Fine Art Prints - The Art of Selecting Fine Art

by Sean Donahoe

July 2008

Fine art prints are the best way to add flair and appeal to your home. Choosing fine art prints tends to be a matter of personal taste that will automatically match with your common taste in your furniture and surrounding decor. However, even with this there are several things to consider before purchasing fine art prints for your home.

What are Fine Art Prints?

First, let 's explore a little more about fine art prints. Fine art prints come in many forms, sizes and reproductions depending on the supplier. Unless you are lucky enough to have an original piece of fine art from a notable artist you will most likely be purchasing a reproduction. The pricing on fine art prints varies wildly from $10 - $5000 depending on the paper, canvas or other medium the art is printed on. For the most part your fine art prints will be a high quality scan reprinted on very high quality paper ready for framing. Most quality online art stores will mail this to you in an incredibly solid cardboard tube with paper wrapping to protect your print and this is essential to ensuring your print is protected and in perfect quality ready to be placed on your wall.

The correct selection of fine art prints can actually increase the perceived value of your home by giving an air of elegance to prospective home buyers or it can just leave you with a warm feeling that this home is really a place to live.

So, what are the important considerations when buying fine art prints for your home? First, look at the rooms you are going to place these fine art prints in, what are the primary and secondary colors you are working with? Do you want this art to stand out from the walls or look like it was there all along?

Important Questions When Selecting Fine Art Prints

These are important questions and will greatly affect your choices when selecting high quality fine art prints for your home. For example if you were in a elegant living room with dark wood furniture and white walls you would likely choose a light picture with a dark frame to let the frame blend with your furniture and the light picture will blend with the walls, regardless of the pictures content which would be your personal choice. You could also choose a dark frame, light matting and a dark image if you like.

Fine Art Prints as a Centerpiece

If you want to create a centerpiece of the room or anchor for the eye with a large print then consider that you still need to make this part of the room 's features and share common colors already present. A lot of home decorators look at this and take it into consideration when purchasing fine art prints and you can do a great part of this yourself.

Using the Fine Art Print Tools

Now, the greater consideration when buying a series of common fine art prints is creating not only a common theme or artist or even color throughout your house. Most of the top online art stores provide you some form of searching for similar prints. For example most popular art sites offer you a way to search for similar colored items within the same category of art you may find or fine more items by the same artist. With these tools you can easily find similar prints to keep the common theme and make the right choices for your home when you finally purchase your fine art prints.
About the Author

Sean Donahoe is the creator and owner of Arteblanche.com, a fine art prints specialist store that has over 200,000 fine art prints, posters and tapestries with something for everyone 's taste, low cost flat rate shipping and first class customer care, you will be in good hands.

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VISITOR INFORMATION

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (413-662-2111; www.massmoca.org), informally called Mass MoCA, is at 87 Marshall Street in North Adams, about five miles from the intersection of Routes 2 and 7 in Williamstown. The museum is open every day, except Tuesday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. From the beginning of July to early September, hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. (Kidspace is open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.) Admission: $12.50 for adults, with discounts for children and students.

The Norman Rockwell Museum (413-298-4100; www.nrm.org) is at 9 Glendale Road (Route 183) in Stockbridge, Mass., about 30 miles southwest of North Adams. The museum is open daily. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays from November to April; weekends and holidays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. From May to October, hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission: $12.50 for adults, free for those 18 and under.

The Porches Inn (231 River Street, North Adams; 413-664-0400; www.porches.com). The weekend rate through mid-May for a room with two queen-size beds is $199 a night. A generous continental breakfast is included. There are many other affordable accommodations nearby, like the Holiday Inn Berkshires in North Adams and the 1896 House, a bed-and-breakfast in Williamstown.

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N.E. Informer Artist Of The Month

Bill Pickett

 

Even the citizens of Marland have forgotten the names of the people buried on nearby while Eagle Monument Hill. White Eagle, of course is remembered. He was a chief of the Ponca tribe. The Miller Brothers of 101 Ranch fame erected the monument in his name.

Bill Pickett rests here, too, a name so well known in rodeo that rodeo people call the graveyard "Bill Pickett Hill," bestowing upon him a prominence that, they feel atones for the disregard of others buried at the site. The grave is marked with a sandstone tombstone that reads: "Bill Pickett-C.S.C.P.A." The letters stand for Cherokee Strip Cow Punchers Association. Pickett, a black man who has been given credit for "inventing" bull dogging, died in the spring of 1932 after an altercation with a bronco in a 101 Ranch corral. He was 62.

