Revelations at the Affordable Art Fair

Carrera III, by Koh Sang Woo
“Carrera III,” by Koh Sang Woo
It looks like plenty of people are buying art these days!

Koh Sang Woo created my favorite piece in the fall show of the Affordable Art Fair (“AAF”) in New York. It’s a Lambda C-Type print, titled “Carrera III,” priced at $6500. It sold.

Woo is a Korean-born artist who lives and works in New York. He has a beautiful website!

A Lambda C-Type print is photographic printing technology at its best. Three lasers merge into a single beam and can create images up to 50 inches wide in a single pass.

The new location for New York’s AAF is at The Tunnel, which is on 11th Avenue between 27th and 28th Street in Chelsea. The beauty of this year’s fair was the ease of walking. The straight long corridor and felt spacious (aside from bumping into people).

The Affordable Art Fair began in 1999 in Battersea Park in London, United Kingdom. Every piece of art in the show was required to be clearly priced, with no piece over $10,000. 10,000 people showed up for that first art fair and over a million dollars in art was sold!

The first AAF in New York City was in 2002.

Founder Will Ramsay has since expanded the AAF and the 15th city he’s adding to the mix is Hong Kong in spring 2013!

The worldwide exhibition schedule looks like this:

2012

Stockholm: October 4 – 7
New York, Fall: October 4 – 7
Mexico City: October 19 – 21
Amsterdam: October 25 – 28
London, Battersea: October 25 – 28
Rome: October 26 – 28 October
London, Hampstead: November 1 – 4
Seattle: November 8 – 11
Singapore: November 15 – 18
Hamburg: November 15 – 18

2013

Brussels: 21 – 24 February
Milan: March 7 – 10
London, Battersea: March 7 – 10
Hong Kong: March 5 – 17
New York: April 4 – 7
Bristol: April 26 – 28
London, Hampstead: June 13-16

The New York AAF attracts over 12,000 people!

Like an infant being encouraged to walk, visiting the NY AAF encouraged me to keep on with my art, and not give up. It helped me put my own art career in perspective. Even though I’ve been making art since I was a kid, I haven’t gotten my work out there as much as I could and encouraged myself to go beyond the the stumbling stages.

Stumbling as an artist (or at any endeavor, for that matter) can be over a period of years or decades or lifetimes. I’ve been in the baby stages of getting recognition, awards, and having my work collected. Or maybe I’m at the teenage about to become adult stage. But I found a deeper truth.

Has this happened to you? While you’re at an event of something you love you realize you’re as good as the competition but you’re not competing?

While at the AAF I had just such an awakening.

So thank you AAF for inspiring me!

A True Art Spirit in a New Documentary

When I found Gerhard Richter‘s work I felt validated. Here’s a successful artist who works in photography and painting has elements of reality and non-reality. He isn’t working in one narrow genre. I like that.

Richter’s “Forty Years of Painting” show appeared in 2002 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I didn’t know about him till someone who loved his work pointed it out to me a few years ago and I saw Richter’s work in SFMOMA’s 2010 Fisher Collection.

I love Richter’s visual vocabulary. Photography, painting, realism, abstraction. Vibrant colors. Streaking green lines the color of Granny Smith Apples next to raspberry red made by Richter’s huge squeegees moving chunks of paint on canvases you can jump into, stretching seven or ten feet wide.

If you can catch the documentary about him, don’t miss it!

You might also enjoy:
Messages from a Spirit Photographer
Speaking for Millions of Petals in the Dust
2 Artists Successfully Selling Art Online

The Longest Running Annual Art Exhibit in San Francisco

Seeds of Joy
“Seeds of Joy,” scanogram by Mary Gow

I have a secret about a scrumptious view of San Francisco. It’s at an exquisitely light-filled space and its staff has for 54 years had the generosity to host an annual art show! The Potrero Hill 54th Annual Artists Exhibition runs through June 1st.

The current show features the work of sixty artists ranging from sculpture and ceramics to painting and photography.

If you’re looking for an off-the-beaten-path place to see San Francisco, check out this awesome space, especially the six seats on the other side of the magazine showcase on the second floor.

The library was designed and renovated by the San Francisco Department of Public Works. It reopened in 2010. Here’s a slideshow the SFDPW produced that show’s off the space.

This is the same neighborhood where painter Wayne Thiebaud moved to in 1973. For more about Thiebaud and the Potrero neighborhood see Philip’s Garden Blog’s observations of the streets of Potrero Hill and Thiebaud’s depictions of them.

My piece in the show is a digitally manipulated scanogram titled “Seeds of Joy.” I produced it by placing objects on my scanner, and then pushed it further using Photoshop.

The scanner offers a stable surface for placing objects and the photo mechanism is securely mounted. What a treat for composing elements.

You might also enjoy:
Inside the Modern
The Portable Artist
A Library of 3 Minute Explanatory Videos