In praise of owning art

On artists, art dealers, and you

I do not know if you own a work of art. If you are a student, with a student’s income and a student’s preoccupations, you have probably never even considered investing in a painting or a sculpture. Artworks, even small ones, can be expensive. And there are so many other things to worry about.

But I would like to suggest that even the most harried student can gain from worrying, now and then, about visual art and the role it plays in their lives.And, in aid of suggesting this, I’d like to tell you a story.

In 2016, Emily Reimer paused her BA in Studio Art to leave Guelph and study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, one of Canada’s most prestigious art schools. One of the assignments in her first semester in Halifax required her to make a piece focused on colour, and for inspiration, Reimer looked down the road to the rainbow-coloured residential homes that are a calling card of the Maritime city.

Reimer didn’t just want to document those houses — she wanted a way to link them with her own life.And so she went through her belongings, finding items which matched the various vivid hues of the townhouses, and photographed the objects and residences in juxtaposition.

The piece forged connections on two levels. Symbolically, the colours united her personal life and the landmarks of Halifax. And, quite literally, the process of completing the project introduced her to her new neighbours and familiarized her with the neighbourhood she now lived in.

After two semesters in Halifax, Reimer, now 21 years old, came home to Guelph, where those same pieces continue to make new connections. Throughout September, new versions of those photos have been on display at Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art gallery downtown. The photos are part of Chroma, a show focused on colour featuring two other Southern Ontario artists, Myles Calvert and Andrew Maize.

Chroma is Reimer’s first show in a private gallery: her introduction to the world of art dealers and art collectors.“I’m really excited that people might know my name,” said Reimer, as we spoke on a sunny day at a picnic table behind the Bullring.

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The endorsement of an art dealer like Renann Isaacs can seriously impact a young artist’s self-image: “When I was in second and third year, I didn’t think of what I was doing as my work. I thought of it as my assignments and my homework. I think I’m going to take what I’m making a lot more seriously now.”Small commercial art dealers like Isaacs occupy a fraught middle ground in the world of fine art. On one side is the garish spectacle of the big money art market, where dead sharks and stainless steel balloon dogs sell for millions. On the other is the greyish spectre of the public institution of art, where toeing the party line can count more than whether anyone actually cares.

Through it all, dealers like Isaacs continue with the largely unglamorous work of helping artists make a living and spectators find pieces to hang in their homes.   That’s where you come in.

A peculiar alchemy takes place when you hang an artwork in your home and live with it. Renann Isaacs calls this an “aesthetic investment.” Here’s my theory: you put yourself into the images and objects you own, like so many horcruxes. You store your energy and spirit in those things, and in return they rejuvenate you, carry you through the thick times and the thin.

It’s not a process you can always see, but when you feel it, you really feel it. I felt it on that sunny day with Reimer when I walked into The Bullring for the first time in two years and clapped eyes on the paintings that hang just to the right of the menu, the man and the woman, which immediately filled me with love and joy and melancholy. Those paintings had been a part of my daily life for four years — and I had forgotten about them. I didn’t know how much they meant to me until they smacked me in the face.

“If you buy a really good piece of art,” says Isaacs, “and you research well, and you meet that dealer or meet that consultant that helps you, that nurtures you as an art buyer, then it will be that wonderful aesthetic investment that you will be able to appreciate every day you walk into that room.”One of the functions of making, owning, or appreciating artwork, as Reimer’s project indicates, is to connect you with others and with the place in which you live. Many students will move three or four times during the course of university, like I did. This constant uprooting can be jarring and depressing — but perhaps less so if you have meaningful images to carry with you as a constant.

Unfortunately, if you are a student, or simply a citizen of the digital age, your eyes are constantly occupied. The culture of images in which you are immersed — an unceasing torrent of memes and selfies — is gloriously decadent, but tends to favour the lowest common denominator.

Perversely, art gallery culture can often do the same. Most small art galleries do not have couches. They do not promote loitering. Even large galleries tend to encourage a brisk walk through over a leisurely stay. The true value of an artwork only appears when you live with it.

The sheer number of students who crowd the UC every September during the Imaginus poster sale tells me that students understand the power an image can have when hung on a dorm room or apartment wall.That there is an appetite among students for images that provoke, move, and sustain them.

If you are such a student, you would do well to get to know an art dealer like Renann Isaacs — and to work on making aesthetic investments that will last a lifetime.

Photo by Will Wellington/The Ontarion.