Artists Sell the Abstract

The business of fine art is as squishy as a tube of oil paint.

It seems a work of art is worth what a buyer is willing to pay. Or at least, what an artist is willing to charge.

Artists, gallery owners and collectors in Northwest Arkansas tend to think fine art has an abstract value that can’t be priced. It seems artwork’s real value is in the passion it creates both in the artist and in the audience.

With the emotion of art duly noted, there’s still a lot of money hanging on the walls of area homes and businesses. After all, Michelangelo refused to starve, and his benefactors refused to settle for so-so.

Artnet Corp. is a New York-based company that tracks sales from more than 500 international auction houses and has developed a pricing database with more than 2.9 million entries since 1985. Amy King, manager of the price database, said revenue figures for the art world are speculative at best.

In 2005, her company tracked $4.5 billion in international fine art auction sales. (Fine art includes sculpture, paintings, etchings, photography and the like, but not furniture.)

Dealer and gallery sales easily match — and probably eclipse — that figure, King said. So it’s clear “art” is a viable business, another cog in the national economic engine.

“This is a multi-million dollar industry in Northwest Arkansas,” said Randal Woodward, owner of the Eureka Springs Fine Art Co., a gallery in that town.

“There’s no lack of corporations or individuals willing to support the arts [here],” he said.

The Benefactors

The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal arbitrarily surveyed several local businesses about the art hanging on their walls. Some businesses with large or particularly valuable collections declined to participate citing security concerns.

But most business owners and managers who did discuss their décor said they looked to fill the empty spaces with local and regional artists as much as possible. The reason? “Because it’s the right thing to do,” they said.

United Holding Co. in Springdale — the parent company to United Bank, Lokomotion Family Fun Center, United-Built Homes Inc. and landlord to the Business Journal — finished building its two-story offices about three years ago.

UHC’s CEO, Craig Young, said as the building neared completion, some employees began asking what was going to hang on the walls. The building’s decorations were basically an afterthought, and there was no budget set aside specifically for artwork in the planning stages, Young said.

Some UHC employees and an interior design consultant zeroed in on local painters at a Fayetteville gallery and purchased several originals, including an abstract painting by Fayetteville artist Milan Jilka entitled “9.”

The acrylic painting is a series of nine 11-by-72-inch boards mounted on a curved wall. Because the work was done on separate boards, it was a perfect fit for the wall. Young said the consultant knew of the painting, and she helped facilitate the purchase.

UHC ended up spending between $30,000 and $35,000 on paintings in its common areas, a budget that could have easily shrunk if construction on the building had cost overruns.

Young said the art was worth it. From an aesthetic standpoint, it makes the offices look nice, he said, plus it supported local artists.

Most businesses don’t purchase original artwork. Instead they buy giclees.

A giclee (pronounced zhee-clay) is a high-resolution reproduction printed from a digital file onto various surfaces, such as canvas, with archival quality inks. The prints are much nicer than four-color poster reproductions and generally cost about one-tenth the price of an original.

Arvest Bank-Fayetteville recently moved its private banking office from downtown to Millsap Road.

Kelly Sutterfield, manager of the bank group’s architectural division, and Angy Lyons, interior designer and purchasing agent for the division, said the private banking office required décor more upscale than the typical Arvest branch.

The team chose to use George Dombek’s art throughout the office. Since an original Dombek painting can command $24,000, Arvest used giclees purchased through J. Gallery in Fayetteville.

“It can accentuate an area,” Lyons said. “It’s culturally enriching to the environment.”

Dewitt Smith III, president and CEO of CRI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cooper Communities Inc. in Rogers, said his company recently commissioned Henri Linton, chairman of the art department at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, to do several paintings. The works hang in the common areas of Two Financial Center in Little Rock, a building CRI co-owns with the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System.

CRI spent “several thousand dollars” on the paintings.

“I like ’em,” Smith said when asked if it was a good investment. “It’s colorful and it’s something that’s noticed.” He also noted that it’s “healthy” to employ local talent.

All benefactors felt that the art they’d purchased helps increase employee morale as well. Smith said employees will subconsciously have a better experience at work if the environment is pleasant.

The Artists

Woodward said art — real quality artwork — is typically thought of as existing someplace other than in one’s own backyard.

And within the contradictory confines of Arkansas — a state with both a backwoods reputation and the business magnet of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — many tend to think of artists as crafters and quilters.

But there are several world-class artists who live in the region simply because they like it. Most said they’re inspired by the area.

Susan Morrison’s Signature Gallery in Eureka Springs has seven employees, including a chief operating officer and a marketing person. Every once in a while, the group gathers at Morrison’s house for a “summit” about how sales are going and about the business’ strategic moves. In late 2005, Morrison said her revenue was on track to increase about 30 percent over 2004’s revenue.

Morrison’s trademark works are etchings of wildlife, such as wolves, rabbits, jaguars and bobcats. A life-sized Morrison painting can fetch $35,000 and may take as long as three years for a buyer to collect, depending on how long the buyer agrees to allow the work to be displayed in her gallery. Morrison said prices in her gallery range from $35 to $100,000. Of course, Morrison has been known to hand deliver the work across the country as needed.

