ART and other shit that goes on the wall

[Arachno-capitalist]

My friends and I have entered a phase where were buying art. Why? Its easier to spend money on art than it is on a girlfriend. Ironically, one of the first pieces we both bought ourselves were pictures of lonely women.

Thats one I have. The one my friend has is the same kind of scene but at a breakfast table.
Now I want prints like this:





Anyone else dig on wall decorations? What is a good venue to discover local artists?

[jay-ell]

'Round these parts, there's a "First Friday" event on, conveniently enough, the first Friday of every month, where the local galleries downtown open their studios from 6 - 10 and offer their stuff for sale. That's how I'd find a local artist here. Dunno if you have anything so regularly-scheduled where you are, but I'm guessing there are plenty of art festivals in the year to attend.

If you're into photography, I have a good friend who is a professional freelance photographer. She doesn't have any of her art stuff on her site, but she has an art-school background, as evidenced by some of her highly stylized wedding shots. She's available for commissions.

Cort knows some artists, he got me some art for the Secret Santa name draw last year. It's awesome.

[theinevitable]

this should turn into a thing where I make you buy my friends' art.

[Arachno-capitalist]

this should turn into a thing where I make you buy my friends' art.

well do they do stuff that looks like the above?

[Choop]

we have this one above our mantle:


(click for embiggening)

and some older stuffy by a friend that resembles nothing she's got on her website on a different wall

i'm looking for something short, wide, and mellow for above the TV. right now it's just a big gray expanse of wall, but i don't want anything that draws the eye too much. abstract would be fine, a black and white landscape, sure, whatever. just got to kill the boring.

[KeithHernandez]

Yeah, First Friday in Denver has two pretty big (at least 5 blocks?) areas.  I would look for something like that.  It is kinda fun, too.

[CortJstr]

Cort knows some artists, he got me some art for the Secret Santa name draw last year. It's awesome.

While I'm a big Project Dispatch fan I don't think it's good for A-Cap since you can't predict exactly what you're going to get.

[theinevitable]

right now the only thing on my walls is this:

actually, also there are some small posters for the radio station I worked at.

[wombat]

I suppose it's no surprise that the vast majority of the original art on my walls is either original comics or pictures of pugs.

[jay-ell]

I usually use either portraits of my kids (taken by the aforementioned photographer) or prints that have some historical significance. My office has a print of Rosa Parks being fingerprinted at the Montgomery PD, for instance, and I really want a print of John Trumbull's The Declaration of Independence for some part of my house. (My mother was a Trumbull, and John is an ancestor of mine.)



I have a few more pieces of art (including the ones I got from Project Dispatch) that used to be in my office, but I had to take them down when I moved the furniture and they're not back up yet. I have to find another place for most of them because I put up some media storage shelves that used to be in our family room in our old house to store yarn on, and they take up the biggest expanse of blank wall in the room.

[miles]

Maybe not so surprising, but generally I'll only hang concert/tour posters. I'm pretty selective, though. Like I only buy posters at the concert (I don't go looking for old concert posters), and I'll only buy it if I like the poster itself (that is, I won't buy it just because I like the band or it was a great show). I couldn't find an image online of the only one I currently have hanging, but this one is going up once I get it framed:



Maybe once I grow up I'll get some real art to hang. I have a couple artist friends that I'd love to buy some art from, but that shit's expensive.

[Asherdan]

Sometimes, all you gotta do is go to the swapmeet. I mean, people be trying to sell shit and eat, right? This ain't no hide and seek.  But seriously, it's easy to find the venues out here (like Laguna or the Costa Mesa groups) so maybe your area is different.

I put this in my angry room.



We have a custom from this series in a sitting room, but this one is for sale...

[wombat]

I love that poster, and, there is a band called Tortoise?

[AugustWest]

Love the second one.

[Nabubrush]

We have craploads of art on our walls due to all the artists in the family. I mentioned elsewhere that my step-mom is a (mostly commercial) artist. She has given us a lot of her art (she's relatively widely collected) but she's also given us a lot of stuff that she's collected over the years that she just doesn't have room to show. Most of our stuff is wildlife, because that's what she's into. We have all the portraits and nudes and that sort of stuff in the bedroom, including some prints of Leighton and Courbet and some other shit - purely for eye candy. For those who like the animals, we've got some Byron Birdsall (still pretty reasonably priced, but very masculine, not everyone's taste), John Pitcher (crap site for him, but my searching, it returns nothing of value) and John Seery-Lister (I've got the snow bunting print which is about halfway down. Cool for me because we get snow buntings at work, plus I just randomly found it in a coffee shop and it turns out my step-mom was published by the same house he was long ago). I also collect this guy, because his stuff just struck me and I met him soon after I moved to Portland.