Art a la carte

I'll have a decaf latte, a hummus on pita ... oh, and throw in that oil painting on the wall while you're at it.

Area businesses, hoping their customers' eyes truly are bigger than their stomaches, are offering impulse shoppers the chance to order up some art with their arugula.

Arts aficionados describe this as a "win-win" situation, with businesses getting free wall ornaments and local artists getting added exposure.

"It benefits everyone," says Diane Bush, board member of the Contemporary Arts Collective, a nonprofit arts group which founded the Satellite Exhibition Program a few years ago to provide area businesses with artwork in exchange for corporate sponsorship. "The restaurant gets (its space) beautifully decorated, the CAC receives a 20 percent commission on any work sold, and the artists get great exposure and an opportunity to sell their work."

But Constance DeVereaux, executive director of the Allied Arts Council of Southern Nevada, says exposure may be good for emerging artists, but warns working artists that it's not enough just to 'get your work out there.' "

"A piece not generating sales is doing nothing," she contends, warning artists to be careful. "It's good for the business, it creates a pleasant atmosphere, but the artist has to ask how it serves them. If you're in it for sales, those venues are less likely (to make sales than a gallery)."

Arty trend

Combining art and the culinary arts has long been the domain of the coffeehouse scene. At the 6-year old Engima Cafe, culinary offerings have always been afterthoughts compared to fostering a haven for artists. The Fourth Street oasis and its crosstown contemporaries have served as models for more commercial cafes, such as the cafe at the Virgin Megastore in the Forum Shops at Caesars, and @ the I, a new cybercafe in the Galleria mall.

Trendy, upscale yuppie eateries such as the Forum Shop's Caviareteria are also signing on, banking on the fact that a crowd that appreciates culinary artistry also might appreciate artistry on canvas. Other local restaurants, such as the west side's upscale Bix's restaurant and the Rio's Napa, have played host to similar art-for-sale displays. Even the Picassos hanging in Bellagio's Picasso restaurant are available, technically, for the "right price."

The number of businesses displaying artwork has "tripled" in the past 10 years, Enigma cafe owner Lenadams Dorris says. For those who consider galleries "hoity-toity" -- or just don't consider them at all -- a business is another venue to reach potential buyers. "Having them in places people go for other reasons gives artists exposure they wouldn't otherwise have."

Eateries are not the only places to purchase a little artwork. How about when you're taking in a play at the Las Vegas Little Theater or picking up your kid from the Imprints Day School? The CAC has placed work in both venues.

How about when you're getting that rash treated at the local dermatologist's office? Or browsing for books at the local Borders bookstore? Or when you've stopped by your brokerage firm to check in on your stock portfolio?

At Wedbush Morgan Securities, the oldest brokerage firm in Las Vegas, which opened its doors in 1966, paintings from the Nevada Watercolor Society have been on display since the fall, when Vice President/Branch Manager Wayne Bieniasz was approached by a longtime client, Jeanne-Marie Soderquist, a member of the 30-year-old art group. Soderquist was horrified by the horrendously "bare walls" of the new location in the Hughes Center, and mobilized her dabbling troops.

"It's hard for artists to find a place to display their work," explains Soderquist, the former head of the Las Vegas Art Museum's board of directors, who saw a match between art buyers and stock owners. "Clients coming to a brokerage firm are looking for investments -- and art is also an investment."

The financial picture

Some of these businesses think like, well, businesses, and take the artist's work on consignment, keeping a sales fee for themselves.

A company also benefits by sparing itself the cost of purchasing paintings to snazz up its corridors. All that is incurred is a minimal expense: adding a rider to its insurance policy to cover the artwork in case of theft or damage.

Paula Schmitz Velayo, owner of Alternative Interiors, a custom-designed furniture store, takes a cut of the sales in return for displaying offerings such as Lorraine Filippone's oils on canvas, Elaine Jason's neon sculptures and Rita Malkin's glass work. The art adds ambience to the store, displaying Velayo's "Formica plastic laminate" furniture, while giving the artists an additional venue in the pursuit of fame and glory.

"I like to be able to help them, give them exposure they may not have otherwise," says Velayo, member of the board of the Allied Arts Council. "And the art is complementary to what we're doing, it gives us an appealing space. We appear to be an interior design firm, we're so well-accessorized."

