Starting a "Permanent Collection" -The Fifty

[Bird]

I have decided to think of my collection in a new way. I talk about it here on my blog. Basically I am designating pieces as members of The Fifty, my permanent collection. These are the pieces I will have framed and everything else pretty much can go in my pursuit of 50 great works of comic art . If you are wondering where some of my best CAF pieces have gone, they are inactive pending placement in The Fifty, which will be rolled out on the blog.

 

These are pieces I want on my walls when I die.So let me know what you think. And if you own something in my "want to buy someday" CAF favorites folder, consider yourself on notice!

[Pete Marino]

Cool idea!

 

Are you going to publish your list of "the missing 30?"

[mister_not_so_nice]

Good luck with your mission.

I've thought about paring down my PREACHER collection to my favorite 100 pages (just one series, mind you) and I couldn't do it. No way could I pick just 50 pieces for my entire collection. Can a complete issue count as "one piece"

 

Again, good luck

[Bird]

No rules so far. If a double page spread counts as one, why not an issue?

 

also, I have an idea of what I want but will only be listing general wants, nothing specific. Mostly because I have few specifics and will know them when I see them.

 

The 50 pieces will be so good I will not miss everything else by the time I meet my goal, if ever I do!

[Bird]

I got more PMs about this than replies to the thread!

[mister_not_so_nice]

I got more PMs about this than replies to the thread!

 

People like you

They just don't want anyone else to know it

[Doc McCoy]

I got more PMs about this than replies to the thread!

 

People like you

They just don't want anyone else to know it

 

I see what you're doing here . . . a thinly veiled attempt to butter up the Bird in hopes that a piece from NSN will appear in "The Fifty"!

 

Well played sir, well played.

 

 

[Dr. Balls]

I like this idea, I have the same thing going on with my books. Help you keep ultra-focused!

[Bird]

YES! Focus is the key! I have been all over the place, first wildly and then a little focused. Now I need a laser focus and some increased discipline. Buying art only when sober and clearheaded will be my start!

[Bird]

HEY, first off if you read my blog you would see I myself exempted my 100+ page Starman collection from the culling/sacrificing for The Fifty. I am not crazy. Well, at least where this dream of The Fifty is concerned. I am a bit bat guano crazy in other aspects of my life.

 

But I have been enjoying thinking about The Fifty and revealed another member today on my blog and on CAF. Check it out if you'd like, it is not new to my collection only new to The Fifty.

[Eric Seffinga]

I'm off to read the blog after posting this, but a noble per suit and one that I can identify with.

 

I undertook a similar course though different means, starting several years ago. I am ALMOST there. One last big piece is coming, and a free wards it is going to be mostly window shopping from here on out.

 

When my wife and I bought our house, it seemed big. Really really big. Lots of walls, and lots of wall space. I'd been collecting art for about a decade when we moved in, so I had the usual portfolios full of art and stashed in the closet, plus maybe a dozen framed pieces of artwork.

 

I was so happy to hang those pieces in our new house, but the walls of the house swallowed them up. The framed comic pages looked puny on the wall, we I started to frame more.

 

Now, I realize my wife and I aren't the standard married couple with a comic geek and his Mrs. My wife is also fond of comic, and art. She actually has a degree in sequential art, so there's that. In our case, it meant that the collection has never been limited to a den, or a study or whatever. So long as we could keep things looking nice, art could go wherever it felt appropriate. Also our tastes run against the majority, in that most of our pages came from Indy books and Vertigo type titles. batman being the one exception, and even then it is more Tim Sale and Kent Williams than the usual guys.

 

My wife ended up managing a chain of frame shops for a number of years before she finally made a career change. The thing that most afforded us was better access (cheaper) to framing our own collection. the walls started to fill up. the big epiphany for me came when I realized I loved living with the work. Not just owning a lot of stuff, but actually walking around. Interacting with it. I couldn't believe how much more the place felt like"home" when the walls really started showing off our interests. he pieces in the closet held a lot less interest for me. I started regretting having so much work locked away, save for the few times a year Id dig them out to view them for a few minutes.

 

Also ,our tastes shifted somewhat over the last 13 years since we had moved in, and I had managed to pick up some paintings by artists related to comics or that I just admired. before long those walls that seemed too big to ever fill, were filling up faster than I wanted.

 

The thing is, I've got a sort of visual OCD. Being a designer by trade, if things get too cluttered, to busy, or too "out of place" it starts to drive me nuts. Ike I've got my own visual fung shui going on internally.

 

So we took some hard looks at the collection, and started to try and channel the money that was tied up in a lot of what are our relative low, middle and upper tier pieces into more top shelf works. pieces that just cant be topped, or at least by us financially. Less # of work on the walls and more quality. More visual bang for every bit of wall space buck. ore space between pieces. Hone was the salon style of display, and now no more than a couple pieces on any given wall, nestled into other homey decor.

