Be an Art Collector for Just Pennies a Day : Marketing: The county museum has rented out works for 40 years, but SBC Windows is the first to introduce the concept locally.

Looking for some art, but you’re a little short of cash?

Maybe you should consider renting.

In a marketing concept usually associated with cut-rate furniture, TVs and stereos, South Bay connoisseurs of contemporary art can now rent-to-own artworks for as little as $16 a month instead of shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars in one lump sum to buy it outright.

The rental art is available through a new organization called SBC Windows, which today officially opens its sales and rental gallery on Hawthorne Boulevard in south Torrance.

“Art rentals are a great opportunity all around, for individuals, for artists, and for the community,” said Jo Ann Gaines, SBC Windows administrator. “You really can’t miss on a rental.”

The rental art concept is not new. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for example, has been renting artwork for the past 40 years. According to Lynne Hiller, Art Rental and Sales Gallery chairperson for the county museum, the gallery typically has about 1,500 pieces of art out on rental. Rental programs also are operated by museums and galleries in New York and other cities.

But Gaines said SBC Windows, at the Hillside Village shopping center, 24544 Hawthorne Blvd., is the only program of its kind in the South Bay. The program is an offshoot of the South Bay Contemporary Museum of Art, which was formed in 1990 by Gaines and Peggy Sibert, a local artist. A nonprofit organization, the museum was created to encourage emerging South Bay and Los Angeles artists by providing space for exhibitions of their art.

Until last month, the museum maintained offices and a gallery on Pacific Coast Highway in Torrance, but that donated space has been temporarily closed because of a construction project. The group also operates an exhibition space in the Signal Hill neighborhood in Long Beach.

Contemporary art can be loosely defined as art produced by working artists; although it sometimes is traditional, it most often is what a layman might call modern or abstract art. SBC Windows’ first piece of rented art is an acrylic and graphite piece on paper by Beanie Kaman. Titled “Crown,” it consists of a head-shaped form with a halo of short, thick spikes.

Rental fees for SBC Windows art are based on the list price of the piece, with a two-month minimum for individuals, six months for corporations. A piece of art priced under $200 can be rented for about $16 a month, tax included. A $6,000 piece will cost about $90 a month. Sixty percent of the rental fees can be applied toward purchase of the piece. (The artist collects 60% of the rental fees or purchase price, and the gallery gets the remaining 40%.)

In most cases only “wall art,” not sculpture, can be rented from the gallery.

Visitors to SBC Windows can rent or buy art that is on display, or they can view slides of available art by hundreds of artists. Art renters must be members of the SBC Museum of Art, which for individuals costs $35 a year.

The low rental costs, Gaines and others say, make it easier for many people to enter the art collecting field. Also, many corporate art renters, such as law firms or insurance companies, prefer to rent rather than buy because it permits variety and doesn’t saddle the business with a permanent art collection.

Another advantage of renting art is that it allows renters to see if the art fits in their homes or offices before they buy it. It’s sort of the art equivalent of test driving a car.

“The advantage is you get an opportunity to live with it for a while and then decide if you want to live with it for the rest of your life,” said Pauletta Bryson of Rancho Palos Verdes, who with her husband John recently became SBC Windows’ first rental customers, renting the above-mentioned “Crown.” “I hope we like it after we’ve had it here a while.”

Bryson, a real estate agent, said she and her husband are old hands at the rental art game, having previously rented art works from the County Museum of Art.

Art rentals also help the artists who create the works.

“I think it’s a good idea in this failing economy,” said Douglas Metzler, a 46-year-old artist formerly of Los Angeles and now based in Santa Fe, N.M. Metzler, whose work is on display at SBC Windows, added that not only does the artist receive a share of the rental fees--a small but steady source of income--but renters often wind up buying the artwork outright.

“Art has a slow appreciation period,” he said. “But when it’s in somebody’s home, very often they don’t want to let it go.”