Downsizing is on trend, with decluttering specials on Netflix and thrift stores “awash in richness.” All the more reason to start collecting now, says Penticton Art Gallery curator Paul Crawford.
“The biggest thing I would love to impart on people living in Penticton and beyond is the culture of collecting,” Crawford told the Western News Thursday. “People don’t collect anymore and there is no better time to start a collection of whatever it may be.
“Things that I couldn’t afford to buy 20 years ago are very affordable today and they all come with this amazing history.”
Crawford says the gallery’s 2019 spring auction is a great place to start, too.
While higher-ticket items get auctioned at the gallery’s annual summer sales, their spring “treasures from the attic” auction offers art at starting bids as low as $20.
Crawford said pieces in this second annual spring cleaning auction are bargain-priced to drum up money for the gallery’s education and outreach programs during the slow season.
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“I’m always reluctant to give things up at a bargain, but in this case that’s the agreement that we made with the donors, that they would go on to different places,” he said. “They’re happy if they’re hanging on someone’s wall rather than sitting in our back room.”
Up for grabs are works by renowned painter David Partridge, who was “incredibly famous in his day,” Crawford said, as well as works by local artists.
Laila Campbell, who shows at the Lloyd Gallery, has an acrylic on canvas available. “The value of it is $1,200 and the opening bid is only $250,” Crawford said.
Margot Stolz, who Crawford said had an exhibition at city hall about five years ago, has a piece titled Paddlewheeler available. “Again, a $500 value with an opening bid of $150,” Crawford said.
The fundraising goal of the attic treasures auction is $5,000 and with only one week left to bid the gallery has raised $1,150.
“I really want to find homes for these, but I really want to get people interested in art history, collecting art and living with art on their walls,” Crawford said. “It’s amazing how many people’s homes I go into that have no art on the walls.”
He said you can get something at the spring auction for less than the cost of some IKEA art “that has such a great story behind it and will probably hold it’s value if not go up in value.”
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While the downsizing trend is amazing for someone who loves to collect, Crawford said at the same time it troubles him because “we’re losing this amazing, wealth of material that not only has intrinsic value, but also monetary value.”
“On one hand it’s amazing for someone like myself who loves to collect that history and who values that history, on the other hand I feel bad about all the stuff that’s being lost,” he said.
Crawford started collecting as a kid. In 1990 he found a little photograph and wrote to the photographer. The photographer wrote him back with a signed self portrait, setting Crawford off on the journey of his lifetime: collecting.
“From there every painting I would collect I would go and meet the artist,” Crawford said, adding that he’s met artists from around the world, travelled to crazy places, and drank ice tea and shucked peas at the home of celebrated author Pierre Berton.
“Collecting has been the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. It’s been the most amazing, rich life,” he said. “I hope things like this auction might spark people’s interest in collecting, give an entry level into something you wouldn’t have thought of before.”
The Penticton Art Gallery’s 2019 “treasures from the attic” spring auction ends on Feb. 28.
karissa.gall@blackpress.ca
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