her Napeague scene is on the front of her artist card at right and her Falling Falls is below. 

The Napeague scene features fishermen's nets.

The falls scene features shredded paper to indicate a waterfall. It's an eye-catcher from across the room.

Ronnie Grill, The Falling Falls.

Other Artists

The other six artists at the exhibit were Stephanie Suskin with multi-media sculptures, Barbara Brier, Rena Diana, Patricia Miller, Maddie Goldman with hanging sculptures, and Madeline Farr with groups of people with an international flavor.

Collage Credit 

The nine exhibitors met through an art class for collage credit at the 92 Street Y. I promised to provide a couple of clues to what they teach in these courses. One of the guidelines is that the paper quality used in collages must be archival – no one wants to see their expensive collage artwork start to yellow after a few years. Glue is important and Weldbond was recommended for most things, although it depends on what is being glued.

Based on attendance at the show, interest in the collagists' art work, and sales of art, the exhibit was a success. The show was thought-provoking, even overwhelming. A couple of artists I spoke with at the show said they found that the intensity of the messages was deafening. How does one deal with that problem? I have a thought on this.

I talked with Wolper, who was I think the star of the show, especially because she is such a newbie. As I said to her, one way to deal with the possible noisiness of collage art is for artists to explore a kind of collage and then move on. The voices of that period of one's work then become contained by markers at the beginning and end of the period.

There is also commercial value to defining one's work by a period. My mother said of Picasso that he was a good artist but a commercial genius, because by exploring a kind of art and then moving on, he created scarcity for the art of each of his artistic lives.

Other ART BIZ stories:

• Alec Baldwin Claims Art Sale Switch (Updated Aug. 20 ... (Was Baldwin betrayed by Bleckner and/or Boone?)
• 100 Priciest Art Sales at Auction
• Hot Dots and Collage Credit
• Vincent van Gogh's P&L
• Aug. 11–Pollock Died 60 Years Ago
• Brigid Marlin in NYC
• Some contemporary art is overpriced. | London Phillips ...
• "Hope", Museum of Visionary Art - Yanni ... 
• Eternal Springs Hope

To subscribe to this blog, or its comments, or to search its contents or to forward this post using G+, see the options at top right.

ART BIZ | Ashawagh Hall, Aug. 23-24, APC Sales $6,000

Toby Haynes, "Evening Light, Gerard Drive",
pastel, 21x29, sold for $1,500. All photos of
art by JT Marlin on iPhone.

The Accabonac Protection Committee had its Second Annual Art Benefit Show yesterday and today. As of 4 pm, with four more hours to go, ten paintings/drawings/photos  had been sold for a total of $6,000. I snapped my favorites with my iPhone.

Ellen Dooley, "Accabonac Figure",
Digital map overdrawn with
Carre's Crayon, 23x29, sold, $595.

During the time I was at the exhibit on Sunday midday, Toby Haynes' "Evening Light" was sold, the most expensive of the ten artworks that were picked by buyers. It depicts the point where Gerard Drive ends and the sandy promontory confronts Louse Point, with an active channel between them, draining in and out with the tide.

All of the paintings are of Accabonac Harbor. A clever one by Ellen Dooley shows the Harbor as a map, with a female figure outlined on top with a crayon.

Putting the first two paintings together, you can see in Dooley's map drawing where Gerard Drive faces Louse Point.

David Littleton Smith, "Plum Island to Gardiner's Bay: 
Running Before the Storm", oil on linen, 20x30, 
sold for $900.

David Littleton Smith had a striking oil painting showing, to me, the puniness of the sailor in the face of a storm. While it is technically not in Accabonac Harbor, it could have been painted from Gerard Drive or Louse Point. It sold for $900.

The other paintings that sold:

Cynthia Sobel's "Bright Day at Pussy's Pond", watercolor, 13x16, sold for $450.

Robert Budd, "Uncle George's Meadow at Sunrise", watercolor, 12x27, sold for $400.

Kirsten Benfield, "Rock at Pollock-Krasner House", watercolor, 12x16, sold for $450.

Gwen O'Neil's "On Fire", photo, 22x34, sold for $500.

Laurie Hall's "Head in the Clouds", oil pastel, 12x12, sold for $300.

Abby Abrams, "Inner Harbor", watercolor.

Joric Latham's "Storm Clearing", watercolor, 12x15, sold for $300.

Two other paintings I liked that didn't sell:

Ralph Carpentier's "View to Flaggy Hole,"  priced at $5,000.

Abby Abrams' "Inner Harbor", watercolor, priced at $950. I liked this one because to me it hid a cute sheep and some leprechauns behind the reeds. (As the Little Prince understood, there is no substitute for imagination, and the best art creates opportunities for the viewer's imagination to get to work.)

Ralph Carpentier, "View to Flaggy Hole", oil on linen,
$5,000.

