Art Date

Our customers visit us under all kinds of circumstances - before the movies, after dinner, or when they come to show out-of-town friends our eclectic neighborhood and shops.

One local couple recently visited us on their anniversary, as they add one piece to their collection every year as an anniversary present. Read their story below:

Our Anniversary Art Tradition

We have friends whose house is filled with interesting and charming artwork, accrued through the years. How did they do it? Each year their anniversary present to each other is to choose a piece of art. Ten years after moving into our house, our walls still woefully barren, we decided to follow their lead and start a new tradition by picking out a piece of art together from 13FOREST. After a wonderful dinner at Flora, we went across the street to the gallery.

But how to decide? We probably didn’t have any artwork in our home because subconsciously we were both worried about the permanence of any art-buying decision. And now that we made a romantic event of art shopping we faced the extra challenge of making such a major choice after a good meal and a few glasses of wine, arm in arm with that special someone who might be saying she liked that print to be nice, or who might agree to buying that unique ceramic not to hurt her feelings. And then we’d be stuck with it forever.

Anticipating this problem, and with an eye to preserving future date-night encounters like this, we did what any couple in love would do if they knew what was good for them. Armed with pens and index cards, as soon we opened the doors we split to opposite ends of 13FOREST. We would each walk around the gallery, separately, and write down our top picks—no peeking, no cheating, be brutally honest: write down only what you can imagine on the walls. Then we’d see where there was overlap and decide among those pieces.

As we are apparently spiritually linked our lists overlapped to a great degree (and have every time we’ve done this). That first time we looked at our lists we quickly agreed on our first real piece of art, and being in a romantic mood, that it would be for our bedroom—a print by David Colombo of a kind of cartoonish spooky trellis with slightly creepy bug things with both eyes on the same sides of their heads. Now that’s art, we both knew.

Think of it as vow renewal via ink and oil.

-- Andrea Campbell and Allen Feinstein, Arlington

A fine choice: David Colombo's Flora and Fauna #2, etching, aquatint