Seattle Exhibit Gives March Posters a Worthy Display

CoCA photos by Shirene Soleiman 

Outside of its political implications, the Jan. 21 Women’s March offered an opportunity for artists to showcase their skills, in the form of spirited poster art, which is currently on display at Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) through Feb. 25.

We-the-People-17x30-01-1-580x1024Prior to the march, the Amplifier Foundation put out a call for march poster art from women artists around the country. The organization received 5,000 submissions, and narrowed it down to eight official Women’s March poster designs.

Amplifier made the artwork available for download, which offered another opportunity … this time for printers … as 40,000 posters of the selected artwork were readied for the march in Washington, D.C.

Lending a Hand to Contemporary Arts

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The Center on Contemporary Art’s opening reception for “Change-Seed: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong and Beyond.” Photo credit: Annie Lukin

 

In late March, the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, Wash., opened a ground-breaking exhibit called Change-Seed, featuring a group of Hong Kong-based contemporary artists. The show, which runs through May 15, 2015, is a mixture of edgy prints, mixed media and video installations.

Although Hong Kong is a financial mecca for well-known artists, the lesser-known artists have very limited visibility, says Nichole DeMent, CoCA’s executive director.

“When we put the call out, we said to the artists: Let us be your voice,” DeMent says. “Let us tell your story that you weren’t able to tell in China.”

So CoCA curated an eclectic mix of art projects and asked the artists to send in digital files. CoCA then turned to Rock’s Studio, a fine art digital print service provider in Seattle. Stephen Rock, a multifaceted artist himself, contacted LexJet about the project, in hopes to acquire media to print the photographic works on.

Rock used Photo Tex, a printable self-adhesive polyester fabric, for large-scale prints, such as Laurent Segretier‘s “Untitled 17,” a 72-by-95-inch collage of what looks to be a cliff under construction, lined with vulnerable bamboo scaffolding. “It’s a big, gritty, dirty-looking print,” Rock says. He increased the scale of the artist’s work, which had several cut-out pieces around the print’s edges, which Rock decided to honor, creating a funky, urban piece.

“Since we had no budget to frame and mount these pieces, I suggested Photo Tex,” Rock says. “We can go really big with it and put the print right on the wall.”

He used his HP Designjet Z3100 printer (now available in the Z3200 model) for the prints. “HP just works so great on this material,” he says.

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Photography installations by artist Laurent Segretier: “Untitled 7,” “Untitled 15,” “Untitled 17” and “Untitled 24.”

 

Rock printed other photographic installations on Sunset Velvet Rag 315g. “As a printmaker, I just cringe at having to print big black areas on matte paper,” he says. “Any mishandling and those flat matte areas are prone to flaking. But with the Sunset Rag, it was like: Wow, these are deep and black and matte. They looked really sharp.”

Images in the prints included “Untitled 15,” objects wrapped with black trash bags and “Untitled 24,” an unidentifiable but intriguing image — guesses as to what it is range from rotting fabric to a dead insect.

“What are these guys trying to say, culture-wise,” Rock ponders. “Is it about consumption? There are so many layers and mystery. It’s very appropriate that they left it undefined.”

CoCA was thrilled to be a part of the dialog. “The artists appreciated the opportunity to have their work seen,” DeMent says. “It took them coming across the world to make that happen.”

Rock says he often does what he calls “benevolent printing” for projects like this, using as high-quality media as he has access to. “I don’t do cheap printing,” he says. “And thank you to LexJet, too, for helping. That’s what makes these shows work.”

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Yael Bronner Rubin’s “Connecting to the Spirits,” printed on Sunset Velvet Rag 315g.

The Next Dimension of Fine Art Reproduction at Bellevue Fine Art

Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction got its start as a way to solve a problem. For the company’s owner, Scott Moore, the problem was finding a way to reproduce his watercolor and pen-and-ink fine art. The solution was to do it himself, perfect the process and provide the service to artists and photographers in the Seattle/Bellevue area of Washington.

Spraying and coating canvas“At the time I was traveling a lot internationally and I tried places that did giclee printing in Japan, China, Canada and Paris. I wasn’t getting the color I wanted, and with the pen-and-ink I wasn’t getting the extreme detail I needed. Using my own artwork as a beta test I ended up making my own reproductions, and the more I looked around the more I saw that the Seattle area needed a business like this. There was a need for it, and there still is,” says Moore.

Moore opened the doors of Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction in April 2007, starting with a BetterLight scan-back system to scan and capture artwork, two Epson Stylus Pro 9800s and a software RIP for processing the files for print.

