UC Graduate Painting Students Brush Up on the Art of the Sale

The 14 graduate students in a current University of Cincinnati course long ago learned to do more than “paint by number.”

And so, with students’ creative painting skills already at an advanced level, course instructor Mark Harris, director of UC’s School of Art, wanted to provide a meaningful challenge “outside the lines” for these students. That’s why he sketched out a novel idea. As part of the “Graduate Painting” class currently underway in UC’s internationally recognized College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, the students would also research, interact with and seek to sell a piece to one of three local collectors.

Explained Harris, “Students have to be resourceful in building relationships between themselves and collectors. They have to learn about the focus a collector might have. This is something hardly ever addressed in a fine-art curricula, and yet, many of these students will soon be graduating and showing their work to collectors.”

So, he recruited three sets of local collectors – Andy and Karen Stillpass; Sara Vance and Michelle Vance Waddell; and Michael Lowe and Kim Klosterman – who agreed to participate with the class. Each set of collectors will be provided $500 (from private funding) in order to choose the student work that, at the end of the quarter, proves most individually appealing. Each set of collectors will then purchase a selected work. The collectors can then retain the work or may instead donate it back to the UC School of Art since a specific student work might not ideally fit with their current collections.

Harris added that just as working artists must decide basic issues, the students in the course must decide whether to adapt work to an interested collector or to take the opposite approach and interest a collector in their extant and ongoing work.

Liz Kauffman, 25, of Ft. Wayne, Ind., who is a earning a master’s in both fine arts and art history, knew about the unusual sales project that would be incorporated into the class even before she enrolled. That’s why she was interested in the class.

“I’m graduating in the spring, and this project directly applies to real life after UC. It’s like interviewing experience. ‘The more, the better’ when it comes to meeting collectors and curators. Connecting with others and communicating on a number of levels is why most of us our doing this creative work. This project means experience in communicating our work effectively in a number of ways, and that real-world motivation is important for me,” she explained.

Similarly, Katie Labmeier, 27, of Delhi, a fine arts graduate student, knew about the project before she enrolled in the course and wanted the practice at building important business relationships that shape the art world. Said Labmeier, “Building a relationship is more important than selling one piece. The collectors have shown us their works, invited us into their homes. This is valuable in a different way in that we’re seeking how people intimately live with the works they’ve already acquired. It might be something sitting on a coffee table. It’s not sterile. It’s integrated into their lives.”

One of the collectors who has invited the UC students into her home to view the international and local art that she has collected is Sara Vance of Indian Hill. She said the best part of participating in the project is meeting the students and getting to know them as artists. She explained, “I love to get to know any artist that I collect.”

The only hard part, according to Vance, may be finally selecting one work from among so many. “For me,” she added, “The real pay off has been helping young artists. It will be hard to choose among them.”

Student Chris Kulcsar, 30, of Cleveland, hopes his work might be selected. An MFA student who deliberately picked the painting class over one in drawing, he admitted, “Well, the $500 is a lot of money to me. I’m your typical, broke student.”