Since I live in Sandy and have an excellent library close to my house, I don’t go to the Salt Lake City Main Library often. When I do, which is usually when my children have late books and high fines, I always stop at Art in the Main, the art gallery. I do so because of a valuable lesson I was taught many years ago.
In the early- and mid-1990s, I became acquainted with a man whose path crossed mine about two times a week. In bits and pieces, I learned he was retired but taught art history classes as an adjunct professor at a national college with a branch in Salt Lake County. One day, when I was telling my friend about Sister Wendy, a bucktooth, habit-wearing, Catholic nun who seems to know everything about European art and had starred in several art history documentaries for the BBC, he told me there’s a secret about art that most people don’t know or understand. That is everyone can afford it. No one has to have prints on his or her walls, ever.
Over the next six months, I tested my friend’s assertion by visiting art galleries and co-op studios. To my surprise, I learned he was right. I could afford original art. I could have pieces that no one else in the entire world had. That is if I could solve one problem that started to bother me almost from the beginning: what in heaven’s name should I buy? After long consideration, I came up with two rules that, for the most part, I live by today. First, if I could paint it, it’s not art and I don’t want it. Second, everything I buy has to mean something to me.
The first piece I bought was an oil painting of Wheeler Farm. I did so because my children went there once every spring, summer, and fall. They knew the trees, barn, and outbuildings in the background; the dirt track in the middle; and the large white stones in the foreground. The artist had just finished painting the picture, and it looked fresh and crisp, and she only wanted $250.
Next I bought a vase from the Sundance Art Shack for $80. This was when Sundance saved all the bottles from their restaurants and then invited glassblowers from Mexico to spend the summer at the resort to turn it into plates and glasses for Sundance and vases and sculptures for visitors. My children got to see how our vase was made, and I filmed it so they could always remember the day.
About a year later, my family and I went to a play at BYU. To get to the theater, we had to pass through the main lobby of the Harris Fine Arts Center. At the time, many of the art students had their work on display. One piece, a Nativity scene with a horse in it instead of a donkey, jumped out at me, and another by the same artist of Mary Mary Quite Contrary, jumped out at my daughter. I bought both for $700. Later I commissioned the artist to give Mary a boyfriend by doing a third painting of Little Boy Blue.
I won’t bore you with everything I’ve bought over the years, but I want to add one more tidbit. My two rules have not served me perfectly. I own a piece I started to hate the day I hung it on my wall, and I wish with all my heart I owned a painting titled Ain’t Nothin’ Out There But the Moon, Ma! The latter is a farm scene—a large barn and a two-story house—at night. An enormous beetle with huge, glowing eyes is standing over the house. His underside clears the roof, easily. In my mind, I can picture a mother telling one of her sons to look out the window to see, “What in tarnations is out there making all that ruckus.” Then, catching sight of one of the beetle’s eyes, the boy says, “Ain’t nothin’ out there but the moon, Ma!” I passed on the painting because it’s fantasy, which I’ve never fully appreciated, and it’s quite dark. Today, I’d pay twice as much as it was selling for to get it.
This reminds me, Art in the Main currently has a framed painting called God’s Gold that is listed for $560. As my youngest sister would say, “It’s to die for,” but I don’t have any extra money. So, check it out. And while you’re at the gallery, take a look at the one where the skiers are doing a run over a bowl of green Jell-O. I can’t say it’s my forte, but like the picture of the beetle, it makes me laugh. There I go again. I really like the piece, and, if I had extra, extra money, I’d get God’s Gold and the skiers.
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