There is something shockingly different about Wynwood's newest art emporium. The works lining the gritty space's windows, walls, and aisles fly out the door in a single day. And on Wednesdays, you can snag an original painting or limited-edition framed print for half-off or a hefty discount.
The blue-ticket prices on display can be haggled over, without a gallery's high-pressure sales approach. You also won't find anyone fussing over those little red dots trumpeting expensive purchases and designed to incite status anxiety. And customers aren't lured in with promises of free cheese or Chablis.
But at the Salvation Army thrift store at 90 NW 23rd St., the art business is booming in a big, untraditional way. With Wynwood galleries closing, moving, or teetering on the edge, the Salvation Army's approach to art sales might be an effective business model for success in these grim economic times.
"We get a lot of collectors who come in on the day of the gallery walks
and buy this stuff, but when they find out everything is half-off on
Wednesdays, they come back for the discounts," says Vernell Hammett,
the thrift store's general manager and self-styled curator.
"This is an original Ferrante painting for $79.99," he says, pointing
to a dreary, pastel-toned image of clay pots atop an adobe dwelling,
which clashes with a garish olive-green armchair tucked in a nearby
corner.
As the ersatz dealer gives Riptide the tour of his thrifty exhibit, a
7-year-old boy bangs away on an old piano while his mother fingers a
print of a Parisian lady twirling a parasol.
Next to the woman hangs an original Thomas McKnight print depicting an
ocean view from the porch of a Nantucket home. The peaceful image,
fairly bedecked in an ornate frame, is priced at a low $24.99. Other
offerings in the same price range include a bucolic scene of stylized
animals marching in pairs aboard Noah's ark and a solitary American
bald eagle in midflight.
While the Salvation Army's cheap, rotgut version of art might not lead
to a stampede of snooty collectors anytime soon, for the price of a
case of beer, you can find something to cheer up your ratty living room
couch without taking a dirty shot to the liver. That's not always the
case at galleries where a DVD of a naked artist packing glitter into
her poop chute and farting silvery fairy dust can cost you a $2,500
hangover.
Local dealer Giovanni Rossi, who after a year in Wynwood is moving his
eponymous gallery at 2628 NW Second Ave. out of the neighborhood, says
the Salvation Army's venture into the art market makes sense. According
to the 34-year-old, art crawlers visited his gallery maybe 12 nights a
year during Second Saturdays and over the Art Basel weekend.
"More people are willing to spend $20 at the Salvation Army on a shitty
poster than those who might come into my space and spend $20,000 on a
painting by a serious artist. And good for them," he says.
