FEATURE

ALLTOGETHER

NOWBy Norman Shake

Have art, will decorate? Not when a single print costs an arm and a leg. That’s why we love The Tappan Collective, an online platform where you can discover and collect limited edition prints and original artwork by some of the best emerging talent, all at an affordable price.

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Seeking to unite up-and-coming artists with aspiring art collectors, Jordan Klein and Chelsea Neman decided to launch The Tappan Collective. Easy to navigate and remarkably affordable, the new online platform allows shoppers to delve into local art scenes from around the world – all from the convenience of their computer. Los Angeles natives Chelsea Neman (L) and Jordan Klein (R) met at the University of Michigan. The artist and art historian studied together in Michigan’s Tappan Fine Arts Library and within those walls, the two developed their understanding and love for art. After graduating in 2010, Chelsea followed her passion as an artist and Jordan pursued a career at an art gallery. They quickly realized the lack of opportunity for emerging artists. Many of their talented friends fresh out of art school were struggling to exhibit and sell their artwork. Jordan and Chelsea saw great opportunity for an online platform that would connect emerging artists to the many aspiring art collectors seeking exciting artwork at affordable prices. They’ve tapped into local art scenes across the world to curate a collection of cutting-edge work by the next generation of artists. Join The Tappan Collective to Tap into the Art Scene. Discover and follow emerging artists and collect original artwork and exclusive limited edition prints. It is Chelsea and Jordan’s mission to rid the world of bare walls.

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2 Spark | September 2012

2 Spark | September 2012

Though the art business was remarkably slow in venturing onto the Internet, art-buying sites have proliferated in the past few years, with Paddle8, Art.sy, Artspace, the VIP Art Fair and others competing in an untested playing field. Now another one has joined that battle, the Tappan Collective, which offers to connect aspiring collectors with a selection of emerging young artists at low prices in an online-shopping format. Tappan Collective’s founders, Jordan Klein and Chelsea Neman, were born in Los Angeles and met at the University of Michigan (the site takes its name from Tappan Street, which runs by the art school, where the two met). As 24-year-old art and art history majors, Ms. Klein and Ms. Neman are familiar with the lack of opportunities for most young artists and collectors. Their company aims to target what Ms. Klein described as “the gap in the art market for high art at low prices” by making young talent available online.

“We are trying to build a new way to find and discover art, to create a young space that seems fun, where you can be educated about art and discover young talent,” Ms. Klein said. They’re mostly showing their friends and friends of friends, as dealers tend to do. That’s in sharp contrast to some of their online colleagues like Art.sy and the VIP Art Fair, which aim to facilitate sales from galleries across the international art world. So far they sell work by 21 artists, who live in New York, Paris, Chicago and London. Tappan Collective’s prices are more in line with extremely young Lower East Side galleries than Chelsea standbys, and it often presents limited-edition prints rather than unique works. “We don’t see ourselves as competing with higher-priced galleries or websites.” Ms. Klein told The Observer.

An unframed 16-by-24-inch print by Isaac Brest, founder of the New York–based Still House group is listed for a relatively affordable $200. The 30-by-45-inch version (in an edition of 20 rather than 50) goes for $400 more. In contrast, at the Still House show at art adviser Mark Fletcher’s new gallery in Washington Square Park,

prices for unique works range well above Tappan’s modest $1,000 cap. (The gallery declined to release exact prices.) But the project is about more than simple commerce, Ms. Klein emphasized, and the site comes along with a hefty editorial component. “We’re really focused on showing behind-the-scenes images of the art-making process,” Ms. Klein referring to the company’s blog, which offers artist interviews and studio visits with artists they represent. Through that blog, Tappan offers potential customers an enticing glimpse at the world from which the work comes. Whether these online businesses endure remains an open question. For now, though, Ms. Klein said, “Business is booming. I think we’re doing really well.”

“We are trying to build a new way to find and discover art, to create a young space that seems fun, where you can be educated about art and discover young talent”

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3 Spark | September 2012

4 Spark | September 2012

THE ARTISTSAMANDA CHARACHIAN

Artist Amanda Charchian lives and works in Los Angeles. While earning her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design, she began investigating the state of alienation through realms of the physical, psycho-social and spiritual human condition. Employing photography, sculpture and painting to transmit mystical experience into matter, her art practice is a means of communicating the subconscious sphere into objects; creating possible portals to ascend beyond known reality. Each medium functions in a different way as a response to these simulcasts, photography being the most immediate and sculpture more gradually revealing its mysteries.

Education:BFA Otis College of Art and Design Website:www.amandacharchian.com

Anna Ayeroff

Anna Ayeroff was born in Los Angeles where she also currently resides. She received her BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design after studying at Columbia University and Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art. Greatly influenced by literature, her work explores ideas of utopia and perfect place. Ayeroff uses photography, film, sculpture and drawing to create objects that guide her on her path to finding utopia. Her process often involves repetitive, labor-intensive methods of making, such as sewing together small pieces of mylar to form a large sculpture or pulling prints on a lithography press for hours. This cyclical labor reflects the process of her fellow utopians, continually searching for a better world. Ayeroff is a teaching artist and runs an art workshop space out of her studio. She considers teaching to be part of her practice, hoping her efforts might influence a better future.

