apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I am an artist and have very few real rules about art except one: NO PRE-FAB ART! Prints are one thing- a set of multiples made by the artist. But the kind of art i'm talking about fills the isles of Target, Home Goods, nd numerous other discount homewares stores. For the price they charge for a replica "print" of Audrey Hepburn, anyone can go to their local arts fair and find an original work by real artist. And the more expensive pices are well worth it as you'll likely have them in your collection forever. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL CRAFTS-PERSON!

i whole-heartedly agree with ck8g0's sentiments ... there are very few circumstances where pre-fab art is a necessity! as for the rest of the tips - i've totally done the butcher-paper trick in my place. i have hugely tall ceilings (15 feet) and hanging without the paper would have been a gamble to say the least.

i've also used the 3m removable hangers on a few pieces that were shoulder height and near a walkway. i wanted a way to hang where if the frame got bumped it wouldn't come crashing to the floor. they have held up famously for about 6 months now.

ck8g0, yes. yes yes yes yes yes.

favorite recently framed item:

My nerd-face boyfriend is in law school and got called for jury duty. The official summons is extremely fancy (who would have thought bureaucracy would have such great taste in typefaces!?). Framed the summons, he loves it!

I love the painting in the first photo! It pleases me that I've been seeing a lot of large art lately. As an artist, I have experimented quite a bit with groupings, and I don't really like the clutter of them. I prefer one large piece.

totally agree with ck8go. once can also scout etsy.com for artists. i recently purchased a watercolor from a college friend in India.
http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=16611638

Right on ck8g0!

I love black and white photos of my ancestors and often they are pretty small and/or odd sizes. If I choose to put them in smaller frames I make sure to display them in groups. Otherwise I will select a much larger frame and make sure the frame is simple and the mat is white. If I have gaps around the picture I fill them in with pages from old books.

Agree with ck8g0 100%.

Oh, and don't hang your art too high! It almost makes a home feel unwelcoming!

I love the first painting, where is it from?

ck8g0 . . yes yes yes! I go into a home with "Bed Bath and Beyond" stuff and I cringe. It's like there's no soul . . .

etsy is full of delight and wonder. And I'm sure there are local artists in your area that would LOVE to do a piece just for you!

There are always tons of art fairs and the like during the summer months . . check out your local artists!! (and musicians!) :)

P-nut, I layered a bunch of my ancestor photos on three photo rails. It was sort of a case of "oops, I have more picture than wall," but think the end result is pretty interesting.

Question: What about hanging a medium sized painting along with a few smaller paintings, photos over a mantle with huge (14') ceilings? Just curious about that kind of grouping.

Never buy art to match your current decor. Buy art because you love it. Your decor will change over time, your love will not

My advice would be don't hang overly intimate photos in common areas of your home.
Other than that, Love everything that you hang in your home, if you don't love it, don't hang it.

Totally agree about avoiding mass-produced "art", though I would not be above buying a piece for the frame---if I liked the frame and the price was low enough! It would feel good to throw away the "art", too.

I can't stand art that is hung too high, or a grouping where there's too much space between frames. Or a frame hung too high over a dresser or desk. It should be hung low enough that the frame plus furniture reads as one mass, not two separate masses.

If there are two frames of different sizes hung one over the other, it always looks best to me if the bigger one is on top. I don't know why, but it does.

I do salon style displays and arrange the art so that at least three adjacent pieces relate somehow to each other---either color, style, content, or composition. I don't really think about it much, I just move stuff around until it looks right. But those are the basic principles behind what I do. Each piece of art has its own composition but then I do one big composition with all of the art, and that big composition consists of several smaller compositions.

It's like arranging furniture or a collection or flowers or anything, really---it helps to know the basics of composition: form, line, mass, color, etc, and how to balance them. You don't have to study art to learn it, either. I didn't!

Agree with the first comment. I only have original pieces and currently adding my own photography because of budget constrains.
I can appreciate random organic group hanging but not in my own home. I don't do cutesy tiny pictures or rows of small pictures. Basically, I would rather have a few good pieces that I love then a bunch of art that has no meaning to me, but that is my approach with furniture and clothes pretty much everything.
I worked in a art gallery when I was in college so I have been very particular about the hanging the right height, never too high.

Generally speaking I totally agree ck8g0 on this as much of what I see in the stores is stuff that just doesn't move me or is "safe" but I'm not above taking the perfect card w/ sentiment and framing that. That said, I have 2, both b&w and both feature Dachshunds, one is a scan of the original that my Mom cut down to fit in a 5x5 frame and I did the exact same and it's a Dachshund from it's tail end walking away, both hind legs slightly off the floor, tail flailing about and head up in the air, it's both cute and funny at the same time as it shows the breed for what it is, the other are 2 of them, facing away from each other, one in front of the other in the same chair w/ the caption that says something to the effect of "friendship is a way street or is a 2 sided thing" or some such.

