Now, becoming an art collector can be as easy as buying a candy bar or a bag of chips.
The first Art-o-mat in Iowa will start vending art and culture for $5.00 a pull at CornerHouse Gallery & Frame in Cedar Rapids, IA on July 14, 2011, 5-8pm. Artist Clark Whittington, from North Carolina, will give opening comments at 6pm that evening.
Art-o-mat machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. Since 1997, Clark Whittington, has been making Art-o-mats that vend "Artists in Cellophane." He now has over 90 active machines in various locations throughout the country with approximately 400 contributing artists from 10 different countries. Most importantly, each Art-o-mat is one-of-a-kind, custom built to the host's desire.
Each "Artist in Cellophane" is art on a block of wood or in a box if it is 3D. It's then wrapped in a piece of cellophane to help it slide out of the machine like an old cigarette pack.
CornerHouse Gallery & Frame is now a host like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian, Whole Foods, the Studios of Key West, the Contemporary Museum of Honolulu, the contemporary Art Center New Orleans, SUNY Cortland, and the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, just to name a few.
Come by, pick your artist, plug, pull, unwrap and smile.
See more Art-o-mats at www.artomat.org