 

And so on it has gone the last 7 years or so now

 

We have finite wall space unless we move, and I really don't want to do that. We love it here. We did decide to eschew an open floor plan to modernize the house, because we would have lost some of that ever precious walls space, but if we care to downsize in the future, in favor of doing something like that... That decision is not completely off the table.

 

Room by room, we have arranged and rearranged pieces until they started to form collections within spaces. the first and the most unwavering has been our bedroom, which has always been all work by Kent Williams. 3 paintings, a pencil on photograph, and 2 figure studies in pencil and pencil and pastel. A great little cross section of his working methods, and displays wonderfully. That room just kind of fell into being early on, and has since formed a sort of blueprint that we have tried to carry through the rest of the house.

 

The hall used to be solely Jill Thompson work. That work has now moved into the office with Duncan Fegredo and Jon Muth, to form a sort of painted art gallery. The dining room is all Sandman artwork. Everything is framed with white top mats and black frames, though each frame has a slightly distinct molding that ties to the period that the artwork reflects, but the repeating of black frames and white top mats, with a sliver of gray bottom mat unifies the pieces together as a whole. Each unique, but the whole display works professionally. The room is a soft antique green shade with copper accents, so the black and white of the comic art with the deco light fixtures just looks so formal in there. iIt suits it wonderfully, and we couldn't be happier.

 

Right now there are a couple rooms in transition. I have a large painting coming later this year (I hope) that will allow me to finish up a room that will suit us as a reading library. No more books in various places around the house, on different bookshelves. Comics and art books abound, and now they will all be easily accessible, and in a comfortable space to kick back and read. that room will house a group of work, and I may someday post photos on here if anyone is interested.

 

The point of all this though, is that the walls have become my list. if I want to add something, something else must go. I also have to consider how the addition will affect everything around it. Our house has become something like a curated museum. Each space has a story to tell. An aspect of our interests and joys.

 

Today, a list wouldn't quite do, because for me it all has to hang together just so. I didn't know that years ago when this all started, or as it evolved. but it is a very real thing. not with rules so much as by necessity. I sold off a LOT of work. pieces by Kirby and Adams are gone. I let got of painted pieces, covers and anything that felt ancillary to the big picture. A lot of it was brilliant work, but just didnt have a place. But I have foud with today's modern reprints. The Artist Collections, Deluxe Aeditions and such, I am perfectly happy aving books of ALL the pages, rather than trying to own them. I just dont get a charge out of a folder full of originals stuffed in a drawer. I get a massive charge out of walking past a page on the wall though.

 

I have almost nothing in the closet now. Maybe 8 pieces Ive kept out of pure nostalgia and were gifts that wouldn't be right to sell off.

 

having a finite goal though, in whatever form it takes. It is liberating. I can not tell you how much anxiety it was when I started to break up my Deadman collection. It was never going to fit on the walls, and once I realized I didn't have a good space for it to fit into at all, I started to sell it off piece by piece. originally the lower stuff. it once I started, I realized I didn't actually care. more and more of it was sold. bigger and better pieces. iconic stuff, even. nice broken up, it was fine to let it all go. And it financed some. Great paintings. Work that I couldn't live without, today.

 

So a different take on the same sort of journey. it is the aged old quality over quantity. What constitutes quality is an individual pursuit, but if one is of a mind to live with their work, rather than hoard it, it is an inevitability. And there's nothing wrong with the hoard it all mindset either. Whatever floats one's boat, and brings enjoyment of the work.

 

For me, having work looking back at me caused that realization that having it tucked away was a real waste, and that just knowing I owned it meant nothing if I wasn't living with it.

 

And so now the walls are like art Survivor. Any piece that comes up it is easy to balance out whether to buy it, and it isn't strictly a money call. It is a quality call. ow does it stack up, what would it replace, where and is it an improvement to everything else? if not, it is a pass. if so, it's a logistics issue. comic pages are easier as they are frequently the same size shape, so the frame coming down and a frame going up isn't a big deal. Sometimes I can even swop a piece in the same frame. it the paintings are a little harder to handle and require more consideration.

 

But I cld not do a finite list, because the is ALWAYS something out there to tempt. to sway, or to win us over. Tastes can change, but the old adage rings true. Buy what you love. ust be sure you really really do love it, and don't be surprised in 10 years time, if you feel like moving on from the occasional piece. I've had some pieces for 20 years now, and wouldn't consider letting them go. I've sold pieces that I have had for nearly that long, when a better one came along.

 

Sorry for the digressions, this is all from my perspective and expereience FWIW...

[Bird]

Great stuff Eric. I think I bought the JHW3/Gray Deadman from you but eventually sold it myself. Maybe another one as well.

