Brece Honeycutt is taking a break from copying the Emily Dickinson verses she will later etch onto sheets of copper for an art installation in the gardens and cultural center of Wave Hill in the Bronx. Leaning over an open drawer brimming with folders of earlier work, she picks up a monotype in which the beginning letters of the alphabet dance between two soft-edged squares of blue.

"I think maybe this one," she says, setting it aside. The next is vivid pink with blue swirls. "That doesn't work," she decides, returning it to its folder. "I don't want anything that I wouldn't sell. It's not a remainder bin."

Ms. Honeycutt is not preparing for an exhibition or awaiting a visit from a collector. She is selecting artworks to give up for adoption.

This is how it works. Artists post images on www.fineartadoption.net with information about themselves and their work. When visitors spot a piece with appeal, they e-mail the artist, stating who they are and why they want to adopt. An exchange ensues, and if the artist decides this adopter will provide a good home, they discuss logistics.

Rose Aquilino of Rockville, Md., adopted "Freaky Cat," an ink drawing that reminded her of a mischievous kitten she and her artist husband, John, adopted when they moved from New York after the dotcom bust. In her correspondence with artist Jill Henderson, Ms. Aquilino, now a development officer at a school, committed to pay for shipping and framing.

In an art world where money and status loom large, a transaction that revolves around one person's response to another person's art is not only unusual, it is potentially subversive.

"Ideally, the work is going to people who would not otherwise own the artwork," says Adam Simon, the Brooklyn, N.Y. artist who set up Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN) with the support of Art in General, a Manhattan non-profit that supports new work. Adopters might be institutions with no art budget, individuals with little disposable income, or families who haven't considered making art a priority.

Mr. Simon got the idea when his mom moved from a house to an apartment, and he found himself regaining possession of two large paintings he'd made years before. That's when the light bulb went on: Artists have more art than they can store, while plenty of people who love art have no way of owning it. So why not use the Internet to facilitate art adoptions?

To ensure quality, Simon and his collaborators decided that artists could participate only if invited by other artists. Many FAAN artists sell through established galleries, but they also tend to show in alternative exhibition spaces and work on public art projects. More than 80 have posted works since the site went live in April. Most are smaller pieces, often a few years old, ranging from conceptual projects to figurative painting and sculpture. Honeycutt, for example, goes through her year 2000 folder and, to keep packaging simple, decides against offering any of her paper-cast sculptures.

Usually, people who want to own art must write a check. Adopters instead bring to the transaction their response to a work, a willingness to articulate it, and the courage to risk rejection. This kind of currency Nicholas Salvado has aplenty. A police academy recruit, he's headed for a career in forensics; but with "a ton" of college debt, buying art is out of the question. So when a buddy showed him the FAAN site, he browsed and spotted "Study for a Contemporary Portrait: Duccio," a pencil drawing by Brooklyn artist Cathy Nan Quinlan. He wrote to her. "It was a little bit of an essay, like applying for a job," he says.

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