With Art-o-mat, old cigarette machines become an innovative way to connect artists and patrons
Walk into the Art Lounge in Spartanburg, and you’ll find the first surprise: a vintage cigarette vending machine, complete with coin slot and chrome knobs—the kind that used to be ubiquitous decades ago but have largely disappeared from public spaces.
“Weren’t those banned?” you might ask yourself.
Which leads to the second surprise: what the machine is actually selling. Put a $5 token in the coin slot, pull the lever (and savor the satisfying ka-CHUNK), and out comes not a pack of smokes but a painting, a print, or a tiny sculpture.
This fusion of art and commerce happens regularly in the 200-plus venues that host an Art-o-mat machine. What began as a single installation in 1997 by North Carolina artist Clark Whittington has grown into a network of hundreds of artists reaching new audiences in galleries, coffee shops, schools, bars, and other offbeat locales across the country.
“You have to have a place where people feel like they’re part of something,” says Whittington of the venues he works with. “It needs to be more of an experience.”
Whittington and his team refurbish and retrofit the Art-o-mats (he prefers the National models, “the Chevrolet of cigarette machines,” he says) at his Winston-Salem studio. Prices are kept low to encourage potential customers; the $5 they spend on each piece is split between the artist, the venue, and the Art-o-mat organization.
Turing Cigarette Machines into Art Vending Machines
“We’re using the tools of society to get people to buy something they would never think of otherwise,” Whittington says. “We keep things very approachable, and the artists understand that we’re reaching people they couldn’t reach otherwise.”
“We’ve had people who have planned road trips around us because they saw we have an Art-o-mat here,” says Art Lounge owner Brandi Dice, who sees her customers connecting on social media with the artists they’ve patronized via the Art-o-mat. “It’s creating this network between artists and people, and it’s just a really cool community.”
Dice encouraged Spartanburg artist Joan Wheatley to join that community.
“You have to make something inexpensive that doesn’t take long, and then you send 50 at a time [to Whittington],” says Wheatley, whose miniature ceramic mice have been vended at the Cosmopolitan hotel and casino in Las Vegas, among other places. “If just for the advertising alone, it’s worth doing it.”
During her eight years as an Art-o-mat artist, Wheatley has seen increased online orders—along with plenty of photos taken all around the world.
“I always include a note asking them to email me a picture of where the art ends up,” she says. “That’s what I think is so nice. People are happy with them. It’s just fun.”
Art-o-mats in South Carolina
Art Lounge, 1410 Skylyn Dr., Spartanburg
Exchange Coffee Co., 110 Main St., Simpsonville
One Columbia, 801 Wildwood Ave., Columbia
Public Works Art Center, 135 W. Richardson Ave., Summerville
The Creek Collective, 222 St. James Ave., Goose Creek
The Rarebit, 474 King St., Charleston
Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, 161 Calhoun St., Charleston
Find more locations at artomat.org.
