Like a lot of folks, Pamela Hornik found that her social media usage swelled in the early days of the pandemic. She started the Instagram series Two Minutes With Teddy, which films the art patron and collector with her 10-year-old rescue dog in tow, discussing works in her Palo Alto home. Unable to view most art in person during lockdown — or keep up her volunteer duties at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, where she is also on the Director’s Advisory Board — Hornik began following more artists, galleries and museums online.
And much to her husband’s chagrin, Hornik acquired an inordinate number of pieces depicting canines. “David was like, ‘This is out of control.’ He would joke that it was better that I had more dog paintings and dog photos than more dogs,” she recalls, adding that “the role of dogs for me is comfort and healing, and it really helped with my anxiety.”
Hornik procured her first dog art, a Kathryn Lynch charcoal drawing, in 2010. Four years later, Teddy, a Maltese and Chihuahua mix, was adopted as an emotional support dog for Hornik’s daughter — the third of her four children — but soon became a constant companion for Hornik herself. During the pandemic, she says, “the crazy, obsessive dog-art buying really took off.”
Today, her dog art totals more than 100, about a quarter of her figurative-focused collection. While her New York City apartment’s 17-foot-long “dog wall” is lined with 30 works, most are in storage in San Francisco. Now, she says, it’s time to pull them out so they can be enjoyed as a group — at least for a couple of weeks. The pop-up show Some Dogs runs April 24 through May 7 at Four One Nine. Although the SoMa venue is private, there will be public events and viewing hours...
Anh-Minh Le
