This opinion piece reflects the views of John Hazlehurst only and are not endorsed by the Pikes Peak Bulletin.
If you love art, you may yearn for masterpieces, but you buy what you can afford. For most of us, that means paying at most a few hundred bucks at a gallery, and much less at garage sales, on Marketplace, in thrift stores or at auction.
It also helps if you’re entranced by the now-unfashionable art and artists of another era. My grandfather, Francis Drexel Smith, was a prominent figure in the Colorado Springs art world – he was one of the founders of the Broadmoor Art Academy in the 1920s, and one of the founding trustees of the Fine Arts Center. Not surprisingly, I’ve always loved the work of Colorado Springs artists who worked in the first half of the 20th century.
I didn’t become a collector until 1981, when I returned to the Springs and settled down for good in the city of my birth. We bought a house in Rockrimmon and began filling the walls.
For decades thereafter, I was transactional. I bought, sold and traded, trying to build a fine and permanent collection. I was restless and impatient, selling if I could profit. It became a business of sorts, but I soon specialized in antiques. In that pre-internet environment, I could spot bargains and occasionally hit a jackpot. My biggest hit: a pair of 18th century andirons that I bought at a thrift shop for $14 and sold at Sotheby’s for $17,000.
I’m not leaving my collection to a museum.
But my misses outdid my hits. I sold works by Frank Mechau, Charles Partridge Adams, Charles Craig, Birger Sandzen and many others at a fraction of their current value, but so what? I became less transactional and more driven by love than anticipated value.
The result? We have 145 paintings, lithographs, etchings, drawings and photographs on the walls and another 30 or so in the closet, waiting for their turn in the rotation. They vary in size from tiny (4″x6″) to pretty big (3′ x 9′), dating from 1804 (a portrait of my great-great-great-grandmother) to this month (one of Lorraine Danzo’s 90 paintings for 90 years at 45 Degree Gallery).
Happily, our city has plenty of ardent collectors. Chatting with one the other day (whose collection far surpasses mine), he mused about leaving his collection to the Fine Arts Center, or a similar institution. I thought that was admirable – but was it?
Museums act as vast storage units, sealing up such gifts for decades and exhibiting them infrequently. Consider Verna Jean Versa (1926-2005), a multi-talented Colorado Springs artist who willed her art to the Pioneers Museum. As a result, what’s available for purchase on the market is way beyond my means – but luckily enough, I found a lithograph created by Versa and printed by Lawrence Barrett that I’d acquired and forgotten about decades ago. Next step: frame and hang it somewhere in the house – maybe above the door between the kitchen and dining room?
So no, I’m not leaving my collection to a museum. I’ll give away some to family members, Karen can take what she wants, and the rest will be sold directly to collectors – dealers, stay home!
And much as I love the FAC and the CSPM, I don’t want my modest collection to end up like John Brown’s body and lie moldering in the grave. I imagine some future collector proudly displaying one of my treasures, and saying “Can you believe it? I bought that at a house sale for 50 bucks, and it’s worth twice as much!”
