Guest blogger Brad Ford Smith is a Dallas artist and art conservator.

Some of the work available at 5×7 Art Splurge in 2006

The 5X7 Art Splurge and Exhibition is happening tonight, so grab your purse, your wallet or that jar of loose change and get ready to grab some great art at great prices for a great cause, that being the annual fund-raiser for the Arthouse at the Jones Center, Texas’s oldest non-profit visual arts organization.

At this year’s fund-raiser, which is being held at the Dunn and Brown Contemporary, there will be 1100 works of art on display, donated by over 600 Texas artists. All of the artwork follows a 5”X7” format and are priced at only $100 each. There is a complete list available of the participating artist, but since the artworks are signed on the back the whole exhibition is displayed anonymously. This encourages you, the art collectors, to purchase the art based solely on what you like.

This is the ninth year for the 5X7 fund-raiser, and it consistently has high quality artwork done by Texas artists that seem to really care about what they have donated. There is always lots of new talent participating as well establish artists who have donated artwork year after year after year.

I asked some of the local Dallas artists why, when there are so many cultural fund-raisers and good causes to support, do they donate and keep donating to this particular organization? Most of them said that they donate artwork to several fund-raisers each year, but that they always do the 5X7 show. So why? “Because the format makes me think out of the box,” “Because I always enjoy being part of the event,” and the top reason “It’s just fun to do.”

Well, nothing too deep there. No saving the polar bears. No rightings of political injustices No anti this or anti that. “It’s just fun to do.” A simple reason with no attachments. A masterpiece of marketing and management by the staff at Arthouse.