Sedona Art Scene - Part 1

While there's no doubt on the planet that Sedona, Arizona is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, as I discovered while there last year and again this week, it is also one of the most spiritual magnets to a variety of religions and beliefs, including the significant number of people attracted to Sedona as a result of it's "energy Vortexes."

Let there be no doubt that this is an area of profound beauty and full of a palpable sense of energy and power. I loved it and will be back many times, as there are dozens and dozens of trails and vistas to explore.

But on this second trip, I wanted to also focus some time and comments on the Sedona art scene, a "scene" with some national footprint, regardless of where you stand on the planetary scale of the art world. in fact, within a few minutes of anyone discussing that they're going to Sedona, someone will immediately pop in and describe the city's great art scene.

And so, let me approach these views with the prejudiced eyes of the artsy Easterner, accustomed to white cube galleries, minimally presented with austere framing, white matting, and where even title and price labels are often eschewed in preference of a discrete price list on the gallerist's white or light wood postmodern design table.

Let start with Sedona art galleries.

But first, extrapolating from to the city's website, the city probably has around 12,000 people, about 90% of them non-Hispanic whites, with a median household income roughly $100,000 less than Potomac, Maryland and paradoxically with a median house price about $100,000 more than Potomac's pricey homes.

It's the first of many paradoxes about this gorgeous place.

Depending on who you believe, Sodona also gets between four and five million visitors a year.

The Sedona Visitors Guide tells these millions of visitors that Sedona "not too long ago had 300 residents, now has 300 artists and more than 40 galleries." We also learn from the guide that Sedona averages one gallery per 300 residents, and for every dollar spent on art, the art buyers spend $12 on other Sedona stuff. The guide also claims that statistics show that approximately 33% of the city's visitors are attracted there by the art, and that these art aficionados thus spend between $200,000 to one million dollars in various Sedona businesses each day. We thus can extrapolate that around $16,666 to $83,333 dollars are spent each day on art in this small town.

One issue appears to be clear: it's the tourists who buy art, not so much the locals (does that sound familiar?). This makes sense, after all, how much art can 12,000 residents buy from 40 galleries?

"Locals don't buy any art," told me a former Sedona gallerist, who prior to opening a gallery in Sedona had been a dealer in Chicago. "There are a lot of retired people here [the median age is around 55] and although there are some very large multi-million dollar homes, there are also a lot of modular homes [a fancy way to described a souped-up trailer]."

To the prejudiced and minimalist Easterner eye, the riot of color, subjects and presentation that characterizes most Southwestern art is an assault to long-held visual sensibilities created by the black and white world of the East Coast and Left Coast artworlds and its European and Latin American brethren.

I am shocked to discover that perhaps there's something of an elitist in all of us, as the preconditioning of being an artist, an art critic and an art dealer raised in all those aspects, and mostly along the Eastern states, prejudices my eyes to what I've referred previously as "coyote art."

My better half, who many years ago interned in Santa Fe with the legendary Gerald Peters Gallery (and Peters is credited by many as energizing the interest in Southwestern art and placing Santa Fe and the Southwest in general on the art scene), tries to educate me somewhat as to the different sensibilities between what she labels "an Easterner, with an East Coast vision of what a gallery should look like, looking at a Southwestern space."

It will take time, but then again, at one point in his life Duncan Phillips hated Impressionism and then eventually was seduced by it and became the American champion for it.

On the other hand, Wisconsin farm girl Georgia O'Keefe, even in her Southwest years always kept her austere black and white world where colors were generally reserved for her paintings.

So I proceed with as open as a mind I can have, maybe somewhere between Phillips' eventual enthusiasm and O'Keefe's steadfast minimalism in personal tastes.

There are a lot of spaces in and around Sedona that sell artwork. I'm not really sure if there are 40 galleries, unless one includes a lot of spaces that sell a lot of Native American and Mexican crafts.

Sedona itself is sort of divided into two areas, and as one comes to it from Highway 179, Uptown Sedona is to the right and the other Sedona to the left. Most art spaces are either located on 179 itself or Uptown Sedona.

The first set of galleries one comes across on 179 are located on a shopping area to the right as one enters the city, with a spectacular view (from the shops) of the Sedona rocks and the city itself.

We'll go there first...