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To look at Chris Burmeister's art collection, you'd think the guy was a trust-funder with time and money to burn.

You'd be wrong.

"I did it on a very meager budget, and still do," says the Albuquerque clinical therapist, who works with troubled children and adolescents.

Using a keen eye and fierce negotiating skills, Burmeister has assembled one of the city's best contemporary art collections. Focused on pop and minimalism, it has big names, emerging ones and a lineup of locals.

Alongside Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg, and Charles and Ray Eames are New Mexicans Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Stuart Arends, Wes Mills, Tom Waldron, Robert Kelly, Eric Garduno and Johnnie Winona Ross.

It's a highly personal collection that mixes the serious with the whimsical. There's a Warhol Brillo box, a Koons inflatable flower, a bubble gum sculpture of bacon and sausage by Melissa Martin, a Jacob's ladder of movie kisses and guns by John Baldessari, a billy club of gaffer's tape by Paul McCarthy and a wall ball of tape, ink and dirt by Tom Sachs. There are quiet, powerful images by Agnes Martin, Ross and Ellsworth Kelly.

Burmeister decided a year ago to publicly show a part of his collection, and has worked with Chip Ware, curator of the Jonson Gallery on the University of New Mexico campus, to make it happen.

Ware dug through the 120 or so pieces, some of it in closets and cupboards in Burmeister's crowded home, to come up with 47 to display in a show titled "Modern Masters from the Chris Burmeister Collection" that runs through March 9.

"I didn't know what I was looking for," Ware says. "He started pulling things out, and I picked what I liked and what I thought would work well together. It was tremendously fun."

Burmeister chose UNM for the show because he says it has an art school that is turning out some great young contemporary artists.

"Students should come take a look at the collection," he says, "and start creating work."

Burmeister's collecting had a serendipitous start.

"I was walking past a gallery in La Jolla and a Roy Lichtenstein caught my eye. I just liked it," he says. "I told myself that, someday, when I graduated from college, I would like to own something like that."

The Baltimore native had moved around the country before enrolling at San Diego State in California. He transferred to New Mexico State - his mother and grandparents had retired in Las Cruces - where he studied philosophy for a year, and later earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from UNM and a master's in clinical psych from the University of Phoenix.

At UNM, remembering the Lichtenstein, Burmeister took an art history class and began buying books on contemporary art.

"The class was brutal, but I learned so much," he says. "I continued buying books and becoming self-educated."

He even wrote a letter to Lichtenstein, saying the artist had inspired him. Nine months later, Lichtenstein wrote a short note of encouragement back and enclosed a signed book.

Burmeister's first art purchase was a Keith Haring that he returned to California to buy, working with an art dealer. It started a cycle.

"I would save money and make payments on a piece," he says. "I'd go to California for the summer and by the end of summer have the piece paid off and bring it home."

Burmeister continued to work with dealers and educate himself through books, magazines and talking to experts. "I learned valuable lessons," he says. "I refined what I liked and started meeting artists. They had a big influence on me."

He met the late, venerable Agnes Martin at a retrospective of her work in Santa Fe. "I just walked up to her and asked her to sign a book," he says. "She started telling me stories. She got me down on one knee and wouldn't let me leave."

It was the beginning of a friendship between the two.

He's met Ruscha, Richard Tuttle, Bridget Riley, Wes Mills, Claes Oldenberg, John Chamberlain, Tony Feher. "I developed relationships with people in the art community who are friends of the artists," he says.

He continues to research art and "looks everywhere" for work - auction houses, individuals, dealers, even eBay. "I bought a Richard Prince drawing on eBay for almost nothing," he says.

Burmeister's advice to budding collectors is to negotiate the best price, make payments, get to know artists and dealers, and buy small and trade up.

He says he collects art for the fun of it and the inspiration.

"Artists think differently from the rest of us," he says. "When I look at a piece of art, I think like they think. The world of art opens other worlds to you."

Burmeister has spent as little as $50 on a piece, and at the high end, "it's a lot less than people would think," he says.

"There are things in the collection I definitely couldn't afford today."

His favorite piece, one he'd never part with, is a Ruscha that he got at an AIDS charity auction in Los Angeles. It's a small wonder: the letter "e" written in sand on a Marina del Rey phone book.

And it's there, in the Jonson Gallery show, not to be missed.