Comment

My wife Alice Tepper Marlin also looked at the show and commented how pleasant the overall effect of it was.

She thinks the concept of the show is excellent because Accabonac Harbor is so pretty that it is hard for a painter or photographer to go wrong.

And: Anyone who has lived here wants reminders of the landscape.

To subscribe to this blog, or its comments, or to search its contents or to forward this post using G+, see the options at top right.

ART BIZ | Vito DeVito, East Hampton

Vito DeVito (L) and John Tepper Marlin, before a

 DeVito painting. Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

I go to a lot of art exhibits at Ashawagh Hall in downtown Springs, East Hampton, where Old Stone Highway meets Springs Fireplace Road.

Good reason: Ashawagh Hall has some good exhibits and I track them.

Real reason: I pass by Ashawagh (Indian name for a crossroad) Hall several times a day when I am here.

This evening Alice and I popped in on a one-man show by Vito DeVito, a New York City native who lives in Sagaponack except for summers when he is in Norway, Maine. I like one-man shows. Only one artist to interview if I am blogging, and I get to know the person.

DeVito is not just an artist. He is an artist-entrepreneur. The reason most artists are "struggling" financially, even "starving"–is that they don't understand some key commercial aspects of their business. The worst of all situations is where artists are (in the words of Catholic doctrine) "invincibly ignorant"–they don't want to know what steps they could take to be commercially successful because it would compromise their artistic creativity. Quietum non movere.

Vito DeVito is an artist that I can't visualize being unsuccessful. He exudes self-confidence and busy-ness and customer engagement. In addition:

•  His art comes out of his own passion for creative work and his own love of nature. It's clear in everything he does. His fish and duck paintings look right when in motion and when still.
• He paints nature against recognizable local backdrops -- a big plus when it comes to making a sale.
• His backdrops are in the Town of East Hampton and for the past 25 years also in Maine, where he and his family have spent their summers. 
• Like Picasso, he reinvents himself so that he has different things to sell. He is a sculptor -- I love his group of birds -- as well as a painter. He has been trying out etchings -- not all as glamorous as his paintings -- and in BFF (his dog) he has tried to glam up the etchings by hand-coloring the dog's collar in red. I would like to see more of the hand-colored etchings.
• He sends out his framing to DeVito Framers in another room of his house. If it is raining he doesn't take the day off, he gets to work in his framing studio.
• The giclees of his paintings are done by DeVito Facsimiles Ltd. His Artist's Proofs have low numbers and one gets a sense of confidence from him that he handles the numbering rigorously so that collectors don't have to worry about a flood of new giclees or prints. 
• He knows how to sell to people most likely to buy, for the homes or offices of the well-to-do. Not many nudes in the exhibition -- I only saw one, called "Illicit Love" (not as good a painting, I thought, as his ducks). Corporate and family buyers prefer scenes of hunting, fishing, landscape, scenes from nature. He is in a lot of corporate collections.
• He knows about stratifying his market. He has made a bronze sculpture for $6,000, oils for around $3,000, giclees for $500, etchings for less than that. There is something for everyone.
• He has found a way to get paid up front, commissioned on demand, not only for portraits but for hunting scenes and ducks and fish. He works with hunting-and-fishing magazines and nonprofit organizations that ask him for specific animals or scenes and then they sell limited-edition lithographs or giclees.
• For most of the past 19 years he has received annual commissions from Duck Unlimited to do a Duck-of-the-Year. His work is in the collections of celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley, Mario Cuomo, John Zuccotti and Alfonse D'Amato. 

"The Power Below" painted for the Safari Club International.  

Photo by JT Marlin.

Here's an example of how Vito DeVito leverages his art. Those animals in the oil painting at left are thundering towards us. They appear to be wildebeeste in front of Mt. Kilimanjaro, so this is a recognizable scene in Kenya or Tanzania. The price tag on this is about  $3,000.

This is a strong painting, definitely conveying a threat as the beasts head toward you. A good macho painting for an executive's office. It says: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!" It is also nicely framed. But should you need that $3,000 to put toward your daughter's tuition, DeVito has an option for you.

"The Power Below", numbered giclée. Photo by JT Marlin.

For one-sixth of the cost of the original oil painting, you can get a numbered and framed giclée of the painting. It's even hard to tell the difference between the giclee and the painting from an distance of a few feet.

Customer is happy. Artist is happier. Best he can get for an oil (based on posted prices) is about $5,000. But if he sells out a series of 100 giclées at $500 each, he can make $50,000. With the help of associations and  magazines, it is also easier to sell prints than original art work.

Vito DeVito is a 1975 graduate of Seton Hall University, which would place his 60th birthday in the near vicinity. He has a wife Laurie, a daughter Emma Ann and a son Drew. More about him at www.vitodevito.com. Contact him to order something at vitodevito@optonline.net.

To subscribe to this blog, or its comments, or to search its contents or to forward this post using G+, see the options at top right.