The contents of a Brown County artist’s home will go up for sale this weekend, including some of her paintings.
Following the wishes of her family, Ida Gordon’s estate will be sold from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 3 and 4, at the home where she lived and worked, 336 State Road 135 North, just north of downtown. Anything left after the tag sale will be auctioned.
Gordon’s paintings have sold for as much as $25,000, reports Aether Estate Sales Co., the company conducting the sale.
However, money was not Gordon’s goal.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
“I paint for myself. I don’t paint for the money … I like for painting to be painterly, to give expression to the feelings for which we have no words. Each painting is an experience which the viewer must share if the painting is to be meaningful,” she was quoted as saying in the “Hoosier Art Collection” held at the Kokomo Howard Public Library.
Gordon was born in Windfall in 1903 and lived in Kokomo for 41 years. She was educated at Indiana University and studied portraiture in New York and Paris at the American Academy.
She spent the next 20 years in Brown County, painting more than 1,000 canvases, averaging 150 per year.
She and her husband bought and renovated the former cabin of artist Adolf Shulz.
In Nashville, she studied under artists Marie Goth, Derk Smit, George Jo Mess and Homer Davisson and received private instruction from Goth, Davisson, Marilyn Bendell and Leonard Richmond, the auction company reported.
She was a member of the Brown County Art Gallery Association and its board of directors, the Indiana Artist Club, Hoosier Salon and Indiana Heritage Arts Inc., as well as other organizations.
Gordon’s impressionistic works included floral still lifes, many of which were painted from arrangements of flowers that her husband grew at their home, a news release said. She also painted landscapes, seascapes and portraits.
Gordon died in 1983 at her other home in Florida.
Dozens of her works are throughout her Nashville home — “placed behind furniture pieces, stuck in the basement rafters, literally everywhere,” the release said.
The thousands of items tagged for sale include newer and antique furniture, antiques and collectibles, tools, kitchen items and more.
Lee Parsons, of the estate company, said a sign-up sheet will be placed outside at 7 a.m. and everything will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis, “well under fair market value.”
Items will be posted in advance on the estate company’s website, aetherestatesales.com.
Gordon’s daughter and son-in-law, Donna and Merwin Bugher, had been living in the home. Donna died in 2012, and Merwin died March 1 at age 92.
