Sometimes it takes two to build an art collection. Akron, Ohio, advertising executive Fred Bidwell and his wife Laura and graphic designer, known for their sense of adventure in contemporary photography. In the last 15 years they have collected 500 pieces by photographers such as Josh Gosfield, Brian Ulrich and Edward Burtynsky. Bidwell is now working with the Cleveland Museum of Art to renovate a former transformer station in Cleveland to house their collections, some of which were promised to the museum. The exhibition hall is open next fall.

This week, Bidwell spoke about their early art-collecting couple. The following is the edited transcript.
-Kelly Crow

Fred: We started collecting many years we were married, 1991. We started small and rather slow, and many of the early landscape drawings. Over time, our interest expanded to a lot of conceptual work and portraits. It’s not like I have a sensitivity and Laura has a very differ-99% of the time we know what others will like it.

Laura: We are based on images are a little weird, but has a real beauty to them. I think we have a sense of David Lynch.

Fred: In our living room, we have the big picture ‘Shopping Bag’ Hendrik Kerstens. This is a portrait of old-style master-photographer’s daughter, except that he wore a white shopping bag on her head. It looks like one Dutch woman wearing a white hat rich during the Renaissance.

Laura: We also just bought a work of Jill Greenberg, who is known for the series about the crying baby and a series of animals such as bears and monkeys. We are the picture of a lamb, sweet, fuzzy, pink ears and open mouth covered with what looks like blood. We talked with Jill and in fact, the sheep just eat jelly donuts. People come to our house and go, “Oh!”

Fred: We’re also excited about Jordan Tate. He worked really clever conceptually across a picture to explore.

Laura: One of his works show the iPhone on a pink pillow.

Fred: This is a picture from a camera phone, the screen that contains more pictures. We usually agree on the artist, but sometimes our discussions about what a particular image that we want more. One of our favorites is a Dutch portrait painter Meene Helen, who has been highly regarded series of portraits of teenage girls. They are a strange and unique, and he threw his subjects in an interesting way. So we will discuss our options, and usually means that we need to buy to make everyone happy.

Laura: We have eight girls now, and we’ll buy more.

Fred: You get a better picture of the sensitivity of the photographer when you have some examples of their work is not just a one-off. We have bought 30 or 40 images Todd Hido’s work. He lived in the Bay Area, and he was known to house shooting at night, in fog, rain-splattered streets empty through a windshield.

Laura: His past seems to always be on his back. You can never go wrong with him. He is fantastic.