This drawing stole my heart at Platform Gallery in November. It's a tiny perfect world in pencil, by New York artist Michael Schall, for $700. It's called Wooden Rink (2012) and the image measures 6.25 by 5 inches (on a 15-by-17-inch paper). platformgallery.com
Collectors all over are hooked on Terry Turrell, one of Seattle's great folk artists. He cobbles together whatever discarded Americana is at hand, and he carves and paints wood figurines that are unusually alive for being so stiff. At the Hop, this 2012 piece made of wood, tin, wire, oil, and enamel at Grover/Thurston Gallery—standing 8 inches high—is on the low end of his price range at $1,600. groverthurston.com
Cullom Gallery is a hidden wonderland in the International District. This folded-and-cut-paper piece is an ideal example: By Tokyo-based artist Ryohei Tanaka, it's called The Horizontals, it was made in 2010, it measures 11.25 by 5.75 inches, and it costs $275. cullomgallery.com
Seattle artist Julie Alpert's November show at Gallery4Culture featured rows of haunting watercolors the artist calls "negative positive pattern paintings." Each one depicts a room decorated with ghost furniture, ghost vacuums, ghost computers, ghost fireplaces. Somewhere deep in your mind, you know these rooms. Office is $350 and 10.5 by 9.5 inches. juliealpert.com
Congolese photographer Baudouin Mouanda has been making images of the postcolonial sapeurs, or African dandies, in Brazzaville—members of the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, or Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People—since the 1990s, and the pictures are sensational (obviously). They're 24 by 36 inches, at M.I.A. Gallery, and the price for each varies according to its place in the edition (each edition is 10 plus 2 artist proofs), ranging from $2,000 to $3,000. m-i-a-gallery.com
Buying art by someone famous isn't for everybody, but it's far from impossible. This gorgeous, 14-by-11-inch gelatin silver print by one of the early masters of photography, Minor White, is called Mobil Station, San Francisco (1949), and it's $7,500 at G. Gibson Gallery. ggibsongallery.com
Be adventurous: Buy a video. (No, it does not include a monitor.) This one, Being Part Of... (2:20 minutes, edition of 3), is a split-screen take on real-life rehearsals for a military parade. One side focuses on the individual faces. The other side depicts faceless men disappearing into the crowd but becoming part of a larger whole. It's an inventive portrait of masculinity and also a river of abstract patterns, and it's by rising Seattle artist Rodrigo Valenzuela—you should probably get in on his work early. It's $1,000 at PUNCH Gallery. rodrigovalenzuela.com
