A Bushwick studio will host the city’s most intriguing garage sale this weekend — and each item is a one-of-a-kind art piece.
Artists and high school friends Katie Svensson and Buzz Smith decided to create a tag sale-themed art show this fall after they grew nostalgic rummaging in their friend’s backyards on lazy weekends in Chicago’s western suburbs in the 1990s.
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“Garage sales were very common in our neighborhood,” Smith said. “It was a place where you might choose to hang out, there’s likely to be corndogs, and you’re looking at everybody’s used garbage. When you found something at a garage sale, it was treasured.”
Smith had cleared out his junk at typical yard sales before moving to Portland, Oregon, after college to become an artist, but had never put together an art exhibition. When Smith moved to New York, he teamed up with Svensson, who studied curatorial practice in graduate school and worked at the Mmuseumm and several Tribeca galleries, to come up with their concept of elevating unique bric-a-brac.
They scoured Craigslist and found a large ground-floor studio at 1049 Willoughby Avenue that reportedly once belonged to artist Abel Macias. Smith and Svensson spiffed the place up, built makeshift tables out of two-by-fours and drywall, and in early October sent out an open call to artists for their show, The Garage Sale of Upscale Garbage, opening at 7pm tonight, November 3, and running through Sunday.
“We recommend that each work was no larger than a microwave and not pricier than one either,” Svensson said, revealing that nothing will cost more than $200.
By the end of the month, 29 artists had dropped off scores of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces that will blanket the space until they are sold off (Smith and Svensson only got about two hours of sleep setting up the show). Some pieces are by well-established artists, such as painter and sculptor Jean Foos, a veteran of the East Village art scene. But most works are by students and early-career artists whom Smith and Svensson did not know prior to their exhibit.
“People we emailed were enthusiastic and intrigued, and confused about the idea and forwarded it on to others who had a similar reaction,” Smith said. “We met a lot of artists in this process, so that’s been a huge joy.”
Some they still haven’t met. An artist named Marge Rendell dropped off a two-square-inch saltine cracker coated in a thin layer of resin and glitter with a printed image that says, “100 PERCENT PINK PRINCESS.”
“That was a fun yet slightly mysterious piece,” Svensson said. “She dropped it off behind our garbage can which is perfect. She sent an email this evening saying ‘It’s there I left it,’ and we found it thankfully.”
Other works are harder to miss. Painter James Sundquist assembled a cubist canvas with scraps of plywood and board pine that he painted in vibrant, contrasting colors that he is offering for $199. And Moon Lijewski built a surprisingly lifelike action figure out of bent wire and paper goop that he called “Cursed Toy Rat.” It is being listed for $6.66 (don’t tell the city’s Rat Czar).
Smith and Svensson are selling several of their own works, too. Smith created a sculpture of a speaker system made of audio components of a discarded boombox and two empty milk jugs. Svensson made a masquerade mask out of a cardboard insert with glued beads, ribbons, and a shattered Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle.
But neither may equal the coveted finds of their childhood. Svensson still keeps a 1976 clay bust of a man’s face she found at a garage sale on her bookshelf.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “It seems like he made a mold of his face and cast it in plaster and glazed it. “It also had my birthday on the back although I wasn’t born in 1976.”
The Garage Sale of Upscale Garbage will be open tonight starting at 7pm; tomorrow, Saturday, November 4 from 12pm to 6pm; and Sunday, November 5 from 12pm to 3pm at 1049 Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn. See some of the objects included below.
Source: Hyperallergic.com