Pickett worked for the Millers, who not only had the big Oklahoma ranch (the 101) but also a big show (101 Ranch Wild West Show), for most of his adult life. But his remarkable story begins not in Oklahoma but in south central Texas near Taylor, Williamson County.

His antecedents were of mixed "Negro, Caucasian and Cherokee Indian blood," according to Colonel Bailey C. Hanes, "a not uncommon blend [in the 1800's] in the upper south." In his book, Bill Pickett, Bulldogger (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1977), Hanes concludes that "Thomas Jefferson Pickett was born in Louisiana and was 26 years old in 1880, which means that one of the Pickett women was pregnant at the time the wagons headed West and that he was born at some unknown place in 1854 as the caravan passed through Louisiana, " According to Hanes" research, "the caravan was made up of 48 whites and 52 Negro slaves." Thomas Jefferson Pickett was Bill Pickett's father. He and Bill's mother, Mary, produced13 children. Five of the boys, including Bill, may have been the first black entrepreneurs in Taylor, where they operated a business called "Pickett Bros. Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Ass'n."

Bill was born in 1870, five years after the Civil War ended and the slaves of the Confederacy were emancipated. By the time he was 16, he was becoming interested in horses, cattle and dogs.
Not many writers emphasize the influence cattle dogs had on the young man, but, I believe, if it were not for these dogs, he might never have been the famous bite 'em style bulldogger he was. There were "heel" dogs and "catch" dogs. The latter went to a critter's head, while the former harassed the heels. Cowboys were used to such chases because it was next to impossible to swing ropes, or make cow catches in the thick tangles of brush that covered much of Williamson County.

As young Bill watched the cowboys, working on ranches or in holding corrals, he wondered to himself why so many critters got away If they would just do it like they dogs, he must have thought as he and his brothers organized their business: catching and bringing back wild cattle and breaking and gentling wild horses.

Exactly where Bill Pickett first grabbed a steer's lip with his teeth-like the dogs did it-is not known. You hear stories that he did it in the brush, on the range, in a holding No. But wherever he did it, he was the first to do it and the first to be promoted in a specialty act.

In talking to old-timers, much of the fanciful element is reduced. They figure that Pickett went down or! the back of a cow brute, stopped it, then bit into lip or nose and just fell away, dropping the steer by twisting its neck and assisted by the attrition of leverage.

But an "eyewitness account" in the Tulsa World, Oct. It, 1931, described his fear in "shows" (there were no rodeos in those days) like this: "The steer longed into the arena ... his Pickett's horse plunged full speed after it . the rider leaped from the saddle. He turned a complete somersault along the length of the steer's back, flying out and down over the curved horns... to fasten his teeth in the side of the steer's mouth. With sheer strength he dragged the running behemoth's head to the tan-bark, thrust its horn in the ground, and forward momentum threw the steer hocks over horns in a somersault of its own. "

"He'd be killed or going to the hospital," commented one veteran rodeoer after I read him this early account of what Pickett was supposed to have done Before his death a few years back, Yakima Canutt, one of the best of the pioneer rodeo gang, told me that "hoolihaning" was so dangerous to both contestants and stock that it was outlawed, following a rash of injuries and death .

Hoolihaning is described by Ramon F. Adams in Western Words (University of Okalahoma Press, Norman, 1944) like this: " The act of leaping forward and alighting on the horns of a steer in bulldogging in such a manner as to knock the steer down without having to resort to twisting him down with a wrestling hold. The practice is barred at practically all recognized rodeos."

Mrs. William Paxton Irvine once confirmed that "Bill Pickett was riding with my father, Lee Moore, near Thoundale, Texas, in the late 1880's, They were rounding up cattle and one steer was hard to turn. Bill took after the steer and bulldogged it." (How he did this was not elaborated on, but he must have used the bite-'em style because Moore, who had a theatrical bent, booked Pickett in Texas and other states, describing him as a "bulldogger that did it with his teeth."
In addition to Moore, whose agreement with Pickett ended in 1903, the black man was "shown" by the promoter Dave McClure, again as far away from his home turf as Cheyenne and the shows in North Dakota.

His success and notoriety as the "only professional bulldogger in the world," caught the attention of the Miller Brothers whose 101 Ranch Wild West Show was fast becoming the best such entertainment in the country. In 1905, they hired Pickett for his popular act and brought him and his entire family from Texas to Oklahoma, housing them at 101 Ranch headquarters at Bliss (now Marland).

Of course, Pickett was on the road a lot, billed as "The Dusky Demon" on show flyers. When not on the road he did all sorts of chores to help the sell-sufficiency of the huge ranch. He picked cotton, maintained fences, built corrals, and broke and gentled horses. He was particularly good with horses, according to his great grandson Frank Phillips.
" My grandmother, Bessie Pickett Phillips," said Phillips, "told me a lot about Bill ... how he pretended to be 'the man of steel' but how he was really hurting, in later years, following work each day.