Morrison was always an artist, she said, but it took time for her to learn the business side of art. She said she learned that from her husband, Woodward, and through lessons in the art community that include colorful stories about Andy Warhol.

One of her largest commissions to date was called “Animal Tracks,” an environmental education program created for Wal-Mart Stores from 1990 to 1992. Morrison said Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, commissioned five of the “Animal Tracks” works and now owns all but three of the 22 pieces created for the collection.

Dombek’s work is a local favorite at barbecue joints and offices of high finance alike. His paintings are known for their painstaking minute detail in watercolor. He paints rocks, trees, tin cans, bicycles, and recently, New York water towers.

“It actually drives me sane,” he said of the precision. “If I had my druthers, I’d do nothing but paint.”

But Dombek seamlessly switches from painter to businessman. He has very few arrangements with galleries and sells most of his work through his own business, at his own gallery in Goshen.

“I don’t know too many other businesses in America that work on this consignment thing,” he said about galleries.

He noted that as far as artists are concerned, it’s the easiest time in history to sell artwork. Art quality is high, people have money, and people want what artists produce, he said.

Original Dombek paintings range in price from $1,000 for a very small piece to $24,000 for a 40-by-60-inch painting, he said.

In the art world, it seems size does matter. There is a fairly standardized price based on the size of a work, he said, but he didn’t want to give away any artists’ secrets.

“I think my paintings, by Arkansas standards, are pretty high … but by other places, such as New York, they seem very reasonable,” Dombek said, noting that his prices will probably go up a little in the near future.

Dombek, who makes his permanent home in Goshen, is currently living in New York. He was one of 14 artists awarded one year of free studio space in that town by the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. The 14 winners were culled from a pool of 900 applicants.

“New York is not the center of the art world, but it is the center of the market,” he said. “If you want to be an artist, you need to go to a city — and a big one.”

The Galleries

Julie Wait Fryauf, owner of Julie Wait Designs in Rogers, has helped hundreds of businesses pick interior designs, including the artwork.

She typically suggests local artists to her clients, and she has kept files on artists as she’s encountered their work over the years.

As of early April, she was coordinating the installation of several large prints by Missouri photographer David Burt at the soon-to-open First Western Bank & Trust in the Pinnacle Hills area of Rogers.

Sometimes it’s a hard sell to get a business to spend money on original art, she said.

“It can be pretty difficult because it’s one of the last considerations, and the money is frequently gone,” she said.

She believes in supporting local artists so much, that she’s actually morphed her business model somewhat in the last year. The design studio is now part gallery.

She purchased a 2,000-SF building in downtown Rogers. The space was larger than she needed, so she opened up the walls on about half of the building to local artists who can hang their works and sell them to the public. Each artist gets an opening reception night.

Wait Fryauf takes a 20 percent commission on works sold during the show, an industry standard. But she feels like the effort is more of a goodwill generator (from the community and the artists) than a revenue generator.

Woodward is the quintessential artist advocate. He operates the Eureka Springs Fine Art Co., a two-story gallery directly above Morrison’s Signature Gallery.

“There’s nothing better for an artist than to sell his work,” Woodward said. “Selling feeds the artist,” he said, using the term both literally and figuratively.

Both Woodward and Morrison said he helped his wife gain her sea legs in the industry and turn her work, in fact herself, into a profitable business based on her environmental and painting passions. They started the Morrison-Woodward Gallery in 1979. It is now Susan Morrison’s Signature Gallery and ESFAC.

Woodward has expanded his expertise into the ESFAC that is filled floor to ceiling with works by local, regional and international artists. He likes to present a good mixture of both so people can compare the quality of local artisans with someone from, say, the United Kingdom.

Woodward said his 2005 revenue was up about 15 percent over 2004’s and that things look good, even when some business owners in Eureka Springs are struggling.

And Woodward is an advocate not just of local artists but also the town of Eureka Springs. He’s figured out a way to take his gallery on the road and promote his community at the same time.

Long ago, he noticed how nonprofit organizations ask artists to donate work for fundraising events and silent auctions. The artists frequently get little or no money out of the deal, and typically donate works they can’t sell, he said.

Through much thought, Woodward has come up with an alternative. He will take a “gallery” of about 200 works to a fundraising event. The artist will take home 50 percent of the retail price (say $500 for a piece that would sell for $1,000 in a gallery).

Then ESFAC and the nonprofit will split the remaining of the retail price ($250 each). The nonprofit takes any amount bid above the retail price. So, if the work sells for $1,500, the nonprofit will take in $750 on the sale, the artist $500 and Woodward $250. It’s a triple win, Woodward said.

He’s taken the gallery on a couple of trips, and it made an appearance April 8 at the 12th annual Wine & Roses event to support the Donald W. Reynolds Cancer Support House in Fort Smith.

Revenue and the number of pieces sold at the event weren’t available at press time.

“There’s more creativity in the business of art than in art itself,” Woodward said.