Art

I bought and sold old things for years as a second job. I would schlep to Backwoods Maine on my days off from my nursing jobs. My cars themselves were close to antique. The trips were always adventures on many levels.

 

I found everything. Old clocks and music boxes became specialties of my inventory after a while, but I also bought furniture and decorative items. I found a genuine Ming-era Buddhist gong and an 18th century clock on one lucky trip. I didn't make a fortune at this business by any measure. However, I learned a lot about restoration, materialism and small business.

 

Objects have value for their rarity. Often rarity trumps beauty or condition. Once an item has value, based on its rarity especially, it can be ugly as sin and reap a lot of money.

 

The experiences I had selling old things affected my feelings about art very deeply. I realized that art in commerce, like beauty, is in the eye of the wealthy beholder. In other words, what is considered 'great art' is the stuff that brings in the gold. Art as a business is the height of materialism and often the low-point of good taste.

 

I recently finished a small creative project myself. It's a piece for my living room. I wanted a 'window of color' on a wall. A specific size and shape to compliment an old drop-leaf table beneath it. I generated paintings in a computer program and applied the print-outs in tiles to a painted canvas. The result was very close to what I imagined. In fact, it was better...less formal and stiff than my imaginings.

 

I've learned to make simple frames from stock lumber from Home Depot. My first frame adorns a lovely abstract of a birch forest which Peter created for our living room. Peter stained and finished it to compliment the colors on the canvas. I think it is stunning.

 

None of our art has any value in a commercial sense. It has no provenance. We haven't done one-man shows in a trendy gallery. Yet we prize it for the experience of creating it, for framing it, for sitting together and appreciating it. This is art as practice and the art of practice.