Tradition matters at The Arts Company, and with good reason

The Annual Avant-Garage Sale (the 15th edition this year) is one of our top gallery traditions. It is a bear of an event to curate from the point of view of gallery staff, but it's a truly fun, affordable, festive summertime event for the groupies who come every year. Not to mention the new friends we make during the event, we think mostly because they didn't know coming to an artsy garage sale could be such an offbeat and surprising event...so "avant," you might say.

From the August 2010 Garage Sale

The selection of goods is wide and random, though our job is to try to corral the treasures we pull out and try to make sense of them. This year in particular, the sale kind of reveals what happens in the backstage areas of our gallery. Every year is like an archaeological dig with this year's treasures including: extra frames that have lingered long after the project was over; some gear for making shelving; and a few special baskets and boxes used for exhibit props. Our well-loved vintage drafting table and stool have long outlived our need for them, same with a couple of flat files.

Some great white empty frames that need a new home!

Photographs, paintings, and sculpture from estates and/or from our customers who collect and for one reason or another need to bring in pieces that no longer fit their decor or lifestyle or they are moving and can't take it all with them. This second chance for these pieces is a great opportunity for our avant-garage guests to find neat artwork or furniture or related artifacts that suit them perfectly.

Billyo O'Donnell, Last Light of the Construction, oil on canvas

This year in particular, folks have brought us a lot of pieces from a variety of regional artists.

Plus, we always add a lot of truly unexpected fun decor kind of stuff that has lingered for more than a few generations in people's closets far too long and needs new homes. Pieces such as odd assortments of neat bowls, pitchers, baskets, chairs, tables, lamps, some of which are true treasures that mix well in contemporary settings. To name a few: 2 book presses, vintage gold leaf cornices, a rare folding wooden farm table, and 2 sets of sofa chairs designed by Nashville's interior design legend, Herbert Rodgers. We even have signed, limited photographs by Eisenstadt, John Loengard, and others.

Vintage 4-part couch - by renowned Nashville designer, Herbert Rodgers

And then there are the art books and the vintage children's books and the cd's and a selection of classic record album covers (with the records still in them), and a few lingering art posters. Some are signed and rare.

Equally important, the prices are right. And the lemonade is plentiful and ice cold. We give up our two gallery parking spaces in the avant-garage for this one-week-long event.

This Arts Company tradition--our Avant-Garage Sale--continues each year just to see how much neat stuff we can pull out and make sense of so that our guests are inspired to give it a new life in their own lives. Remember, this is a curated exhibit, which means we have seriously searched through the remains of the past year and come up with some gems worthy of your attention.

How many curated art-related garage sales have you been to lately?

15th Annual Avant-Garage Sale

Opening Saturday, August 6, 2011

11-9:00 pm / Reception 6-9 during First Saturday Art Crawl

Continues one-week only: August 6-13

When Artists Collect Art, People Want to Know What and Why

...not just to be nosy, but to know more about the particular mindset, taste, and interest of the collecting artist. The why's and when's are particularly interesting in the forthcoming August Collectors Art Night guest collector/artist, John Nikolai, because John's work is seemingly eons removed from Andy Warhol's. Yet, John has collected more than one Warhol, and he has lived with them for a long while. The last one we helped him sell sold virtually overnight to an art dealer in London who specializes in Warhol.

John Nikolai in Ireland with his trademark toboggan

But before we put the information out online this time, we wanted to host a special collectors night with John--one of our favorite artists--as our guest so we could pick his brain a little about what has driven him to collect. He's also bringing along a rare hand-written letter from Greta Garbo and lots of Garbo memorabilia he has collected since he was a teenager. Reading the letter will show you just how cranky her mind could be; and looking at the photographs that are beside it reminds you how glamorous she could be.

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, offset lithograph on silver-coated paper, 243/300, 1966

The Warhol and the Garbo material will be available for purchase, along with a few other miscellaneous selections John is bringing. But, in addition, we have asked him to bring along other pieces that are of particular personal importance to him, though not for sale, but just there as samples of artwork he chooses personally. For instance, two pieces he is bringing just to show are related to two of his Nashville friends who are also artists--a watercolor by John Baeder and a classic photograph by Jim McGuire.

