Artsicle Rents Inexpensive Art Cheaply

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Alex Tryon, a founder of Artsicle, studies works by Kenneth Wong during a studio tour in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

ABOUT 90 minutes into a high-speed scouting expedition through the artists' studios of Gowanus, Brooklyn, Alex Tryon paused. In a small subdivided studio taking part in an annual event known as the Gowanus Open Studios Tour, her eye fixed on some acrylic paintings of neon-colored plastic squirt guns. They had a weird presence, cheery but menacing.

Her partner, Scott Carleton, leaned over and said, conspiratorially, "I like the squirt guns." Ms. Tryon whipped out her iPhone and began taking pictures. "That goes to the Twitter feed," she said. "It lets people know the Artsicle team is out on the streets, and this is what we're seeing."

Artsicle is the ear-catching name for an offbeat venture, an online business that rents inexpensive art cheaply. Ms. Tryon, 26, and Mr. Carleton, 27, have taken aim at novice collectors with small budgets, limited art knowledge and no appetite for the intimidating atmosphere at many established art galleries.

They are trying an end run around the gallery system, an idea that has enticed a number of entrepreneurs recently. This spring, Artify It began offering an art subscription service, on the Netflix model, in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

"I thought the art market was ready for innovation and disruption," said Idan Cohen, one of several investors who put a total of $390,000 into Artsicle last November. "I thought that Artsicle could reach young people not exposed to the art world yet, but who still want something that looks good in their home, to which they have an emotional attachment, that has a story behind it."

Ms. Tryon knows their predicament. Just a few years ago, she went shopping for a print by Jock Sturges, known for his photographs of adolescents and their families taken at California communes and nudist colonies.

She got nowhere fast. "The galleries made it very clear that they were not very interested in a young buyer with a budget of $1,000," she said. "I encountered a lot of attitude everywhere I went. At the same time, I met a lot of young people interested in art. There seemed like a disconnect, an inefficiency in the market."

"Inefficiency in the market" is business code for "moneymaking opportunity." Ms. Tryon thought of creating an online business that was inexpensive and accommodating, what she calls a "Zappos for art."

Mr. Carleton became her unlikely partner in the venture. The two met when she was studying communications and art history at the University of Pennsylvania and he was majoring in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. On a weekend trip to Philadelphia with a classmate, he ended up sleeping on Ms. Tryon's couch. "Uninvited," she pointed out.

A long-distance relationship developed. After college, Mr. Carleton found engineering work in the nuclear division of Westinghouse Electric. Ms. Tryon, whose nickname is short for Alexis, was hired by American Express, where her liaison work with top Manhattan restaurants dovetailed with her and Mr. Carleton's enthusiasm for good food, craft beers and fancy cocktails. The couple have taken a solemn vow to eat at the world's 50 best restaurants by the age of 50. (The tally so far: four.)

The relationship became short-distance when Mr. Carleton got out of the nuclear-reactor business, moved to New York, rented an apartment with Ms. Tryon and plunged into Web site development.

To test his code-writing skills, he badly needed a real-life Web project, something like Ms. Tryon's art scheme, which had no name until Mr. Carleton spontaneously blurted out "Artsicle" while driving on a freezing winter day.

The word means nothing in particular, but the two partners thought it sounded friendly and fun. "I knew it was good when someone told me, 'I don't remember your name but I do remember Artsicle,' " Mr. Carleton said.

The first version, with work by 10 artists, was unveiled in December 2010, but within a few weeks the two partners decided to shift the emphasis to renting rather than selling. The business began to gain traction.

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