Bringing original art to the masses in Bend, one $20 canvas at a time

This Friday, people will start lining up at the High Desert Museum for an annual art show that can feel more like a Black Friday sale. But instead of a mad dash to score a new 4K TV, the customers here will be jostling past each other to grab canvases of original artwork off the wall, each one priced at just $20. Now in its tenth year, the 20-Dollar Art Show features more than 4,000 handmade pieces of art submitted by 165 artists this year. If a work sells, 100% of the money goes to the artist, according to Stuart Breidenstein, an artist and the co-founder of the 20-Dollar Art Show and Bright Place Gallery in Bend. Oregon ArtsWatch profiled the show before tickets for the opening night event, which are now sold out, went on sale. Breidenstein and Kait Kenobi, an artist and branding consultant in Bend, join us to talk about this unique event and its enduring appeal for artists and the community in Central Oregon.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. This Friday, people are likely to start lining up at the High Desert Museum in Bend for an annual art show that can feel more like a Black Friday sale. Instead of a mad dash to score a new TV though, folks are going to be jostling to grab original artwork off the walls. The 20-Dollar Art Show, now in its tenth year, will feature more than 4,000 handmade pieces of art submitted by 165 artists. Stuart Breidenstein is an artist and the co-founder of this show, also Bright Place Gallery in Bend. Kait Kenobi is a branding consultant in Bend, and one of the artists who submitted work for the show. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on the show.

Kait Kenobi: Hey, thank you.

Stuart Breidenstein: Thanks for having us.

Miller: Stuart first, where did the idea for this show come from?

Breidenstein: We used to do an art walk on the last Saturday of every month, and it was just kind of a whim. We thought, let’s gather up some artists. For the first show, we had about a dozen artists and we had 60 pieces of art. And I think we hung it the night before the show. A handful of people showed up outside before we opened and came in and bought a bunch of it. So, that was the origins of it. And it’s just grown every year. It was kind of an unexpected little gem.

Miller: A handful of people you said for that first iteration. How many people were there last year?

Breidenstein: Last year we had about the same as this year. We had, I think, about 140-150 artists. We have 160+ this year.

Miller: How many people showed up to look at the art or to buy it?

Breidenstein: The museum sold, I think, about 800 tickets the first year, I think maybe 750 last year. I think about 900 people will be there this year.

Miller: What are the rules for artists that you’ve come up with over the years?

Breidenstein: It’s pretty basic. The piece has to be small ‒ this is all small art ‒ 36 square inches or smaller. It has to be handmade. And then we have some criteria for how it hangs. We want it finished, a sawtooth hanger on the back and little pads so that we can quickly hang it on the wall. It’s all about efficiency and speed. We need to be able to hang 4,000 pieces in a few days.

Miller: That does seem like an immense task for museum staff.

Breidenstein: Yes, the museum has been incredibly helpful with everything, gridding out walls and even building some temporary walls for us this year, because we had more than we could hang on the museum’s walls. So, yeah, they have been very helpful with that.

Miller: Kait, what went through your mind when you heard about the 20-Dollar Art Show?

Kenobi: The first time I heard about it, which was three years ago, it just seemed really fun. It feels like a really low-pressure way to allow artists to maybe try new techniques, new styles, new mediums, and just kind of get it out there in the world and see what people think about it. I personally was really excited because most of the work I do is on the computer. And so this is a great opportunity for me to step away from that and create something with my hands.

Miller: What did you make the first year that you participated?

Kenobi: I made these weird wooden cut outs with mirrors and eyeballs and chains all over them.

Miller: Were they a hit?

Kenobi: Yeah, I sold out, I believe the first night.

Miller: What about this year?

Kenobi: This year, I’m sticking with wood, but I’ve kind of made these paintings of traditional tattoo-style paintings on wood.

Miller: It’s $20. It’s in the title, and that’s what you have to sell these works for. How do you think about the economics of this in terms of the work you’re putting in, the work you’re making, the time it’s taking, and the money that you could get at the end?

Kenobi: Personally, especially in the past few years, artists are using it as more of a platform to try new stuff, like I said. Try new stuff, get involved in the community. People that don’t even feel like they’re artists are given permission to create art and maybe sell it. So, I think for the most part people, the goal of the artists isn’t to necessarily make money. Of course, it’s nice to get a little check at the end. But even if you don’t, there’s value in the creation process.

This year seems a little different because there are artists that put up to 200 pieces in. And I think that maybe they’re hoping to make money off of that, which is great for them. But for the most part, I think it’s kind of a fun club to be in. “Oh, are you doing it this year? What are you going to make?” It feels really fun to be part of this community.

Miller: Stuart, there’s a lot there, but I’m curious about the people who are putting 200 pieces up. I imagine that those are people who figured out a way to work quickly?

Breidenstein: That’s kind of the key in this. We started doing it just so that artists could make a little money for Christmas time or whatever. That was part of the whole thing is you can get paid. It’s not very much, $20 isn’t that much money. For next year, we may limit it to how many pieces you can put in. But we’ve had a lot of artists put in over 100 pieces over the years. The average is about 20-25 pieces. But if you figure out how to work quickly and you’ve got a system down and you can crank out a bunch of work that is somehow compelling, then yeah, you can make some money.