 

I didn't quote you because I agreed with so much. I posted some pictures this morning in the framed art thread, and that is also behind much of my thinking. You said so much that could easily have come straight from my mouth (and I read it all eagerly.) My wife and I are sympatico as well, and at this point we have talked about the upstairs hallway and the living room (we agreed on a Tim Truman Ratdog/Hot Tuna/Planet drum painted piece that was used for the New Year's poster for their 1999/2000 show to be in the Living Room but I haven't had it framed yet.) as other places the art would look good but so far I am still filling the downstairs room where I spend a lot of time. I love living in my art, and like you I decided if I cannot see it it is not as meaningful.

 

Now breaking up my Starman collection won't happen anytime soon but I see it in a decade or so when the house is filling up.

 

I would love to put stuff on my office walls at work too, but I work for a state hospital in NJ and it wouldn't be safe from co-workers theft when I am not there. Sad but true.

 

Again, thanks for the thoughts Eric. They mirror my own in so many ways.

[Eric Seffinga]

You may have. The JHW / Grey piece was a great comission. I've seen Mick mention it a few times over the years.

 

As for the Starman collection...

 

I have one thing that is somewhat related. My one guilty pleasure I guess.

Phil Hale put out a book a few years ago called Empire. It is a collection of his drawings, prelims, and photo collage pieces. I find this type of work pretty spectacular. Especially what he manages to convey in his little contour line drawings. They seem so rough to the untrained eye, not m,ore than scribbles. But to an artist who is familiar, it's astounding the information that is in them. little blueprints for very accomplished work.

 

Phil has given me several such drawings over the years, and a couple of the collages. I've also bought a few from him and others. But in the end, I wasn't sure what to do with them. I eventually hit on the idea after Empire was published. I bought a large 12x12 album meant for scrapbooks, and put together my own hardcover "Empire", but everything in it is an original. It is about 40 pages. It sits on my bookshelf next to all of Phil's other hardcover books, but mine is a one off, and full of originals. Some day I may break it up, but at least right now it is accessible. Not so different from pages in a closet, but with the advent of these Artist Editions, I wonder if one could source 11x17 sized hardcover portfolios that comic pages would fit in. Such a book could go on a large shelf with artist editions and fit right in nicely.

[ashrael]

Comics and art books abound, and now they will all be easily accessible, and in a comfortable space to kick back and read. that room will house a group of work, and I may someday post photos on here if anyone is interested.

 

I would love to see your setup now and when finished

[Bird]

I made another member of The Fifty active this morning but had no time for a blog post yet. But there is no way this commission was not going to end up in The Fifty, so I moved it in today.

 

[Eric Seffinga]

Are the pieces you have already added to The Fifty all pieces that have already been framed, or are some earmarked for framing down the road?

[Bird]

Are the pieces you have already added to The Fifty all pieces that have already been framed, or are some earmarked for framing down the road?

 

The ones in the "show us your framed art" thread are all I have done now. But yes, I do intend to have them all framed and on the wall. I did not ever think it would be this way but the aforementioned thread and one man in particular got me going. I saw the way someone else displayed their collection (Rob.?, the guy with them taking up every inch of wall space almost) and realized I could really enjoy that. Then I did 2 pieces and hung them up. I couldn't take my eyes off them as they hung on the wall behind this computer. I got the next 3 one at a time pretty quickly and that was 3-6 months ago. I have the next 3-4 pieces picked out for framing and will start again when I get my consignment money from Clink. (go bid boys and girls! A rising tide floats all boats, even my skimmer hopefully!) My Doc wall is really planned for 5 not 3 as stated earlier (I have 2 on there now). I have a Starman cover wall planned but I kepp getting more and now have choices to make, I think 5 will fit nicely.

 

I was dismayed at the cost for smaller pieces, I wanted to do some 17X5 but may only do one or two as they look $85. Michael's forces a 2 inch border on all edges on you, and that really increase the size of a smaller piece. I may look into other choices for those.

 

So yes, I am ready to frame frame frame. Strip art, paintings, commissions (The Biz may be soon too), covers, and pages. Whatever looks good to me goes up.

 

My daughter and I did discuss the fact that I am showing the burglars what to take in a very obvious way! I check the windows on the ground floor very frequently, especially if the windows have been open for weather. Then multiple times/day!

[Bird]

Thanks for engaging me Eric, and the others as well. you guys are keeping me into it as well, and I posted one this morning on CAF and will write a little on the blog tonight probably. Each time I frame I consider this one, but have not gone there yet. But there is no doubt it is one of my 2-3 top commissions (probably my favorite but the PMS, Banks, and Ormstom pieces might hear me, so shhhh!) and therefore will always be in The Fifty I would think.

 

 

 

[Bird]

I have not yet mentioned it but it occurs to me it is relevant as well. I am about to sell all, or at least 90%, of my comics. That cash is going to The Fifty as well. Well, some of it hopefully. But I have two daughters with no interest in them, not even Leave It To Chance. So out the door they are going to a boardee who will sell them for me. Oh Yeah! I get two closets back I think. He gets to try and sell my Valiants for me!

[Bird]

I have posted some more thoughts on my blog about The Fifty. I am up to five items revealed on the slow roll.