I have a grouping of Jazz album covers in black LP frames about half done and they are all done by the same designer, same decade and all feature strong graphic design and they hand over my couch, a large vertical painting that my sister did in college for an assignment and it's really just a blow up of something she found in a magazine. I love it for what it is and it sits on a LACK shelf and leans against the wall and I have other things as well but yes, art by other artists, some I do myself (4 daisies that I colored in Photoshop and are in cheap colorful plastic frames shaped like jigsaw puzzles and each frame as the exact color daisy in it with a back background, photo was found in Google images in a fit of inspiration as to WHAT to put in the frames. :-))

As for how I hang, not too high and am not afraid to let part of a nice piece go behind a lamp say a little or place framed photographs on shelves, group smaller items together and love large dramatic art pieces too, set them off by themselves if need be, but relate them to the furniture or whatever is nearby but go with what I love is my motto and yes, I have the occasional cool plate, some Mexican tiles my Mom gave me, which hang in a narrow vertical spot near my bedroom door (4 tiles) and I even have an Australian boomerang hanging in my hall.

The biggest thing I notice is too many small things hung indiscrominately over a wall and art hung too high. Now, I'm not against the occasional store bought poster or Japanese block print or some such, but the vast majority of what I see at places like Target, Ross, TJ Maxx etc just doesn't move me.

Ooops, on the daisy art, each frame has its exact OPPOSITE color in it, say the red frame has the yellow colored daisy (petals), Yellow has the red etc.

I like to rearrange my artwork every 6 months or so to keep it feeling fresh. I find that I gain new appreciation for pieces that I had just became accustomed to overlooking until they are in a new location. To do this, I've placed all the wall hooks at the same height. To get the artwork to hang at the exact height I want I only adjust the wire on the back. Once you have everything done it is easy to rearrange on a whim as all you have to do is move the artwork and it will be the right height anywhere. There are a few problems to this method. It helps to have similarly sized artwork. In smaller spaces I also stack small pieces so this system doesn't work for that either.

And yes, support your local artists. I think there are a lot of creative people on AT. My collection came entirely from friends that I traded some of my work for. So not only do I have what I consider great art, each piece reminds me of someone special and it was essentially free (just my time and materials for my work).

My first rule is to buy art you love. While I prefer original art, much of it is too expensive or in a museum and nothing I can buy. So if I love a piece, and there is a poster of it for sale, why not?

My only other rule is to size your art to your wall. Too many people hang a very small painting on a very large wall. Large walls need large art, or a collection of smaller pieces that work well together in some way (theme, frames, etc). Don't be afraid of large art.

I buy originals... most of the time from a good friend of mine who is an artist. 2 times I "cheated" and bought 2nd edition lithographs... becuase I'll never be able to afford the 1st edition ;-) I've also inherited some very nice art.

My rules are the following:
buy good NEUTRAL frames and mattes and select UV-coated glass. When someone walks into the room, they should see the art first, not the matte or frame.

Do not hang art in direct sunlight (even with the UV glass). All my lithos are on walls far from windows.

I do not cluster my art. Each stands alone, as they are all quite unique conversation pieces... but that's just my personal style.

one more thing:

Some art is best seen close up and should be hung where it can be viewed that way, like along a hall or in a narrow or small room.

Other pieces need to be seen from from some distance to appreciate their scale and subject matter; these should be hung where you can really stand back from them.

And then there are some pieces with a large scale composition but with little details that must be seen up close to be appreciated. These should be hung where you can stand back but also where there are no big pieces of furniture or other stuff to keep you from coming in close to appreciate the details.

I'm tired of seeing small scale art in places where I'd have to climb onto a bed or sofa or whatever to see what it is.

For those of you in love with the painting in the photo---it's from a lovely local artist (to Austin) named Rene Norman. She also happens to have a gorgeous home---and we'll be doing a house tour of it later this month! Stayed tuned to see more of her home and her art.

Oh! And I should say too, that the photo was taken a year or so ago when her art was hanging in the local store IF D.

just this past weekend i was fortunate enough to finally find mouldings that are suitable for use as picture rails - two 9-foot long pieces for each side of my living room.

i'm looking forward to hanging my posters, photos, plates, and framed cards without hurting my walls.

My list of Do's:

DO use non-marking removable sticky hooks for artworks up to 5lbs... although I've very occasionally had them fail in really hot weather.

DO cluster art by theme, like family or animals, but don't be afraid to subvert any themes you create.

DO use colour on the walls behind the artworks to bring their colours out and warm them.

DO consider issues such as direct light and steam when placing paintings - NEVER in direct light, NEVER over a cooktop or a kettle.

DO mix textures; oil paintings prints sculpture textiles to prevent things from getting too matchy-matchy.

DO display all photographs of dolphins overlaid with inspirational captions in the nearest dumpster.

Agree bwith ck8g0 - However have bought pre-fab art for the frame on more than one occasion and replaced the pic with an original.