5 Artworks Under $5,000 - IFPDA 2025 Edition
My top picks from the International Fine Print Dealers Association this weekend
Disclaimer: if you haven’t read my Prints Edition + Manual yet, I encourage you to take a moment to read it before continuing:
Archive: Summer Prints Edition + Print Manual
As we are well into summer, many of us are spending a great deal of time at our vacation homes. I often hear from my clients that these houses have too many empty walls. If they are going to make the effort to fill them, they tell me they want something fun, and not too significant of an investment. In these cases, I often advise that my clients fill these spaces with some of my favorite underrated artworks: limited edition prints.
This past week in New York was “Print Week,” the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s annual palooza celebrating the many ways fine art prints enrich our understanding of art history, art-making and art-appreciating. Highlights of the week included the opportunity to visit the studios of some of the hottest contemporary artists making prints today, a curator-led tour of Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell’s fifty year print career at the New York Public Library, and of course, the IFPDA fair where everyone could see and buy world-class artworks at every price point.
Learn more about the IFPDA, the fair and programming HERE.
This year, I brought my fiancé along to the fair, in the hopes of finding some special pieces in our budget for the home we are building. Below are five we considered.
Peter McDonald
Private View, 2024
Hand-finished lithograph on Super Alfa paper
16 1/2 x 11 4/5 inches
Edition of 20
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I love the humor in Peter McDonald’s colorful, shapely vignettes, and can’t help but see myself in the above work and chuckle. Many of McDonald’s characters are depicted with comically large heads in bourgeois environments — in a time where it’s easy to criticize sharply or take life too seriously, it’s refreshing to see art that pokes fun lightly and adds a bit of levity to the room.
Cornelia Parker
Trick of the Light, 2024
Polymer Gravure etching on Madrid Litho 300gsm paper
22 1/8 x 20 1/2 inches
Edition of 25
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How remarkable is it to transform a three-dimensional glass bulb into a two-dimensional etching? Cornelia Parker’s decades-long exploration of “compressing” everyday glass objects is both scientifically and artistically fascinating. It stops you in your tracks, making you think about the surroundings you take for granted in a new light (pun intended).
Jordan Ann Craig
Sharp Tongue: Soft Skies, 2024
Five-color lithograph on Newsprint grey Somerset velvet
21 x 21 inches
Edition of 50
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Artists so often give titles short shrift nowadays, but not so for Jordan Ann Craig. In her first collaboration with storied print publisher Tamarind Institute, Craig uses her titles to juxtapose the hard-edged triangle patterns of her paintings (called Sharp Tongues, get it?) with the gentle color palettes of beadwork from her Cheyenne community. This is an artist to watch, and this beautiful new print is a great way to own a piece by a star on the rise.
Deborah Kass
Gold Barbra, 2013
9 color Silkscreen on paper
24 x 20 inches
Edition of 75 + 14 APs
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Paying homage to pop art legend Andy Warhol and his 1960s screenprints of famous beauties like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, Jewish feminist artist Deborah Kass gives Barbra Streisand the same reverent treatment. This is just one of many clever artistic re-interpretations that aims to better include and celebrate previously under-represented people in fine art.
"You think beautiful girls are going to stay in style forever? I should say not! Any minute now they're going to be out! Finished! Then it'll be my turn! "
- Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl
Sarah Crowner
Pastoral (Greens), 2025
Intaglio in 2 colors
33 x 26 1/8 inches
Edition of 10
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Sarah Crowner is known for her paintings of beautifully dyed and stitched canvases of organic forms, which translates seamlessly (hehe) to creating works on paper “stitching” together shapes of colors by cutting the shapes into a plate and then printing a different layer of color into each form. Like with Peter McDonald, color and shape drive the composition, but with this work, it’s all about appreciating the process of making something simply beautiful.
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