I was browsing through Instagram the other day when I happened upon a post from an old friend and former co-worker who is a very prolific artist. He was putting the contents of a storage unit up for sale via an online auction, and this prompted a bunch of questions, thoughts and ideas.
The first thought was that it was an unfortunate situation – here was a storage unit with approximately 700 art works, art supplies, and other miscellaneous things. What would cause an artist to put several decades worth of art up for sale in this manner? The starting bid was $30, which is what added to the sense that this was an unfortunate sell-off. What mindset does an artist need to be in to completely dump his life’s work like this?
It seems there was nothing tragic about it at all, but rather a quest to “let go” of the past. He stated an urge to look forward and to move towards a new chapter, to make new art, with less baggage (and no doubt to remove a financial obligation for the storage unit).
So now my mind starts racing. This is a guy whose art work I always liked very much, and wished I could have owned some, but simply couldn’t afford the prices he was selling for back in the day (I last saw him in person about 25 years ago). So here’s a room full of his art, available for the price of $30! Of course that’s just the starting bid, but I had the naive idea that this was a pretty obscure auction, and how many people are going to take on 700+ artworks?
That was a good question for me too. Where would I put 700 artworks? The pictures on the auction site suggested that the contents of this storage unit would fill up my garage. I was getting ideas about trying to sell the art, selling the art supplies, taking art off the stretchers and using them for my own art. It seemed like a fun idea, to go through a room of so many art works and see what was there. What would I want to keep? Could I really throw any of it away? Since I knew the guy personally, would he take an interest or try to get involved after I take possession of everything, with a hope of maintaining some element of his artistic legacy?
The auction was only for a couple days, and then the terms were that the buyer would have to come clean out the whole unit within 48 hours of the closing of the sale. I investigated renting a U-Haul, hiring movers to do all the work, and got ballpark ideas of how much either plan would cost. I have to admit, other than watching the “Storage Wars” television show a few times, I’ve never participated in a storage unit auction, or had any experience in such a thing. So perhaps I was pretty naive to think I could win this auction so easily, and for such a cheap price.
24 hours later, there was only 1 more bid, pushing the price up to $40. Ok, things are looking good, I’m still thinking about it and asking friends if I’m crazy for even considering buying the contents of this storage unit. Granted, if I had a store or a gallery – or even a storage unit of my own, it would make the decision a bit easier, as I would have a venue in which to try to handle and/or move this inventory on my own terms. But while the idea of having a store or gallery is appealing, the truth is, I don’t have one … and this would fill up my garage for who-knows-how-long.
But then it hit me – like I had suddenly waken up from a dream: I don’t need to take this on. Why would I spend money to give myself a new problem? Granted, if it was 50 or 100 art works, that would be one thing … but over 700? If I could even pick out ten of my favorite art works from the lot – as I mentioned, I’m familiar with and love his art – that would be amazing. But that’s not the reality.
And then the reality of storage wars and online auctions kicked in … I checked back later in the day and the top bid of $40 was now a top bid of $500. Then $520. Next time I checked, it was over $2,000. This morning, when the auction closed out, the final and winning bid was $4,500. No way was I ever going to spend that kind of money on this, I think I took myself out of consideration even at $500. But it was a fascinating couple of days, thinking about the “what ifs” and how the real life storage auctions really work.