Santa Fe’s preeminent
ART INDUSTRY INNOVATORS
John Schaeffer and Sherry Ikeda, owners of Gallery 901 at 708 Canyon Road, are Santa Fe’s preeminent art industry innovators. Continuing with their provisional patent to change the way art is bought and sold around the world, they announce their next step in its development.
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chaeffer explains, “We will first put together art walking tours in Santa Fe where we match people’s personalities and tastes to specific art they would most likely want to purchase. At the same time, we will match them to other people with similar tastes and interests. We will gather groups together for a tour, show them their ‘matched’ art and then share a nice meal to discuss the experience. We need a group of people to act as a pilot group to help validate our tests.” Schaeffer and Ikeda will be offering these participants discounts on future art walking tours/meals and on matched art. Additionally, anyone who completes the process will be eligible to win an original piece of art: ‘Café, Canyon Road’ by Deborah Gold (retail value $1,250). The working name of the project is “Art World Game Changer.” People interested in participating can go to www. ArtWorldGamechanger.com for more information and to sign
OPPOSITE PAGE L-R John Schaeffer and Sherry Ikeda, owners; WORK ABOVE Ron Rovner ‘Nacht Musik Series’ Works on Paper
up. It’s a fun new way to see great art, to socialize with others interested in similar art and to make new, meaningful, lifelong friends. “Many people who come through our gallery are intimidated by fine art. They don’t trust their own taste. We want to make fine art buying a fun and rewarding experience for the many people who would buy art if they better understood the process. People spend a lot of time researching what automobile or televisions they want to buy, but they have little understanding how to research fine art, artists and galleries,” Ikeda explains. Schaeffer adds, “Sherry and I are interested in fundamentally changing the way art is bought and sold. We want to develop new art collectors who are confident in their decisions and new artists with high potential for success and continued growth.” Once Ikeda and Schaeffer’s system is fully developed, it will look something like this: you register on their website and take a test. You’re then identified in terms of personality, taste and status. Depending on your results, you are given a little pin to wear on your lapel, like at the MET in New York, identifying you as a knowledgeable and capable buyer. You also receive an ‘Art World Passport’ that participating galleries can stamp whenever you make a purchase. The more stamps you have, the more you can participate in special invitation-only shows and discounts throughout the world. On the gallery side, subscribing galleries know they have a pinned/passport buyer before them. With the swipe of the buyer’s passport, the gallery instantly has three matched paintings to showcase. There is no guessing and nothing left to chance. The gallery can even print out a one-page dossier on the potential buyer telling them the buyer’s “art buying personality type” so they can customize the information to that specific person. No longer will buyers have to tolerate canned sales pitches. It’s like knowing the head chef at a restaurant and having him or her cook that special meal tailored to your tastes. You don’t have to look at the menu they give everybody else; you’re special, an instant VIP. “When it comes to art appreciation and finding art that ‘feeds our souls,’ we are TOP JBobbie Goodrich ‘STALLIONS Camargue France’ Photograph 44 x 35 in; BOTTOM Dave Newman - #7045 The Road - Mixed Media 15x15
a product of all the art we’ve seen in our lives,” Schaeffer describes. “We’ve seen Van Gogh images thousands of times. How can we look at any art without some unconscious part of ourselves comparing it to Van Gogh? But it’s more than that. The survey is designed to get at art you would have never discovered on your own.” He continues: “I gave my sister the prototype survey. After the test, and before I revealed her matched three pieces, I sent her out to walk Canyon Road to each of the galleries and to come up with three pieces she liked on her own. In comparing the two groups, what she picked out was very basic, for lack of a better term. It was art that matched her furniture or current décor; safe, neutral and pretty, but emotionally unconnected. I stood her in front of the pieces I chose based on her test, and it brought her to tears and, I believe, has fundamentally changed the way she looks at and experiences art from here on out.” Schaeffer, a psychiatrist with 30 years of experience in the study of human personality and social interaction, utilizes theories of Jung, Lacan, Piaget and others. “I’m trying to link psychology with art to harvest all that unconscious emotion in order to usher in far more people who can experience art as a means of deep expression and meaning. Sherry and I stood in front of a painting on Canyon Road about eight years ago. Spontaneously, both of us walked up to this piece at the same time and immediately felt an overwhelming emotion. We both stood there with tears running down our faces. Somehow, our separate but similar childhoods, our journey that brought us together, the images we’ve experienced and the lives we’ve led had a common core. To be able to give thousands of people questionnaires and then selectively bring six random strangers together in order to introduce them to a painting at the same time and predict with some degree of certainty all six of them are going to experience the same emotion at the same time is a very powerful thing. That’s ultimately what we’re going for.” Gallery 901 708 Canyon Rd. 505.780.8390 www.Gallery901.org MIDDLE Marina Brownlow - NAES - Oil Transfer Monoprint 22 x 29.5