Student artists start new online gallery
By Gretchen Webster
A project that combines the love of art with business acumen has been launched by Staples High School art student Chloe Jordan, with the help of several other Staples student artists. The business, called SOLD, earned 10 young artists $900 by selling their artwork recently at the Westport Fine Arts Festival.
They plan to continue to sell more student art online and at upcoming summer festivals.
“This showed them what being a professional selling artist was like,” Jordan said about the student artists whose work SOLD is representing “I realized that if kids had a place to sell, they could make a profit from it.”
Their artwork is displayed online with 60 artworks currently on view in their gallery. Not all the art is for sale, according to Jordan, a junior, but anyone interested in the artwork can contact the students at studentsonlocaldisplays@gmail.com, to see if a particular piece is for sale or to arrange for an artist to work on a commission.
“We love making art and we’d love to have as much opportunity as possible to show what we make,” said Lucas Flesch, also a junior art student at Staples, who helps run the young business.
Every artist in their group sold at least one artwork at the festival, and some sold more, he said. Jordan and Flesch used their profits to split the discounted festival entry fee of $300.
She has taken many art classes at Staples, Jordan said, and plans to continue with her art in college. “The art classes at Staples are really amazing. They are really wonderful.”
She credited one art teacher in particular, Mark DeRosa, with inspiring her to keep up with her art education.
DeRosa, reached at Staples at the busy at the end of the school year, said he loved the idea of the student art collective. “It’s a great opportunity. It really gives the students a chance to get their work outside the building, to get their work into the community,” he said, and he hopes it continues.
The venture is a great opportunity for student artists, Flesch agreed. “We aren’t given enough locations to show our work.”
SOLD is open to any young artist, the organizers said. “We’re open to taking anyone – any student artist that has work to send us – anyone who shows effort and dedication to their art,” Flesch said.
The art-selling business would be a wonderful addition to the art scene in Westport for years to come, DeRosa added. “Hopefully it can be passed down the grades … and it will go on and on.”
To view the student gallery, visit https://soldartgallery.myshopify.com/
Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.