Art!

I mentioned on Saturday that we had bought some new art at the Leeper Park Art Fair, an annual event that has claimed a fair amount of my money over the years. Promila Kumar’s booth was right by the entrance to the Fair, and I think we both knew immediately that we were buying something from her as soon as we’d had the chance to wander through the rest of the displays. If you look through her website you’ll see that some of her work is more concrete and representational than this, but the movement and use of color was what grabbed us– I love the blues, and the golds sparkle nicely with the light in our bedroom.

This specific piece, as far as I know, doesn’t have a name, and Promila was nice enough to let us know that she didn’t care if we displayed it horizontally or vertically, and even asked which way we were thinking of hanging it before signing it. This conversation entertained both of us, as we’d just had a conversation, out of her earshot, about whether that precise situation would offend an artist who worked in abstract colors and shapes like she does– we needed something with some horizontality to it to fit this particular spot in our bedroom, and she had a few pieces with similar dimensions that she’d displayed vertically. I mean, on one hand, she’s never going to be in our house, so who cares, but there’s something to be said for respecting the artist’s vision, y’know?

So, yeah, I gotta appreciate an artist who basically says “My vision for this piece is whatever makes you more likely to buy it.”

Give this man your money

Just another quick one today, but the link will be worth checking out. The Leeper Park Art Fair takes place in South Bend today or tomorrow, and one of the exhibitors is Josh Merrill, who was there last year as well, and who we specifically went looking for this year. He is a photographer and he does regular prints just like everyone else (we picked up a print of his “The Introvert” piece, if you go looking at the site) but what caught our attention is that he also does prints on metal.

I cannot properly represent to you how amazing this man’s work looks when printed on metal. The colors absolutely glow in a way that no .jpg on a website is going to show correctly. What I need you to understand is that most of his framed metal prints were going from around $1700-$2300 at the show, and he was selling them at that price, and I was doing my level damnedest to convince my wife to pick something up. I’m serious. I’d have dropped two grand on this guy’s work in a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t have felt bad about it at all afterwards. And now that I know that he sells his work straight from his website, I’m going to pick something and start legit setting money aside every paycheck for it.

His shop is here, and you need to take a few minutes and look around.