'You Can’t Sell Good Art with Bad Art'

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A new arts organization aims to be the catalyst for positive change in the way South Jersey artists are promoted and marketed. 

By Tamara deMent

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jun. 8, 2011

Local artist Katherine Stanek

Photo by Bill Horin

One may wonder at the  neighbor who spends all night working out of a 16-foot box truck. But that’s exactly what local sculptor and mixed-media artist Lennox Warner has had to do at times, in order to complete his work. 

“I don’t really have a detached studio outside of my residence,” he tells Atlantic City Weekly. “So I had to rent this box truck to give me ample space to do the process overnight.” 

“It’s one of the predicaments of artists,” he adds, explaining that most artists are “reclusive” in their creative processes, sequestering themselves within their homes — or in Warner’s case, box trucks — meticulously tending their craft. 

Unfortunately, for those who are local and engaged in artistic pursuits, having enough space to produce artwork is hardly an obstacle of preponderance. According to local photographer and entrepreneur Bill Horin, what artists in South Jersey lack the most is visibility.  

And while there have been many local arts organizations over the years that have strove to promote the region’s fragmented art scene, their financial resources are limited and marketing techniques subpar.  

Thus, ArtC was born. 

Launched a little over a month ago, ArtC is a new organization, affiliated with the Noyes Museum of Art, that hopes to become the next advocate for the Atlantic City region’s art scene. Powered by a team of artists and business strategists led by Horin, ArtC seeks to support both established and up-and-coming artists by offering a vast array of resources, including informative and biographical content, photos, video features, critiques, a calendar of exhibitions and gallery shows, and a directory of local artists.  

To artists like Horin and Warner, when it comes to the South Jersey art scene, the famous philosophical riddle — if a tree falls in the forest, unperceived by the world, did it really fall? — could easily apply. ArtC seeks to rectify that. 

“We’re not Philadelphia, we’re not New York,” says Horin, but good artists exist here, although they are often overlooked, or worse, misrepresented. 

“The problem I see with the promotion of the arts — and it’s not just in this area, it’s in other areas too — you’re talking about good art and good artists,” he says. “You’re talking about how creative they are and then you show people terrible photos, lousy design and bad writing [to market them].” 

“How are you going to sell art with bad art?” he adds. 

While ArtC is a new venture, it’s not the first project Horin has undertaken in the name of arts promotion. 

“Twelve years ago I started a magazine because I saw there was nothing in the area that really promoted the arts or showed the quality of arts in this area,” he says. “There was enough good artists that people didn’t know about.” 

The magazine was dubbed Artbeat, which later became Envision and featured stories on local artists. Unfortunately, the failing economy in 2008 along with the shift from print to Web-based media took its toll on the project.  

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