Lisa Hering
Lisa Hering leans forward on her sofa and glances at the walls of the comfortable yet elegant living room of her home in rural Landenberg. Outside, it is a blustery day with a rain-soaked view of quiet pastureland and small clutches of swaying trees.
“I had never thought of myself before as an art collector,” Hering, an architect, says, as she scans a portion of the many paintings, photographs, and sculptures that she and her lawyer husband, Louis Hering, have put together through their years of marriage. “But I guess we are.”
Rodney Chester, who has been buying paintings since 1991, says that he has “probably 150 pieces of serious art” that covers practically every inch of wall space in his small cottage in historic Arden—and some tucked elsewhere. “I think of chairs as being easels,” he says with a laugh as he points out one piece in a sitting position.
Mark Avellino
Architect Mark Avellino says he bought his first original art three years ago and is just getting started as a collector. There are a few pieces in his Fairville office and a few more at his home. “Do I want to build a collection?” he says. “Oh, yes, but I don’t have a lot of money.”
Catherine and Jamie Gregory, married just four years, see the collecting of their first few paintings as an integral part of growing into family life in a quiet west Wilmington neighborhood. “I have no art background,” Jamie says. “I’m a bond trader, so I’m very quantitative.” Not surprisingly, he bought the couple’s first painting at a non-profit auction. “Being a trader in a bidding situation, I got very excited,” he says.
There are common threads that run through all of these people and their collections, regardless of where they are in building them or their level of financial commitment to the task. These include a focus on certain styles of artwork; a predetermined ceiling on how much they are prepared to spend; regular attendance at gallery openings, auctions, and art fairs; the decision to collect primarily original works and not copies or prints; and—most of all—the steadily growing number of pieces acquired.
“You know you’re a collector when you start focusing on a period or a style or certain artists,” says Fred Carspecken of Carspecken Scott Gallery in Wilmington, who, as an art dealer, has worked with dozens of collectors through the years. A colleague in the trade, Sadie Somerville of Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, notes that, “Some new collectors may not even realize that they are collectors. One couple, who bought only a painting or two a year, didn’t really consider themselves collectors, but ended up donating their ‘collection’ to a museum.”
Although there are commonalities among collectors, there are also differences. For example, the Herings and Rodney Chester collect many of the same regional artists—Christine Lafuente, Jon Redmond, Greg Mort—but their approaches are quite different.
“We never buy anything without knowing where we’re going to hang it,” Lisa Hering says, and bemoans the fact that her wall space is filling up and that she will soon have to consider “stacking” or grouping paintings in arrangements. Chester, who designs custom kitchens, says his acquisition budget depends on how the business is going.
Then there is the matter of conservation. Hering sees artwork as part of the living environment that she and her family, which includes two daughters at Sanford School, share, and admits she doesn’t provide her art any special treatment as concerns humidity and light. But not Chester. “I live in a 25-watt world,” he admits, referring to the low levels of lighting in his home. “I should wear a miner’s helmet.”
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