Art Of The Deal

Chelsea Neman Nassib is democratizing the art-buying experience—and bolstering new talent while she’s at it. This month on ELLE.com, she shares her knowhow for the aspiring collector

- Keziah Weir

In 2010, newly graduated from the University of Michigan and armed with a hot off-the-press BFA in painting, Los Angeles native Chelsea Neman Nassib planned to become a full-time career artist. “But the path isn’t quite…sustainable,” she says. “Once you have a couple of shows, and your friends come, and your parents’ friends come, you tap out your own network. How are you going to get new people to see your work? Who’s going to buy your work next?”

These questions were fresh in her mind when, later that year, Nassib took a job as a project manager for an interior designer and started selling her own artwork to the firm’s clients. “At the time,” she says, “it was difficult to find original work that was unique and at an approachable price point if you didn’t have a relationship with a gallery.” For clients who weren’t well-known collectors—some prominent galleries won’t even sell to someone who isn’t—or those with more modest budgets, options seemed limited to “that horse print that’s produced in the thousands.”