See Saw

RETAILING FOOD AND ART TOGETHER!

I hung the first show at Healthy Living Natural Foods in South Burlington on Monday, and it looks swell. If you are in the neighborhood, go over and check it out, buy some great food or products, and tell me what you think.  I'm so excited to have this new adventure in retailing. Brilliant, if I do say so myself, to combine art and food retailing. I wonder if it will become a trend.

Melaney and Megan at the customer service counter at Healthy Living Natural Foods .


information counter at Healthy Living

FAKE! on the long wall at  Healthy Living. The one on the right, Liza Leger Woman With Vase is a print of my original painting. I had it done on water color paper and it looks amazing. Best of all, it only costs $200 unframed, so if you want one, send me an email (liza@pinestreetartworks) or call. 802 863 8100. I don't have a paypal widget but I'm happy to wait for a check, or take a credit card over the phone. the rest of the work is for sale as well, at slightly higher prices because they are originals.

Megan on the phone in front of my two Picassos. The one on the left, Portrait of Jacquline,  is on a mirror. In the back Portrait of Marie Therese, is a reverse painting on an old window.

 
Amanda at the coffee bar.


Head Chef, Jaime Eisenberg.


Cosmetics counter, Healthy Living

Cup display at Healthy Living

Display at Healthy Living. Seriously good visual merchandizing  by Rhoby throughout the store.

Food and Art Together? Naturally.

Pink Tulips, photo by Liza Cowan

I'm thrilled to announce that Pine Street Art Works will soon be opening an annex at Healthy Living Natural Foods, on Dorset Street in South Burlington. For those of you who don't live in these parts, Healthy Living is a locally and independently owned, ethically operated, and now rather large, retail provider of food and related products. HL started 20 years ago with a staff of two and now employs over 100 people.

I'm a fussy shopper and HL meets all my criteria. It's locally,independently and ethically owned and operated- by a dynamo of a woman named Katy Lesser. It is beautiful, it sells local organic produce and foods (thereby supporting local agriculture and artisinal food crafters), provides prepared food and baked goods  (I'm a pretty big fan of take out.)  The staff is great, and it functions as a Third Place, with it's restaurant and coffee bar, where people can sit and read the paper or run into old, or new, friends.

Here's the deal with Healthy Living. I will curate shows, small shows, in the store at the information/welcome center lasting up to two months. I estimate that between five to ten pieces can go up for each show. I will choose some of the artists who show at PSAW  but others will be coming in first to Healthy Living, and then maybe ending up later at PSAW.  So far, Cara Barer and Richard Gombar have agreed enthusiastically to showing at HL, which is two for two.

Best of all, this is a win -win -win situation. I get to show and sell my artists work to many more people than show up at my gallery, which is situated in a section of town I fondly call New Siberia.  Shoppers at HL  can view gallery quality art in an enhanced shopping experience. And HL gets to offer this visual treat to their customers. It's kind of the visual equivilent to being served a cup of free  coffee while you shop. This actually happened to me one morning at B*rns and N*ble bookstore a few weeks ago, and it was such an unexpected treat. The fact that they have a St*rbucks cafe in the store was not lost on me, but it didn't diminish my pleasure at being served a coffee. Such is the nature of marketing.

I'm starting the Healthy Living exhibition series with my own Fake! series because it's ready to hang and quite frankly, I can't resist the thrill of seeing my fake Matisses and Legers hanging in a grocery store. I can't even explain why I find this so exciting and amusing.

And here's a funny coincidence. It turns out that I used to live right next door to Katy's sister Elizabeth Lesser, in Woodstock, New York. My dog Alice, a beautiful German Shepard mix, used to trot through the small woods that separated our houses, sneak into Elizabeth's kitchen and steal food off her table. Apparantly Elizabeth isn't a major dog lover, but she was always gracious about it.

MEDIA WHIRL

Yesterday the new issue of Best Of Burlington Magazine came out. My copies were hand delivered by the publishers, John and Robin Gales.

The cover story is Flashbags!

Ali and Laura, Photo by Rose Murphy, Best Of Burlington Magazine . That's my Liza Leger bottom right.

Here are some scans of details of the pages because this story is not online. (Hint Hint Robin and John.)

To see the whole article you are going to have to subscribe or buy a copy at a news stand. There's also an article about my favorite bookstore, The Flying Pig, in Shelburne, VT, and a wonderful article about Burlington's Architectural Gems.  visit their website :Best Of Burlington Magazine, 802 295 5295

And remember, I have new images for sale on Flashbag products.
Like this:

A delightful checkbook cover with an image from a vintage needle book.

HALL OF MIRRORS

Liza, self portrait using iMac Photobooth and digital point and shoot camera. With SP Goodman painting as screensaver.

Alison Bechdel mentioned in a response to my last post that there is a piece about this blog in our local weekly newspaper, Seven Days Vermont. At the risk of this blog turning into an endlessly recursive hall of mirrors, I refer you to the the piece.

Alison is one of several artists who have exhibited at PSAW who also blog. See Alison’s blog, also Elizabeth Bunsen and SP Goodman. Other artists have excellent websites, which you can get to by following the links page on the PSAW website.

Links are often my favorite part of blogs. I’ve found some of my most valuable resources by following links, not only in the body of the text but also by following the URL’s embedded in names of reader comments. [Which, by the way, is different from people using comment space to write about their own sites. This is generally - with certain exceptions -not considered good blogging manners]

Some of the people who respond  to blogs are brilliant bloggers themselves -creative thinkers, writers, artists, analysts, collectors. Or not. But it’s worth following the links if you are interested in what they've said.

Just click on the names on the comments, and if they have embedded their URLs you will get there. How postmodern is that? It’s one of the best and easiest ways for blogs to create community, which, according to the piece in 7Days, is what I’m here to report on.

