New Acquisitions

At the beginning of June we went to the 57th Street Art Fair and found a great new piece for our gallery wall. Artist Kim Caisse calls these pieces walnut ink doodles and she does them on old Reader’s Digest condensed book covers.

We made room for it on our wall but of course that made another space to fill. We kept an eye out through the summer when we went to other art fairs or art stores but didn’t find the right piece. After awhile I hung one of the colorful suns from our Northampton downstairs bathroom there as a placeholder and I had started to think it might have to become permanent. But then this weekend we went to the Lakeview East Festival of Arts and found the perfect piece!

Artist James Lee makes “art from beer- related things.” In addition to amazing large mosaic pieces created with bottle caps he makes portraits of cats and dogs using beer bottle labels and bottle caps. But he also had the skull made from two New Belguim Spiced Imperial Dark Ale labels. He glues an intact label on the back.

The bicycle cap eyes are from the same bottles. I love how he used the arches and dots of the label to create the eyes and the “Lips of Faith” portion to create the mouth.

It fit the open space perfectly. We could even use the same nail we had used for the sun placeholder.

One of the things I appreciated about both of these artists was that while they also have pieces that sell for much more they also bring some affordable (to me) pieces to the art fairs.

Both artists are on instagram:

Kim Caisse @kimcaisseart

James Lee @DrinkBeerMakeArt