Baran-Unland: Good things happen when we support local artists

Last week, my son Timothy Baran bought a piece of art and paid a fair price for it.

You might think, so what? People buy art all the time.

Well, the piece Timothy bought wasn’t initially for sale. Timothy had discovered the piece, seemingly by chance, at the Joliet Focus “Our Community, Your Experience” exhibit at the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

The exhibit, as well as the piece Timothy bought, is on display at the museum through Dec. 31.

Now Timothy, an amateur photographer, knew about the exhibit because I had written a story for The Herald-News about it. He wanted to see it, so off we went. We started at the wall near the door and worked our way around the art, noticing details here, making comments there.

As we rounded the corner, his eye caught a painting across the room. He vroomed over it and stopped, awestruck.

“This is amazing,” he kept saying. “Who painted it?”

I looked at the tag: Autumn Sky Collier.

“She’s actually a high school student,” I told him, and he quickly asked, “What does she want for it?”

“I don’t think the painting is for sale,” I said. “But I can ask.”

I found Tycee Bell, one of the Joliet Focus coordinators, in another part of the museum. She contacted Autumn’s mother and Autumn and her mother met Timothy near the painting.

Timothy pointed out details he liked and asked Autumn what inspired them. We learned Autumn painted the picture for her mother to hang in the living room, but she was open to selling it.

“How much?” Timothy asked her.

She named a fair price. And Timothy, who had just received an unexpected gift that day and had the means to pay it, paid it.

Then Timothy left the painting hanging on the wall so others could enjoy Autumn’s talents, along with the other artwork, through Dec. 31.

The description of Joliet Focus on its website says Joliet Focus is “an app that allows the Joliet community to share photos, artwork, essays, articles, poems and other thoughts on experiences living in Joliet.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “share” as “to partake of, use, experience, occupy, or enjoy with others.”

These last few months, Shaw Media’s Joliet Focus app gave people “safe and engaging place for neighbors to share information and news.”

In the story promoting the Joliet Focus art exhibit, Bell said people experience Joliet in various ways and people don’t always get to see those different experiences. But the Joliet Focus app helped widen that experience through the opportunity to share.

In this case, Autumn was able to share and then experience the appreciation of the art she created. In Timothy’s case, he not only met the artist, he gets to enjoy the fruit of this artist’s creativity for many years to come.

Without the opportunity of the Joliet Focus exhibit, neither would have happened.

The exhibit features a digital exhibit of all the photos that were uploaded to the Joliet Focus app, 25 curated photos from the app and artwork loaned by 12 artists with a Joliet connection, artwork that highlights “Black artists and creators of art rooted in African culture,” according to a news release from Joliet Focus.

Mediums include “acrylics, pastels, pencil, paint, photography and coloring books,” the release said, and will help to “celebrate the everyday life of the Black community,” Bell said in the initial story.

The Joliet Area Historical Museum, located at 204 N. Ottawa St. in Joliet.

For more information on Joliet Focus, visit jolietfocus.com.