Fine art and photography reproductionSince that time, Moore has updated his BetterLight System, upgraded to two Epson Stylus Pro 9900s, moved his RIP workflow to ImagePrint and most recently added a 24″ x 36″ laser engraver table. Moore says that about 90 percent of his business is fine-art reproduction; the other 10 percent is photo reproduction.

Moore serves a narrow niche, but is expanding the options and opportunities of his client base. Moore sees himself as far more than simply an art reproduction company; his job is to help his clients find a wider market for their work.

Laser etching fine art“We look at each artist’s artwork as intellectual property that can be productized in different ways, from limited edition prints to cutting vector designs of their work into various materials,” explains Moore. “We want to take people’s existing assets and help them do interesting things with them.”

What that has translated to with the addition of the laser engraver is products like etching artwork into leather for purses, cutting patterns into Masonite that the artist then paints and has Bellevue Fine Art reproduce, die-cutting Photo Tex Repositionable Fabric for walls and other surfaces, and even etching urns for a local funeral home.

Reproducing fine art on canvasThe addition of the laser engraver is a perfect fit for Moore’s customer service philosophy. As he puts it: “Providing good service is more than calling back and being on the ball. We’re very well connected with the art community so we provide a lot of services to people you wouldn’t normally think of, like gallery introductions, suggestions on where to show their work, and advice on ways to display and sell their work. Service is a lot more than giving someone a cup of coffee while they wait for their print. We try to be connected and active in the art world so we can complement our services in other ways, such as introductions and industry knowledge. It’s symbiotic; the more we do for them to help them be successful the more they come back to us because they are successful. Service is all about that ecosystem around the artist; anything I can do to help them be successful makes me more successful.”

Of course it’s all for naught if Moore isn’t producing the output to the exacting needs of his client base, which is why he keeps up with the latest workflow and printing technology and spends additional time educating his clients and setting expectations.

Scanning artwork with the BetterLight system“When we evolved to the Epson 9900s we also went with the ImagePrint RIP. If you’re in the business of printing art all day long, you don’t want to think about how to get it out the other end. When you drag and drop those images into the interface and select the correct profile, that’s all you have to think about. It makes our workflow that much faster; anyone who values their time should be willing to spend their money on that,” explains Moore. “Printing is just like painting. One of the successful traits of painter is knowing when you’re done. You could re-do it forever, but you’ll probably be the only one to notice. When you’re trying to reproduce a masterpiece for sale you have to strike a balance. We’re working with aqueous inks, where the originals are sometimes made with ground gems or minerals, creating iridescents, fluorescents and metallics. The challenge is helping them understand the limitations of the technology and how to best utilize it. Some people don’t want the reproduction unless it’s perfect. The prints are as close as we can get them, but if it’s that important, buy the original, which is why an original costs so much more. There’s only one perfect copy of an original, and that’s the original. We spend a lot of time setting expectations, and we won’t just write an order and take their money unless we think they will be happy with it.”

Toward that end, Moore employs a variety of inkjet materials from LexJet, including Sunset and Hahnemuhle brand fine art and photo papers. Moore says the material choice is usually based on what comes closest to replicating the original. For instance, he’ll typically use Sunset Textured Fine Art Paper for watercolor art, Hahnemuhle Bamboo for “warmer” originals, and FineArt Baryta for acrylic originals.

“My personal favorites are Sunset Fibre Elite, Sunset Photo eSatin Paper, LexJet Premium Archival Matte and Hahnemuhle FineArt papers. Sunset Fibre Elite for black-and-white printing is stellar; it looks and feels a lot like the old metal halide papers. It’s a special, unique paper that, when placed next to other photo papers, really stands out; the color jumps out at you,” says Moore. “Our staple papers are Sunset Photo eSatin and Premium Archival Matte, which we use for proofing as well.”

Producing fine art in multiple=Though Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction has only been in business for about five years, the company is attracting and retaining business beyond its borders, especially from those looking for high-quality scanning services.

“We’ve invested heavily in making sure our image scanning and output is the best it can be. We pick quality materials and equipment, and we don’t worry about cost that much. How we do that and compete in today’s world is that we’ve captured a niche that is high margin and low volume. We’ll take the jobs other printers don’t want; we’ll do 10 watercolors, for instance, that a commercial print company would prefer not to bother with,” says Moore. “So rather than compete with larger print shops, we actually complement them. There are a number of print shops in the area that come to us for scanning, and they do things we don’t do, so we have a good complementary business with our would-be competition in the area.”