Schools train artists. Museums and galleries exhibit them. Grant-making organizations (like us) do our best to fund them. But who creates that crucial connection between art-buyers and art-makers?
Flatfile Boston is a project of Sara Dassel, Mika Hornyak, and George Sopel, three folks that help prospective art collectors find and buy art, work to create opportunities for market growth and audience building (such as a pop-up show in Wellesley at Essentia, through to this weekend), and use their blog as a medium to display artists with local ties.
Essentially, they match buyers with art. Here, the folks at Flatfile match insightful answers to our Cur8or eight questions.
Please use “Flatfile” and “Boston” together in a sentence.
Flatfile works to grow the Boston area’s contemporary art market by giving greater exposure to local and locally trained artists, by educating potential buyers, and by creating alternative venues and experiences for buying art.
Growing the local art market is like A) spiking/dyeing pink the local hairdo, B) releasing the local Kraken, C) adding yeast to the local bread, or D) launching the local Moon-or-Bust rocketship.
We hope it’s like C, and we are just adding a little boost to the local bread to help it rise a little higher. Or maybe it’s trying to add more “dough” to the bread, since we are really trying to get more people to buy local work and collect locally so artists can work and thrive in the area. But sometimes we think it’s a little like E, as in “none of the above.”
What is the most misunderstood aspect of what you do?
People ask if we sell art online. While we’re not opposed to that and know it’s part of the landscape these days, we think that it’s very hard to get a sense of what you are looking at online, and encourage people to try and see art work in person before they form an opinion about it.
Is there an art + buyer connection you’ve made that you’re most proud of?
Honestly, we are proud of all the connections we make. We’re like the Patti Stanger Millionaire Matchmakers of local art buying. We are all really committed to finding the right match for people. We think there should be a love connection with the work you bring into your life.
What’s the most surprising response to Flatfile Boston you’ve ever had?
If we told you, it would no longer be a surprise.
We know your mission: grow the local contemporary art market. But what’s your SECRET mission?
Find great art, throw fun parties, and fill homes in the Boston area with really wonderful contemporary art.
The unauthorized biography of your lives is titled:
The Long and Winding Road: and why we need a GPS to help us get there. In this fast-paced novel our three heroes travel to areas of Boston that few if any have dared venture, seeking out art that deserves to be seen by citizens whose empty walls and lives are gasping for work that both fulfills their aesthetic and spiritual voids.
Finish this statement: “Buying a work of art is like…”
Ok, say this with a kind of teen-age accent, “Buying a work of art is like… the most addictive thing ever once you take the plunge. It’s crazy fun.”
Flatfile Boston has a pop-up show at Essentia in Wellesley, 91 Central St (thru April 12 [expected] – contact store for details).
For further research on Flatfile’s art-collecting services, check out their collecting blog and/or follow them on twitter.
Images: visual art featured on Flatfile Boston collecting blog, courtesy of the artists: John Guy Petruzzi, POISONER (2012), watercolor on polypropylene paper, 26×40 in; Jesse Burke, WARREN COURTS (2009), C-print, 24×36 in; Nikki Rosato, TRAPPED IN TIME (MERCEDES-BENZ) (2012), watercolor on paper, 22X30 in; Sean Downey, NEW WAYS OF LIVING (2012), oil on canvas, 65×48 in; Herman James, WELCOMING COMMITTEE? (2011), oil on rag paper, 36×51 in.
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