PROVO — Local artist Casey Jex Smith has been around the block.
A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, his career got off to a great start as he earned gallery representation in the Bay Area and New York, found an audience, and was well on his way to "making it" in the highly competitive, and fickle, world of contemporary art.
But then the Great Recession hit. He lost his agents and galleries were closing left and right. He'd also moved to Ohio with his wife, who is also an artist, and his young family. Opportunities, once rife, were disappearing.
"At the moment it felt like I had a real art career going, it dried up," Smith said.
Fast forward to the present and Smith, along with his wife, have not only recalibrated their careers, they have also just launched Unibrow, the first-ever online art auction site run by, and for, contemporary artists.
While the fine art business is on the rise after a few years of decline — it raked in over $60 billion worldwide last year according to a report compiled by Art Basel and Swiss investment giant UBS — it's typical that about half of all sales proceeds end up with auction agents or gallery owners.
Unibrow walks back that standard 50 percent commission and instead will be working from an 80-20 split that breaks in favor of artists. On top of that, Smith and the Unibrow co-founders have committed to pushing back on another long-running disparity in the fine art world.
"Only 4 percent of the work sold through auction houses is from female artists," Smith said. "On Unibrow, we will always have at least 50 percent of our work coming from artists that self-identify as female."
While artists interested in showing and selling work on Unibrow are still beholden to a curatorial approval process, Smith said the goal is to include creators at all stages of their careers. He is also hoping the site becomes an option for those creators who, because of where they reside, have little or no access to exhibition space.
"We're looking for a high-caliber of work, but it won't just be limited to those with long resumes and a lot of shows under their belts," Smith said.
Smith said he reached out to an established California artists' group, Binder of Women, to help curate the first group of artists that went up on the site in early December.
Binder artist Kysa Johnson, who lives and works in Los Angeles, said helping Unibrow launch its debut auction was a task that matches up well with the overarching goal of the group.
"Our efforts (with Binder of Women) have been to help move each other forward in the art world and art market," Johnson said.
Johnson, a well-established artist who is represented by galleries in New York and Houston, said she sees the Unibrow effort as one that empowers participating artists to control the decisions that go with selling work, like choosing pieces and setting prices will creating a new, broader marketplace for contemporary art.
"There are a lot of other online platforms out there, but they are mostly attached to galleries," Johnson said. "Unibrow not only creates a direct avenue from artists to collectors, but gets the work out there in the world, in front of people who may not have access to galleries or who would never visit a gallery."
Johnson said Unibrow's committment to gender equity also makes it a refreshing outlier in an industry that is still struggling, like many others, to achieve a fair representation of the wide world of working artists.
"There are a lot of conversations happening right now about how straight, white and male-centric the art world has been forever," Johnson said. "It's the same conversation that is occurring in many industries and it's long overdue. There are these blue-chip galleries, in the large markets and smaller ones, that are still having shows that are all men.
"Unibrow is addressing this right up front, and being conscious and deliberate about it."
Johnson underscored that there is no substitution for the in-person experience of an artist's work and noted that a lot of her own work, which is full of fine and layered detail, doesn't always translate via the 2D world of online images. But she is confident that a happy medium that leverages the new tools available in the digital realm, with the more traditional showing of work in physical gallery spaces, can find a future of co-existence.
"Art at its core is truly an in-person experience," Johnson said. "Objects should be experienced physically, but using tools like Unibrow to broaden our access and exposure is what you want to have happen.
"I believe we can thoughtfully figure out how to do that through new resources and technology … but do it in a way that uses the best of both while not losing the magic and beauty of experiencing art in real life."
Smith said his goals for Unibrow are centered on navigating those two worlds that Johnson sees as becoming mutually beneficial and is planning on coordinating real-world gallery exhibitions that complement the auction activity taking place on Unibrow. The debut auction group, Smith noted, was also exhibited at the O-O LA Gallery in Los Angeles in mid-December shortly after the works went up on Unibrow.
He is also hoping the site becomes a stepping stone that will help artists navigate their career paths in a way that gives them, ultimately, a lot more control of their own destinies.
"The whole mission of Unibrow comes from a place of being an artist," Smith said. "It's about trying to help other artists get through the difficult times that confront us all."
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Unibrow co-founder Casey Jex Smith.