Etsy Art
You Should Own Art, Edition 19
Hello friends and welcome back to You Should Own Art, the sometimes erratically published “monthly” source for interesting, yet surprisingly affordable works of art, and run on sentences. I missed last month’s edition due to a shocking amount of work, deadlines, visitors, and other adventures and misadventures. As the brain fog lifts, I am happy to rediscover the joy looking at art.
When I last checked in at some point late in the first decade of this century, Etsy was a quirky, occasionally clever and charming, assemblage of handmade knick-knacks. Throw pillows embroidered with earnest or ironic aphorisms, hand-made journals, shabby-chic picture frames, and “jewelry” haphazardly organized in a manner that favored serendipity over precision.
This is not the Etsy of the 2020’s. The Etsy of now is, above all else, slick. It has learned the lessons of Amazon. It is the frictionless everything store of anything that can make even the vaguest claim to be “craft”. I’m sure its customer service is excellent.
And they sell art. Often, when people ask me about selling my own work, they ask if I’ll set up on Etsy. It had never occurred to me to look for art on Etsy (see above) and I wondered what I might find there. And thus is born this edition of Y.S.O.A. An expedition into the furthest reaches of the world’s rummage sale.
And what did I find there? To summarize; portraits of animals, lots of landscapes, some kids in the rain, and not a small amount of erotic art. This is not to say there isn’t delightful and special work there, it’s just a bit hard to find. For instance, last year I bought a great print by Elvia Perrin from her store on Etsy.
All this said, Etsy is great resource for inexpensive art. I think this is helped by the tools Etsy provides to make it easy for artists to offer prints at different sizes and in different formats. And, while I do think there is something special about a singular, original work, prints are a wonderful, low-risk gateway to collecting art.
Before we get into it, I want to alert you to the existence of the Fine Art Film Festival which:
is dedicated to presenting the finest new films about art in the western capital of the art world, and tell stories about how art is made, how artists survive, how they think and work, and what makes creativity our most important skill, and our best hope for mankind.
Watching films about artists and their process is pretty far down the rabbit hole of art nerd-dom, but I hope you’ll join me in there.
Blue Stella
Hana Rubi
USD$32.86
My love of pictures of people is well-documented at this point. And I really am drawn to super expressive work like this.
You can buy this work here.
Hana’s Instagram
Hana’s website
Concetto Spaziale Attesa
Lucio Fontana
Starting at USD$41.60
Lucio Fontana was a mid-century artist Italian artist. He worked through tumultuous times in Italy and in Art. Much of of his work was similar to this in which he created space where there had been none before. While this is a 2D reproduction of what is a 3D work, I think there’s a cool (possibly unintentional) trompe l'oeil effect to it.
You can buy this work here.
A Memory
Eric Fisher
Starting at USD$50.00
The weirdness of the suggested space and the contrast between organic and inorganic form is super interesting to me. The orchestration of color here is pretty great too.
You can buy this print here.
Eric’s Instagram
Eric’s website (more interesting work here)
Outkast - Andre 3000 - SuperStankOmaticAlaFreshFantastic
Jon and David Swartz
USD$25.00
There is fan art, and then there’s this masterpiece. It’s just bonkers and I love it.
You can buy this work here.
The Swartz Brothers’ Instagram
Their website
Italian Hillside
Joanne Hastie
Starting at USD$34.94
You’re right, it’s not like there aren’t a million pictures of ancient Italian villages nestled in the foothills of the alps. But this is lovely. I like the skillful blobby-ness of the brushwork and vibrancy of color.
You can buy this work here.
Joanne’s Instagram
Joanne’s website
Nameless
Xanthi Tsaloupi
USD$72.48
This brings together two elements we’ve already seen: ambiguous portraits and trompe l'oeil. This is a print of a painting that uses paint in such a way to make it essentially a sculpture. I think it’ll have a neat effect as a flat image.
You can buy this work here.
Xanthi’s Instagram
Two Servings
Jaye Schlesinger
USD$$120.00
There’s a tradition in art of focusing on the everyday. Through close observation, objects that normally seem insignificant reveal profound truths. I think that meditative quality is at work here. You should check out more of Jaye’s work, it’s pretty great.
You can buy this work here.
Jaye’s Instagram
Jaye’s website
Gnocchi
USD$30.00
1o1Studio
I am a sucker for graphic design and illustration, and gnocchi. I like how this evokes the experience of making gnocchi while remaining a very simple composition.
You can buy this work here.
Time to Wait
Jesse Cafiero
Starting at USD$25.00
Jesse’s work makes me think that there’s a collage edition in Y.S.O.A.’s near future. Collage as medium lends itself to enigmatic and unexpected images like this. Jesse seems to have dialed into those two qualities. You should check out more of his work.
You can buy this work here.
Jesse’s Instagram
Jesse’s website
Ok! That’s that it for this month (or two :/). I hope you’ve enjoyed this wander through the infinite Etsy superstore. I’ll be back next month with a new batch of artworks. In the meantime, take a second to tell your friends that they too should own art. And subscribe. Definitely, subscribe.