Greta Garbo hand-written letter and photographs

There is a sub-text to all of this as well. This is our gallery Bon Voyage to John, who will be moving to his beloved Ireland this fall. We will also be showing selected work from his exhibits at The Arts Company in recent years. Their subject? Mostly Ireland, of course. All hauntingly beautiful. Each one an original. No two ever alike.

John Nikolai, Waiting on Shore, archival photograph

We may have to whip up some Irish champagne if there is such a thing, and hope we can persuade him to continue to send us new work from across the water. He just now came back from a trip to Ireland, bringing many rolls of film. Since John prefers the old-fashioned method of shooting with film, it takes time to get everything converted, selected, and printed by him personally according to his most precise expectations. Maybe by the time he leaves the country, he will have a group of new photographs to leave with us.

Come join the conversation with John and consider what makes collecting passionate and personal in your own life. His artistic vision and energy will engage you, for sure.

John Nikolai, Self-Potrait

So, Bon Voyage, Farewell, So Long, and au Revoir to John...and come back soon bringing more fresh art and neat insights.

Visit with John during

Collectors Art Night at The Arts Company

Friday, August 5, 2011

5:30 Reception & refreshments

6:00 Conversation with John Nikolai

Remember: Space Limited. Reservations required.

and Complimentary valet parking

R.S.V.P. to 5thAvenueOfTheArts@gmail.com

and be our VIP guest for the evening

Nashville's tipping point in the arts Commentary by Anne Brown

You know for sure Nashville is nearing the tipping point in the arts when a national business publication makes the point for us. Here's the way Jason Ankeny put it in his article, "The art of online commerce," in the current issue (July 2011) of Entrepreneur magazine.

"Nashville is justly celebrated as Music City, but the Tennessee state capital's dedication to the arts doesn't end at the Grand Ole Opry. Downtown Nashville is also the nexus of a thriving visual arts community." Pointing out that the city's Fifth Avenue corridor now boasts more than a dozen gallery spaces that attract some 1000 visitors each month during First Saturday, Jason calls what's happening here "Nashville's creative renaissance."

"Spirit of the River" by Charles Keiger

The article then credits The Arts Company as the gallery that pioneered the idea of making the arts a central part of the Nashville marketplace by establishing an art gallery in the middle of a downtown block full of dark empty buildings in 1996, now a vibrant artistic block that boasts many other art venues today.

But that's only the tip of the tipping point to which this article refers. That was then. This is now. The real challenge ahead for the world of art galleries and related artistic enterprises is the same as for other businesses--how to define and build a bold and energetic role for the arts in the new online marketplaces that are evolving all around us. The Arts Company is still leading a charge forward to making an art business a successful player in the middle of the new online marketplaces.

"Dancing Feet" by Norman Lerner

We have learned already that a brick and mortar location is part of the new way of doing business, but expecting that to remain the one and only venue for showing and selling art is a pipe dream. Those days are over. Not gone. Just over. That cannot be the sole model. The business of art is being challenged to the bone like all other businesses. Fortunately, the new days promise to be more interesting.

Necessity number one is latching on to the online revolution. How to harness social commerce in tasteful, exciting ways requires turning a business upside down and recreating it. Constantly recreating it. It helps that art is a passionate and creative enterprise by definition. Clearly, this is no time to be timid.

"Shelby Street Bridge" by Steven Walker

That's why we were attracted to Moontoast, our online social commerce platform. They are open to the challenge of taking online commerce beyond widgets. We are still at the very beginning of re-thinking our online initiatives. What we can say is that it is very labor-intensive. And very exciting!

We can also say there is something about Nashville that brings out the entrepreneurial spirit in lots of folks. It's the spirit that tells you when you know you are on to something you just go with it however far you have to go. For The Arts Company, being singled out as part of "Nashville's creative renaissance" gives us incentive and responsibility to keep on keeping on.

We are ready to embrace the new online art frontier to complement the 5th Avenue storefront we established 15 years ago, and we're looking forward to this unscripted future....

www.theartscompany.com