by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Buying art in a gallery can be expensive, but an art auction provides the same high-quality work at a lower price, said artist Karl Hofmann.
Hofmann donated a piece of art to the Graduate Art Association's silent art auction with works donated by graduate students, faculty and alumni.
Mary Goodwin, a co-chair of the association, said 3 percent of the proceeds will go toward Hurricane Katrina victims. The rest is used to benefit art students, paying for their juried show catalogs, workshops, visiting artists' speaking events, and end-of-the-year grants for art supplies.
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She said the bid works like eBay.
"It's a timed auction," she said. "There'll be a bidding registration table. You'll go there to put your name, address and phone number. You'll receive a bidding number."
The bidder writes his or her assigned number and a price on a sheet of paper corresponding with the piece of art. She said they're taking cash or checks.
"It's a huge investment in satisfaction, no matter the monetary value," Goodwin said. "It's the best treat any person can give him or herself. We have a nationally recognized art and art history program here, so I think it's a safe bet that art that you buy here is going to maintain its value and increase in value."
Hofmann put in a small piece, he said, to keep the art affordable, instead of giving a large painting, which might drive up the price because of the size.
"The piece I put in is a little gem that I like," Hofmann said. "It's a compositional study for a larger piece. There's a lot of intricate ink drawing and collage scraping from my palette. I think whoever gets it is going to really enjoy it."
He said his pieces are about the multi-dimensional nature of our existence, the multitude of forces simultaneously at play.
"That's quite a spiel, isn't it," he said.
He said buying art adds a layer of texture to our aesthetic experience.
"Why not enhance what you see on a daily basis with something you like to look at?" Hofmann said. "It should be about something you like and something you feel a strong connection to. Otherwise, it's just another aspect of the stock and bonds industry, which is not very interesting."
Tara Zalewsky, another artist, is part of a plein air painting group called Apex. Plein air artists paint landscapes outside on the spot to get natural lighting. She entered one of her landscapes into the auction.
"It was one of my better pieces to submit," she said. "This woman told me, 'I usually don't like landscapes, but I really connected with your work.' It's a pretty serious group of plein air painters. We're trying to get a core group to go out regularly."
Erin Kawamata said her three-dimensional photographic works are based on her family's ancestral stories.
She's entering a piece called "Neither Here Nor There." The title, she said, comes from her great-grandmother's condition while on her deathbed. She wasn't dead, but her mind was somewhere far away.
Her great-grandmother always wanted to go back to her homeland, Japan, but couldn't because she got married and settled down.
"My great-grandmother was on her deathbed and said to my grandmother - who was only 12 - she was asking her if she was on a boat going to Japan," she said.
She said the piece is a sienna-type scroll sewn to a digital print.
"I haven't sewn it flat, so it kind of comes off of the print. It's encased in a shadow box," she said.
Goodwin said there will be more than 50 works in the auction.
