Hotel rooms usually suffer from Invisible Art Syndrome.
Generic sailboats against pastel sunsets, carriages bumping along antiqued avenues and mauve abstracts from the ’80s: they’re all typically chosen to be restful, inoffensive and to pick up the bedspread colors.
It’s all different at Glidden House, the boutique hotel in University Circle. Every year, general manager Tom Farinacci budgets about $10,000 to buy paintings, drawings and photographs done by artists living and working in Northeast Ohio. Working with Christy Gray at Red Dot Project, the nonprofit artist registry, Farinacci is building a collection to enliven the hotel’s public spaces and guest rooms.
The art, says Farinacci, “makes us special. We strive to be a special hotel — very boutique in feel, a very high level of service.”
Putting up “real art,” as he calls it, makes a difference.
The practiced evolved after Glidden House, a 1910 house that was home for a member of the Glidden Paint family, switched from a doilies-and-lace Victorian bed and breakfast into a chic, contemporary hotel in the late 1980s. Owner Joe Shafran and Farinacci bought some high-ticket original paintings for the lobby. Those works weren’t by local artists, but the energy they brought to the hotel was clear.
The challenge was how to keep that energy going. The answer: Look for high-quality, original work by Cleveland artists. The side benefits: the purchases would be more affordable than the prints by contemporary masters Motherwell and Rauschenberg, and they’d also support local artists.
These days, Glidden House guests are treated to a brilliant red,
almost-abstracted landscape by Lee Heinen and a series of black and white monoprints by Damon Reaves. Artist prints by Karen Beckwith and work by Gray (a fiber artist in her own right) decorate some of the guest rooms.
And there’s more to come. Farinacci will start the process of scouring the Red Dot files for the next batch of guest rooms on the list for art. Farinacci has elected to leave rooms empty rather than to temporarily fill them with mass-produced work purchased out of decorating catalogues.
So how does the selection process work?
Intuitively. Gray visits Glidden House to see the spaces up for an art overhaul. She pre-selects a number of works for Farinacci to choose from based on what she thinks might work well.
“We do a good job together of picking out art that fits the space,” Farinacci says.
He tends to steer clear of work that’s too moody or “controversial,” but he doesn’t simply go for images that read in an instant. The Lee Heinen piece he loves, for instance, bears contemplation for how it walks the line between representational and abstract.
Guests notice this even if they don’t know why.
“We’ll see guests standing in front of a piece for minutes and then moving onto the next one,” Farinacci says. “It’s kind of a gallery feel.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To learn more about RED DOT Project, join us July 24 and 25 at the Phoneix Coffee on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights. We are part of the Scion xCHANGE event happening this weekend. We want to hear why Art Matters to you!
Visit our Cause page on Facebook.