ADVERTISING SKETCHBOOK

These are some ads I’ve been working on this week. I try to keep a design sketchbook for ad ideas.

This is an idea for a generic ad. The goal is to sell the gallery using a simple repeated image. In this case it is one of my photos of one of my Adel Rootstein mannequins. The mannequin collection is a feature in the gallery. I think of them as contemporary sculpture.

A large part of my job as a gallerista is designing ads for local magazines and newspapers and  I spend a lot of time studying ads in local and national periodicals to see which ones please me, and why.

This sketch uses an image from Nakki Goranin's upcoming American Photobooth exhibit (February + March at PSAW) I wanted to see if I could use several different images and two different typefaces and still maintain the smooth look that I like. The background multiple is the back of a Jello booklet, the foreground is the Photobooth image. I imagine that they existed in the same historical era. This sketch was fun to do but it's unlikely that I will ever use it. Too fussy, ultimately.

 There’s a lot of optical competition in most periodicals, which so often look like the designer shook up everything up dumped it on the page willy nilly.  Bad overall layout is so commonplace that often the hardest part for me is compensating for having to be part of the mixup.   The challenge is to design something that will stand out. Simplicity works. I like to have the image do the heavy lifting, with text acting as a design element . I prefer to have as little text as I can get away with.

   
The problem I see with most local ads, and a lot of national ones, is that they are a jumble of competing typfaces with no overall sense of composition. It’s hard enough to make people’s eyes rest on a particular ad when there’s so much visual noise surrounding it. When the reader’s eye does lite on an ad, it shouldn’t be a struggle to figure out what the ad is selling.

Another generic. It incorporates an illustration from a children's reader that I picked up in Holland many years ago. This illustration is typical of the kind in my collections and my limited edition reproductions. It was published in 1955, but it must be  a reprint of an earlier version. It must be. But I don't read Dutch, so I can't tell. The book is called VIJFDE LEESBOEKJE, and the illustration is by  C. Jetses. I gave the illustration a  red header, a black border, and added the arrows because they amuse me, add some graphic humor, and point out the physical address and the gallery website.

 

I did this a couple of months ago and although I've never used it as a print ad, I have used it on the homepage of the Gallery Website several times, and I'm very fond of it. It took me ages to get just the right combination of images, and to scale them properly. The image on the left is one of my photographs from Shipyard Archeology, a series I did a few years ago. The image on the right is from Paint By Number painting, part of the collection that was on exhibit last August here at PSAW.

My ideal ad. Volkswagen, 1964. It just doesn't get better than this.

TWO BOOKSTORES

I finished off my rather limited holiday shopping yesterday with a visit to two bookstores, Barnes & Noble in South Burlington, VT and The Flying Pig in Shelburne, VT.

I had a 25% off card at B&N that ended on the 24th, and with a family that's addicted to Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the kids)  and Star Trek (me), I needed to cash in. Our local B&N is as corporate driven as you might imagine. That is, the layout in all the stores follows a format that is familiar and  pleasant, with the requisite St*rbucks, comfy chairs to lounge in and a good used book section. The selection of books is large, if predictable, with sprinklings of local and small press books, and author appearance by local writers, of which we have an abundance.

You can go into a B&N pretty much anywhere and know your way around. My shopping philosophy - Shop Local - only somewhat applies here. But  much of the staff has been there at least as long as I've been in VT, six years, and the salaries, rent and taxes go towards supporting the local economy. I've run into B&N staff in Yoga class, at local concerts and at the grocery store. They know their stock, and some of them, at least, are knowledgeable readers, particularly in the kids section. Despite this, the store is too corporate driven to feel like you are visiting someone's personal vision. You aren't. There's no community building going on here. But I got $50 off my DVD, and that's a good thing.

Ten miles away, in the Village of Shelburne, The Flying Pig Bookstore is another animal altogether. Shelburne is cute as a button and just as small, but recently has bloomed into quite a shopping destination. Shelburne is known around here as being a pocket of wealth and the village reflects that, but in a very New Englandy way- which, as a New Yorker, is still exotic to me. Nothing flashy. No box stores. All very tasteful. Shelburne is also home to the world class Shelburne Museum, just down the road.

The small shops are all in historic wood or brick buildings, some beautifully renovated. The stores are clustered in a central location along Rt. 7 and a gracefully curving offshoot around the village green.  In the summer there's a farmers market. And my favorite cafe, Village Wine and Coffee, is right there, too.

The Flying Pig exemplifies great retailing. Owners Josie Leavitt and Elizabeth Bluemle are passionate readers, as are their staff. The store is beautifully designed to make use of every inch of floor and wall space, which they need to house their stock of 40,000 books.  Josie, Elizabeth and the staff  are so cordial and welcoming - and funny - that you feel like you are visiting their home, rather than their store. Looking at the stock  you know the books are all selected by intelligent creative minds. Although the emphasis is on children's books, the adult sections are as varied and smart as the kids sections. In a nutshell, you can trust their choices. Readings by terrific authors, an informative newsletter and a well designed website with online shopping round out their brilliance.

An important part of being a retailer, and one that is so rare, is the art of being a host. Sometimes employees can fill this role. But usually it takes the presence of the owner, and a rare owner at that. The best stores, at least my favorites, are the ones where I not only feel like I've made a connection to the goods via the host, but also one in which I connect with other like minded shoppers. The best retailers will not only know regular customers, but introduce them to one another. Not in an an overbearing way - there's a fine line here - but in a graceful and knowledgeable way.

Josie and Elizabeth shine at this- as does Kevin at Shelburne Wine and Coffee. When a store has that ambiance, the clientele will start to take over the task as well. That's when a store comes alive, and makes a community.