Miller: Am I right that no one is judging the submissions and deciding whether or not they can go up? If you get a spot, you can have your place on the wall?

Breidenstein: That’s right. We have never juried the show and we don’t intend to jury the show. It’s kind of a show for the people, people that maybe haven’t even done a show or done much art. But we still get submissions from professional artists. So it’s kind of all across the board. It’s great for people who haven’t done art, can be in a show with professional artists at a kind of high- profile venue. It’s just kind of for everybody. But jurying it was never something we wanted to do.

Miller: It makes it less democratic, it seems like. My understanding is there are no names or titles, no little card saying this is what you’re looking at, this is who made it. It’s just the art. Why set it up that way?

Breidenstein: A lot of it is logistics. We did try one year to put tags on each piece, and you would tear a piece of the tag off and bring it back and pick up your piece of art. We ditched all that after the first year we tried it. Now it’s just, if you see the piece hanging on the wall and you like it, you can buy it. The artist’s information is on the back. They have to put their name and they can put any other information they want. So, $20 is not that much to pay. If you like it, you just grab it off the wall and you can see who did it.

Miller: That’s a rule not for the artists but for the visitors, that if you grab it off the wall, it’s yours, you have to buy it. Where did that come from?

Breidenstein: We had heard of another show in Portland where people pull stuff off the wall if they think they want it, and then they kind of decide which they want and they put it back on the wall. And that seemed like a nightmare to us. And it kind of creates a sense of urgency too. We open the doors, people flood in, they see pieces they like, and they grab them. And I think if there’s that sense of urgency, you touch it and it’s yours, people will snap up pieces that they like because somebody else is right behind them.

Miller: Kait, what is opening night like from your perspective as an artist, and I imagine as just a participant as well?

Kenobi: It’s very vibrant, it’s fun, the energy is very magnetic. A lot of the artists are there, and it’s fun to see them not only see their own pieces up, but also to check out everyone else’s. You might see a really great artist that you admire taking a peek at your work, and then you get a little excited. But in general, it’s just a fun atmosphere. Even in the snow. I think it was two years ago that it was just frigid outside. And everyone was just in such a great mood. So, like I said before, it just feels like a really fun community to be a part of.

Miller: Stuart, I understand that the majority of artists for the show come from around the Bend area or Central Oregon. What’s the furthest away that an artist has come from?

Breidenstein: Well, that would be this year. We got an artist, and I don’t know how she heard about us, from Tasmania. And that’s about as far away as you can get.

Miller: And she just popped her art in the mail and it arrived and it’s going to be on the show?

Breidenstein: Yeah. It’s very small pieces. They’re about 3x5, I think. Nicely framed little watercolors. Beautiful work. It is definitely the farthest away we’ve gotten work from. We do get work from the Bay area and the Seattle area, handful of artists from Portland. And then a lot of rural areas. We got a couple of submissions from Burns, Oregon. Which, obviously, there’s not a lot of opportunity for people in rural areas to show art. So that’s something we’re kind of proud of.

Miller: In addition to co-founding the show, you also submit art for it. What has that experience been like for you?

Breidenstein: Abby and I both do a lot of pieces every year. And it’s great because we get to stretch ourselves. I think we both did roughly 100 pieces this year, and we have in the last few years. And that’s where a majority of our payment comes from, from doing the show. But it’s great. We get to experiment with new things and try new styles and polish our techniques. I think I would do it even if we didn’t produce the show.

Miller: Why have you kept producing this show, though? It seems like a labor of love going on now more than a decade.

Breidenstein: Yeah, there have been a couple of times where we thought “Okay, this is the last year. We’re not doing this again.” But every year it comes back. People will write us a story, say “I submitted my art last year for the first time”, and it meant a lot to them for some reason ‒ they’re going through some medical thing or even addiction or something like that. We get a lot of feedback from people who really get something out of the show, not just professional artists trying new things, but people who either are in a creative block that wanna get out of it, or they’re going through something and they wanna express something. And they don’t care if it sells or whatever, they just wanna put something out there into the world. And that’s what keeps us going.

We did this show for four years at our first little location, a little upstairs loft, and three years at our gallery. And then we kind of lost the lease on that gallery because of the rent here in Bend. And the High Desert Museum approached us to bring it in there. And that was just huge for us. It seemed kind of surreal that they would want to bring this weird little show into that venue.

Miller: Stuart Breidenstein and Kait Kenobi, thanks so much.

Breidenstein: Yeah, thank you.

Kenobi: Thanks for having us.

Miller: Stuart Breidenstein is one of the co-founders of the 20-Dollar Art Show, which is happening this weekend at the High Desert Museum in Bend. He’s also one of the co-founders of Bright Place Gallery. Kait Kenobi is an artist and the owner of Midnight Grim, which is a design and branding agency in Bend.

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