" I think he was exploited in a way. He was black and yet he was unique in what he did. But then in those days, all black athletes were exploited in tine one way or another. . especially prize fighters."

There was the Mexico City incident in 1908 The Millers should have known better, should have anticipated the consequences, when they pitted the Dusky Demon against the fighting bull, Frijoli Chiquita. But they did it anyway and nearly lost their lives as the crowd in the El Toro National Bullring vented its wrath.

Everything the onlookers could lay hands on - cushions, rocks bottles, knives, fruit, cans, etc., were tossed into the ring. (They were outraged at what they considered a burlesque of their national spectacle as Pickett, shaken like a rag doll, just hung on for dear life.)

Frank Phillips seems to think that the intervention of Mexican troops was the only thing that saved them. President Porfirio Diaz was in the stands, and realizing the crowd was fast becoming dangerous and uncontrollable ordered the army to invade the ring and restore order.

Certainly Bill Pickett is one of those colorful characters in the history of Wild West Shows and rodeos. And, therefore, he was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, in 1971, the first black rodeo athlete to be so honored.

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Is Cultural Incompetence Putting up Walls Where You Work?

By Judi Lynn Lake

July 2008

On Cultural Incompetence, Dr. Amaal V.E. Tokars states: "When you look around your place of employment, would you be surprised to see a wide variety of nationalities represented? Many would not. Today, most companies try to preserve some degree of cultural competence, accepting and understanding the value of cultural diversity in the work environment. Employers boasting policies of "equal opportunity" pervade our society.

However, there is some evidence showing these companies only support cultural diversity to a certain degree --just enough to reduce their being liable for discrimination. Such employers are tolerant to a wide array of cultures and let them co-exist with the cultural majority, but only to the bare minimum. There is a subtle fear underlying this aversion to anything cultural, a fear of offending or being offended, a fear of what is different, a fear of disruption of the norm. So, despite the employees of various cultures being hired into companies claiming "equal opportunity," in general, it seems to be desired that the semblance of mainstream homogeneity is preserved.

Why should we feel afraid of slipping out of the mainstream? Doesn't our melting-pot society require it? There are several factors contributing to this form of cultural oppression in the workplace. The first is personal prejudice -- the type of individual prejudice the cultural "other" experience in their daily lives. Every day people of different cultures and backgrounds are stereotyped for how they look, speak, and dress. The workplace is just one more arena for the culturally different to be categorized. This type of prejudice is common enough, though, to be targeted as a problem in the work environment. Frequent seminars are given to educate on ways to eliminate this type of prejudice.

Let's get to the root of the problem, shall we? There exist certain systemic factors in our society that perpetuate something called structural racism. (Think of 'white privilege' for a moment.) This unintentional form of racism helps inequality seem the norm. Unrecognized, this problem continues on unchecked. Sadly, the discourse on diversity in workplace seminars rarely touches upon this type of prejudice and its connection to individual racism. Who is to blame for this exclusion? Fault could partly be placed on the presenters, who may not be well-versed in this type of prejudice.

It could also be that the culture of the particular workplace does not see this issue as important enough to discuss as a factor contributing to individual prejudice. Whatever the reason, our adult education is lacking for it. If employers want to teach their employees to be critically conscious of the world around them, aspects of cultural competence must be introduced into these seminars. In fact, it must be introduced into the climate of the workplace as a whole that we should value our diversity, not suppress it.

Breaking Down Barriers
How do we begin on the road toward a culturally competent workplace? The steps taken could be small --as simple as inviting employees to bring in dishes that reflect their cultural heritage, encouraging them to describe the cultural significance of the dish. The key is to create space for meaningful discourse, which will in turn create a more culturally open work environment.

1. Let your guard down: We must think of diversity as an asset, not a liability. Being culturally competent means understanding that every employee has an equally precious cultural heritage, and that one or two groups do not guide the reigns of diversity.

2. Take Action: Encourage employees to express themselves in a way that will familiarize others with their unique cultural and spiritual backgrounds. In this way, they will learn the value of different cultures and how they enrich the work environment, and the country as a whole.

3. Know you purpose: In educating for cultural competence, we need to understand its importance as part of continuing our adult education. Remember that we live in a country where diversity is ever present, and we cannot truly understand ourselves as Americans without understanding the value of the country's diverse population. The workplace is a great place to start."

Judi Lynn Lake resides in South Carolina, with her husband and 7 year old daughter. She successfully runs her own Advertising/PR Firm.

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