Art it forward
A print by pro snowboarder Mikey Parillo that now graces the walls of my Jackson hair stylist, Jeff. He is a snowboarder too, as well as a skateboarder, hunter and golfer. I really hope this piece is hanging alongside antlers and boards and maybe a gun.
I used to have a superstition about giving away or selling pieces of art I owned. To do so felt like a taboo; like I was breaking the essential artist/collector bond. I’m not sure I expected seven years of bad luck, per se, but I feared minor cosmic punishment.
When Mark and I were moving from Jackson, Wyoming, to Bend, Oregon, I could no longer avoid the art stacked in closets. I couldn’t worry about artist’s feelings – as if artworks possessed magical powers to whisper in artists’ ears that I’d cheated on them. I had to cut ties. We simply had too much art! Over a decade being an arts advocate in a small town meant I had acquired a lot. Mark is no aficionado, so most of the art was mine. Only a few pieces had we agreed on and bought together.
Some of the art that needed a new home simply didn’t “go” with anything else and never had. Some pieces I’d fallen out of love with. Some contained memories I didn’t want to carry forward. One piece I loved a lot and wanted to give my brother as a big gesture of connection. The reasons varied, but the result was the same. Time to let go.
We held a garage sale. I posted something on Facebook. I surprised people with parting gifts. Instead of guilt-ridden, each transfer from my hands to the new collector made me feel lighter. Quite by accident, I discovered that saying goodbye to art gave me a way to say goodbye to my life in Jackson.
Goodbye Teton landscape.
Goodbye short-lived enthusiasm for snowboard art.
Goodbye penchant for cherry red abstraction.
Take these grouse wings, and the hawk.
Lead horses from me and strands of their tails.
Goodbye coyotes, there will be more of you where I’m headed.
Sayonara flowers with your heads cut off.
Yell from the rafters or glow quietly on other walls.
In a few cases, the art I sold went to people I didn’t know well but liked and admired. Seeing the delight on their faces when I handed over an artwork made moving a little easier. Little affirmations of layers of connection one feels in a small town, where acquaintances feel like friends. I saw that my art could have new conversations with different art pieces it had never known before. It would preside over other human interactions, dinner parties, reading nooks, intimacies in bedrooms.
Finding new homes for my artworks took a lot of my time during the moving process. I suppose I could have saved myself days by just packing a box for Goodwill. But that wouldn’t have felt right. I wanted to shepherd the art to new homes, as it had shepherded me through years of my life.
Our home in Bend houses art we acquired in Jackson and new art we found here. That too was a benefit of shedding: we opened space for more. And the tendrils of art connection with people in Jackson remain. A few days ago, someone I’d sold a print to sent me a photo the piece in its new, much better, frame. She said each time she and her partner see it they smile. Benevolent art, happy in its new caring home.
Every other week I FaceTime with my brother and my nephew. They sit on the couch beneath the painting I gave my brother. It’s a piece I love so much, an abstract mountain range bursting with color and weather. The maker is a close friend and having this visual connection between people I love symbolizes rootedness that transcends distance.
I’ve realized that this is what artists do all the time. This is what, most often, they make their art for: to give to others. The price tag merely allows them to keep making more work to put in more people’s hands. Artists are experts at letting go of something meaningful. They are masters of moving forward. Here’s this beauty, they say, take it. See this composition, use it. Take what means something to me and make it your own.