Website:www.annaayeroff.comwww.aspaceforart.org

Brendan Lynch

Brendan Lynch was born in 1985 in Los Angeles and received both his Bachelor and Master of Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is a member of The Still House Group. According to Lynch, his work focuses on the subtle moments in life that stand out over the infinite moments that happen around us.

Education:B.F.A School of Visual Arts 2009M.F.A School of Visual Arts 2011

Websites:groodstuff.tumblr.com/

More Work by This Artist*

4 Spark | September 2012 4 Spark | September 2012

THE ARTISTSAMANDA CHARACHIAN

Artist Amanda Charchian lives and works in Los Angeles. While earning her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design, she began investigating the state of alienation through realms of the physical, psycho-social and spiritual human condition. Employing photography, sculpture and painting to transmit mystical experience into matter, her art practice is a means of communicating the subconscious sphere into objects; creating possible portals to ascend beyond known reality. Each medium functions in a different way as a response to these simulcasts, photography being the most immediate and sculpture more gradually revealing its mysteries.

Education:BFA Otis College of Art and Design Website:www.amandacharchian.com

Anna Ayeroff

Anna Ayeroff was born in Los Angeles where she also currently resides. She received her BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design after studying at Columbia University and Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art. Greatly influenced by literature, her work explores ideas of utopia and perfect place. Ayeroff uses photography, film, sculpture and drawing to create objects that guide her on her path to finding utopia. Her process often involves repetitive, labor-intensive methods of making, such as sewing together small pieces of mylar to form a large sculpture or pulling prints on a lithography press for hours. This cyclical labor reflects the process of her fellow utopians, continually searching for a better world. Ayeroff is a teaching artist and runs an art workshop space out of her studio. She considers teaching to be part of her practice, hoping her efforts might influence a better future.

Website:www.annaayeroff.comwww.aspaceforart.org

Brendan Lynch

Brendan Lynch was born in 1985 in Los Angeles and received both his Bachelor and Master of Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is a member of The Still House Group. According to Lynch, his work focuses on the subtle moments in life that stand out over the infinite moments that happen around us.

Education:B.F.A School of Visual Arts 2009M.F.A School of Visual Arts 2011

Websites:groodstuff.tumblr.com/http://enterstillhouse.com/content/brendan-lynch-4

More Work by This Artist*

5 Spark | September 2012

Kelsey Shultis

Artist Kelsey Shultis studied at the Academy of Art, Archi-tecture and Design in Prague, Czech Republic and received her BFA from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design. Shultis creates large scale, sculptural oil painting that explore strength through thick texture and aggressive move-ment. Focused on research, her works chronicle a search for strength that is constantly confused and demeaned by exterior physical agents. Through distorted physical environments and forms, Shultis suggests that a being exists without its physi-cal form, sometimes in spite of its physicality. Aggressive and confrontational, the forms in her work awaken a heightened emotional presence. Her collective works reveal a reverent approach to a complex process of dissection and impulsive reconstruction. Kelsey is currently living and working in Chi-cago, IL.

Website:www.kelseyshultis.com

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Lola Rose Thomson

Artist Lola Rose Thompson was born in Studio City, Califor-nia. She studied sculpture at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and received her BFA from Otis College of Fine Arts. Thompson is interested in the idea that objects can receive and transmit information that they may or may not contain; and moreover, that these objects have vast stores of data and fig-ures, that may be difficult to see. The drawings, sculptures, and installations she makes are often accompanied by text; lengthy, prose-like titles that imply or describe the multiple connotative potentials of objects and words, which have previously been veiled by their exhaustive utility. She wants to create unlike-ly empathies, and unearth similarities shared between distant things, for example the President and the World’s Tallest Woman, magic and big government, or physics and psychics”.

Website:www.lolarosethompson.com/

Olivia Wolfe

Born and raised in Miami, Olivia Wolfe received her BFA at Georgetown University. Wolfe followed her pursuit in the arts to New York City, where she studio assisted the likes of Ja-naina Tschape and James Hyde. “My work is very grounded in association, and accordingly the disconnect that comes along with that...” Wolfe recounts moving to New York and finding her place within the concrete jungle, becoming more aware of herself than ever before; “...my place here, my days here, my life here, my friends here, my deli here, my plans, my dreams, my failure, my ego here. I place ‘myself ’ in everything I come across in NYC more so than anywhere else, and I think every-one that lives here does the same.” Becoming very interested in the idea of trash and its representation of those moments that define the smallest, darkest, quietest parts of us. Wolfe says she rarely looks straight ahead when she walks, but rather up or down. The latter proved to be a gold mine for some of these discarded obsessions: drug bags.

Website:www.oliviawolfe.com

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5 Spark | September 2012

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6 Spark | September 2012