Get Herald RSSThe lack of originality present in residence hall decorations on campus has inspired the creation of College Canvas, an online business run by three Brown students selling Brown and Rhode Island School of Design student art. After months of preparation, Michael Frederickson '07, John Harroff '07 and Joseph Lace '07 launched collegecanvas.com at midnight Nov. 27.
The basic goal of College Canvas is to gain exposure for local Providence artists and to create a marketplace to display and sell art while livening up dorm rooms on campus, Frederickson said. According to Lace, the idea for their business was born after he and Harroff decorated their dorm room with a painting lent to them by a friend from RISD. They received many compliments on the piece and even a few purchase offers.
College Canvas, which currently features nearly 200 works by 10 artists, attempts to make transactions as favorable as possible for both parties, selling art at reasonable prices to the college market, Lace said. Artists decide how to price their work and College Canvas receives 25 percent of the final sale price to cover Web site and delivery costs. While this is a business venture, Frederickson, Harroff and Lace hope to create something along the lines of a "virtual art gallery" and a "community of conversations," Frederickson said.
College Canvas has no restrictions on the types of work they accept, which currently includes drawings, paintings, prints, sculpture, sketches and tapestry. In the near future, Harroff and Lace said they plan on adding T-shirts and jewelry. "There is no form of censorship in it," Frederickson said. "We are very open to everything."
The three friends came up with the idea for College Canvas in May and have spent the interim turning their idea into a working business. Frederickson, a double concentrator in visual art and computer science, spent his summer creating College Canvas's Web site. "I spent my whole summer sitting there coding like a maniac," he said.
Harroff and Lace, both economics concentrators, worked to set up the business. Harroff pitched the idea to artists from Brown and RISD to secure artwork. His work was made more challenging because he had to arrange everything from his native Geneva via e-mail. "You have to push (the artists). You have to give them a little bit of a carrot and then a little bit of a stick and it's just like, it's a whole game. It was an arduous task," he said.
Visual art concentrator Julie Kumar '07 became involved with College Canvas in May after being contacted by Harroff, who was in her first-year unit. So far Kumar has sold one of the 23 pieces she submitted to the site. "I wasn't incredibly happy about taking it off the wall," she said, adding that she might take a few of her favorite pieces off the Web site now that it has hit home that her works will actually be sold.
Kumar questioned if there would be much of a student market for artwork. "People with time to be interested in what is decorating the spaces where they live" are more likely to buy art, she said, making students' parents more likely customers.
According to Frederickson, it was important that this business was not so much a corporate venture as something being done for love of the project. Harroff said that he and Lace were both particularly interested in the marketing and daily management of the business.
"We are also very committed to having this be a success so we have a very long-term plan for how this is going to develop into the future," Frederickson said, adding that the Web site is designed to display thousands of pieces.
The creators also hope to implement a feature allowing artists to post work that they are not selling alongside work that is for sale, creating an online portfolio that can also include a picture of the artist, a description of the type of work they do and a biography. "Artists who might not necessarily be disposed to creating their own site can have a presence online both for selling and for just showing people the kind of stuff that they do," Frederickson said.
The site, which accepts credit cards, has recently added a shipping feature so that people outside the local area can purchase work. "Basically right now we are just treating it like a little baby and we are just seeing how we can make it grow," he said.
"We want everyone at Brown to have pieces from RISD artists or Brown artists up in their dorm rooms," Lace said.
In it's first day as an active site, College Canvas made several sales in both the Providence and Boston areas, Frederickson said. "We got multiple thousands of hits on the first day. Just from people I've talked to who've seen it we've gotten real positive feedback and that along with the sales - it has been very encouraging," Frederickson said.
As for what happens when the trio graduates? Lace said, "I think we're going to cross that bridge when we get to it. We intend for it to keep going."
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