Venue Fine Art & Gifts reworks forgotten works of art for its “refuge” room

Connie Shakalis
| Special to the Herald-Times

Sometimes a piece of art is better placed in someone else’s home. Perhaps it’s a change in preferences or a homeowner moving to a smaller home. There’s a new art haven downtown, at Venue Fine Arts & Gifts, 114 S. Grant St., and it’s connecting abandoned works with new customers. For now, it occupies a room at the front of the Venue, and there are some high-quality finds at discounted prices.

Three of the artists are the late Rudolph (Rudy) Otto Pozzatti, of Nashville, Timothy (Tim) Greatbatch of Indiana, and Thelma Frame (yes, that’s her last name), who was still painting at 104 years old.

The Hideaway is a complementary service that The Venue offers in addition to its main galleries, which sell newly created artwork and gifts.

Low prices for great art in the Venue’s “refuge” room

This room is a “shelter” because the pieces have been salvaged from garages, back rooms and all those places where artwork is hidden that the owners have had enough of – or died from. Sometimes it’s the piece that comes out when the donor is expected for dinner. After the cappuccinos and ice creams, the painting or sculpture returns to the hangar.

The venue’s refuge began with an art collection stored in a garage that belonged to the estate of a deceased CIA agent named Juan Noriega. It didn’t complement the Noriega family’s decor, but they wanted a safe and valued place to sell it (at a heavily discounted price).

An art shelter wall: all part of the original plan of the place

“The shelter is actually part of our original concept for The Venue,” said David Colman, co-owner with his wife Michelle Colman. Now, 15 years later, it appeared this spring. He has already sold a few pieces and is happy to purchase salvageable artwork as a collection or piece by piece.

“Juan Noriega had a fine collection of Brown County art as well as Pozzattis and other pieces.”

Part of the good news for Bloomington is value for money.

“It’s a recycling of great art,” Colman said. And the prices, for example for a Pozzatti or a Greatbatch, are very good. In fact, the shelter allowed Colman to transport works of art that he normally wouldn’t have considered, due to the high prices.

“I discover artists that I don’t usually see.” Coleman saw what Noriega paid for some of the Greatbatches. Greatbatch markets its work in cities like Chicago and New York.

“So we’re going to see artists that people don’t usually see,” Colman said, “because it was in someone’s basement.” And these pieces come to the Venue at a discounted price, in part because the people selling them have less emotional investment in them than the original owner. This means that “they are often willing to sell them at a much lower price.”

Master artist Rudy Pozzatti

“Rudy won every purchase price, and I mean every one,” said the late Bloomington printmaker and multiple award-winning artist Jim Sampson, a former acquaintance of Pozzatti. Sampson, who died in 2021, was referring to a host museum that would purchase a winning artist’s work. “It was Rudy who developed IU’s internationally admired printmaking department,” Sampson said.

Pozzatti, who also died in 2021, taught art at Indiana University and served as a U.S. State Department artist ambassador for cultural exchange with South America and the Soviet Union and as a representative of the United States at the world cultural conferences in Budapest and Belgrade. .

His art has been exhibited in dozens of galleries and museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitions.

The Monroe County Public Library has two books by or about Pozzatti: “Rudy Pozzatti: A Printmaker’s Odyssey,” edited by Linda Baden and “Rudy Pozzatti: American Printmaker,” by Norman A. Geske. The library also offers a book illustrated by Pozzatti, “More Hoosier Cooking” edited by Elaine Lumbra.

Timothy Greatbatch’s Paintings of Nashville Now in The Venue

Seasonal landscaping is Greatbatch’s specialty. He also depicts the city of Nashville, Indiana and other locations, and creates figurative works outdoors and indoors.

By age 40, Greatbatch was a recognized composer of contemporary orchestral and chamber music. In Philadelphia, he worked as an assistant professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania and was a guest lecturer at Swarthmore College and Princeton University. At the beginning of the 1990s, he changed careers: towards the visual arts.

Shortly after moving to Indiana, Greatbatch received a commission to create a 4-by-8-foot painting for Columbus City Hall (2001). With Indiana Heritage Arts, he has won various purchase awards (one artist’s work purchased by the organization), four Merit Awards, three Excellence Awards, the Dale Bessire Memorial Award, the Carl Graf Memorial Award, the Adolph Schultz Memorial Award. and the 2003 People’s Choice Award. The Indiana Heritage Arts Board of Trustees actually chose his “Afternoon at Ogle Lake” as the first piece in their permanent collection.

Indiana Heritage Arts is located at the Brown County Art Gallery in Nashville and, among other tasks, assists Indiana’s heritage-style impressionist artists.

“We’re selective,” Colman said. “We’re not going to display anyone’s unwanted artwork on the (shelter) wall.” Nevertheless, Colman invites people to show him their art.