The big news at a forum about collecting Tuesday was that that art collector Paige West was working on getting artist Jonathan Schipper’s slo-mo car crash installed in a public space in Philadelphia!
The forum, featuring West, of The West Collection in Oaks, Pa. and founder of Mixed Greens; Christian Viveros-Faune, art critic and co-director of New York’s Volta and Chicago’s Next art fairs; artist Jonathan Schipper and moderated by Galleries at Moore Curator Lorie Mertes was part of Untitled*, a series of forums on art and collecting.
Here are a few of the highlights from discussion:
West: “I was treated like dirt in most galleries…15 years ago. I was frustrated that galleries were not helping me meet new artists. So I went to artist friends.”
Schipper (on his slo-mo car crash sculpture): “As a collectible object, it’s rather difficult. …The art object is really the experience. It’s transitory. To make it saleable, I made it a reproducible event.”
West (on looking at Schipper’s piece at an art fair): “We were watching kids, grandparents–people came back the next day to see what was happening with the cars. …We are trying to get this piece out in Philadelphia, to show publicly. We want to find a way to having the Philadelphia community connect to what we are collecting.
Schipper: The car crash exists on the Web in all these car collection places. They’re all about these muscle cars. …They hate me, but then the conversation changes.
West: Some of the young artists in this city are making some of the best art I see. It’s affordable.
[The West Prize] came out of our frustration. …It’s hard getting ahead of the galleries. …More than 4,500 artists submitted. You can see the submissions on a public site. …It’s a yearly thing. In April, we will launch again.
West: I talk about the web a lot, but honestly, if you’re an artist and don’t have stuff on a web site, you’re hurting yourself…Curators look there.
West also said she doesn’t necessarily want some of the work she buys up on her walls.
*The untitled series of forums, which aim to encourage collecting art, is the brain child of Jenny Jaskey, Madeline Adams and Shayna McConville.