But often the impulse is more altruistic than self-serving:

"It's hard enough as a local artist without having a piece taken out," says Dorris, who has hosted around 50 artist showings in the cramped gallery space adjacent to his Enigma cafe. "The more canned art we can get rid of, stuff design brokers buy from warehouses, the better off we all are."

At Bix's, which opened a little over a year ago, owner Charles Mack has made a practice of displaying work by artists Tony Romeo and (currently) Charles Sites for free, even featuring them in display literature and brochures that accompany a diner's check.

At the office of Deskin Dermatology, old-fashioned nepotism is at play. Dr. Richard Deskin displays his son Steven's landscape color photography around the office. "Patients will walk from room to room to look at the stuff," his mom, Esther, proudly notes.

Matters of taste

Sometimes, though, the art can suffer at the expense of exposure. "The biggest drawback in displaying art in a nonart setting is you can't always give it the context it needs -- certain lighting, or grouping it all together," Dorris notes. "Instead, you just stick in on a wall next to the menu, where it can look stupid or even offensive."

And none of these businesses are likely to display anything that would get the National Endowment for the Arts in hot water.

Although Dorris says he'll take any valid artwork, even if it personally makes him squirm, he finds it hard to imagine bloody images of vampires on the wall of a corporate coffeeshop such as Jitters.

"This is a good outlet for members who do conservative work," Bush concurs. "The client would certainly have a say, and if something offended them, it wouldn't go up. The edgier stuff is not what we try to push. We have our own main gallery for that."

Translation: lots of bowls of fruit and southwestern landscapes.

But artists are willing to make that sacrifice. "I would not take a sample of anything I thought would be controversial or offensive, because you're dealing with a public space," says artist Mari Waits, whose work includes images of Sammy Davis Jr. and classic cars. "It helps to sit down with the business owner, so they're on the same page. That's important, it is their business."

Tallying the results

The larger question is: Does trying to sell artwork in the workplace work? The results are mixed.

According to a Bix's spokeswoman, artist Tony Romeo sold six of his pieces within a year -- at a tidy $5,000 a pop. After three months of display, an artist at Caviareteria says she sold four "Fotofrescoes" -- etchings on Poloroid photographs -- worth $800, to various buyers. At Enigma, Dorris says showings by photographer Eva Steil, cartoonist Andy Hartzell and Skip Wagner have pretty much sold out, while others have gone without a sale.

But even successful artists have found it difficult. Commercial photographer Steven Diskin, who also runs the Four Corners preservation framing shop and gallery out of the Arts Factory, estimates that he sold an impressive 300 pieces -- averaging $200 each -- in the four years he was displaying his photographs at his father's upscale dermatology office.

But when he tried placing his work in other venues, sales were flat.

"I've tried hanging my work in resturants, banks -- you don't sell anything, it was just adornment," Diskin says. "All artists go through it. I got hit by coffee houses (that would) promise we'd make sales, and it just doesn't happen."

The success he enjoyed when selling at the doctor's office he attributes mainly to being on premise to discuss his work and his family ties. "I'd like to think the difference was the quality of my work, but I don't know that's it," he says, shrugging. "I think the difference was my family -- people trusted (the work) of the owner's son."

For many, the sale has more more of a steady drip of paint than a gush. At Wedbush Morgan Securities, only one piece has been sold so far -- a watercolor by Carolyn Merriam, an advertising rep by day. The piece, called "The Courtyard," sold to a Wedbush employee for $100.

And Waits, who has 20 pieces on display at the Virgin Megastore, Borders Books and @ the I, has yet to make a sale.

But, like viewing a Picasso impressionist piece, artists step back and take a longer view.

"Personally, I'm at a point where it's more important to exhibit my work in public," explains Waits, whose "day job" is working with mentally disabled students at Rancho High School. "I want to be seen."

"It's for exposure," the CAC's Diane Bush agrees. "There's no sense in making art if it's going to be collecting dust. Art is meant to be seen and shared."

But the arts council's DeVereaux is more pragmatic. "We caution artists: If you hang it somewhere and it doesn't move, it might as well be in a closet."

archive