Art Gift Guide
Want to give the gift of art? Here are a few ideas for the art lover in your life.
1. For the beginning collector or friend who desperately needs art on their wall, think about their passions and leisure activities. Do they love to hike in the great outdoors? This print by Ed Ruscha might be just the thing.
2. Love your friend, but don't want to break the bank? Ruscha also designed this fun apron that features his famous original recipe for Cactus Omelette. That is kinda like two gifts for the price of one.
3. I've always been a fan of Polaroid and am thankful for the Impossible Project's efforts to keep this unique medium alive. The l-1 camera is the first new camera system in over twenty years that uses the original Polaroid® format. It gives instant photographers new levels of manual control through the companion I-1 App, which allows for complete photographic control of aperture and shutter speed and lets you try out creative techniques like light painting and double exposure. It has a ring flash that provides soft, diffused light, and an autofocus system that makes it perfect for portraits. Just remember, despite what Outcast says, do not actually shake your polaroid picture.
4. Brooklyn-based company Massif Central has done a line of 100% silk scarves by contemporary artists including Trudy Benson, Jonas Wood, Rashid Johnson, David Shrigley Joshua Abelow and Tal R, just to name a few...
These beauties are in limited edition, so get yours now.
5. Robert Storr's newly released Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois spans the artist's 75-year career as a sculptor, painter, printmaker and writer. At 800-plus pages, with more than 1,000 reproductions, the book is ginormous, just the right size to commemorate a genius.
6. Bourgeois was an insomniac for most of her life and described sleep as ‘paradise’. This eye mask features the phrase ‘Key to insomnia: peace or trust‘, referencing a note written on the back of one of Bourgeois’s Insomnia drawings from the mid-1990s.
Curling up with both sounds like paradise to me.
7. Artist I Want To Sleep With notebook - Because where else are you going to keep this list?
8. Small-scale sculptures make a perfect present, like this Adam Parker Smith from The Hole.
9. Don't forget the kids. Choose a colorful abstract or an image with their favorite animal, like this photograph of a Dancing Bear by Keith Carter. It will ignite the imagination and, depending on the piece, grow in value as the child grows too.
11. Contemporary artist Katherine Bernhardt collaborated with curator and interior designer, Maria Brito to produce their objets d’art, a drool-worthy clutch and the perfect addition to any ensemble.
12. Andrea Zittel's A-Z West Containers are hand made ceramic bowls that serve all eating and drinking functions. Zittel has been using “containers” in daily life since the early 1990s. This series was hand produced in the A-Z West studio and then fired by BKB ceramics. Income generated by the container series will fund the purchase of a kiln for the A - Z Studio, becoming another resource available to those in the local creative community.
13. Los Angeles–based artist Laura Owens has pioneered an innovative approach to painting that has made her one of the most influential artists of her generation. Her bold and experimental work challenges traditional assumptions about figuration and abstraction, as well as the relationships among avant-garde art, craft, pop culture, and technology. Owens' Whitney exhibition is still on view, but if you can't make the trip to New York, you can get this limited edition set of three color sugar lift, spit bite and soap ground aquatints published by Crown Point Press. For a client discount, please contact Bowdoin Projects.
