Lady Liberty Lights the Way with an Inkjet Printed Wall Mural

Inkjet Printed Custom Wall MuralCohesive collaboration is often the key to creating a successful project. An excellent case in point is the collaboration between fine art print expert Jeff Fina of Hudson Valley Giclee and abstract fine artist Bruce Bleach.

The pair has been collaborating for the past six years or so on a variety of multi-media projects for corporations and other organizations that are dynamic and detailed. One of their latest creations was a 9′ x 13′ wall mural of Lady Liberty for a corporate client.

A seemingly simple image to re-create, Bleach provided subtle touches that both preserve the integrity of the American icon while giving it a distinctive look.

“We first enlarged and sharpened the photography, and then did some Photoshop work to it where we colored the torch and rendered the rest of the image in black and white. We were able to take a fine art aesthetic and apply it to this project,” explains Fina.

Once the image was perfected it was on to printing and applying the giant piece. After consulting with his LexJet customer specialist, Joshua Mott, Fina decided to use Photo Tex repositionable fabric instead of a wallpaper-like material or an adhesive-backed vinyl.

Applying a Large Wall Mural“I watched application videos at LexJet’s YouTube channel, and it seemed pretty easy. We did some overlap, cut between the overlap and then peeled away the excess and it was seamless. The magic of the material is that it is so easy to work with. We made a couple of mistakes during application where the material stuck to itself, but it’s so tough and repositionable you just pull it out and re-apply it,” says Fina. “It makes it a lot easier to price out these projects when you know you don’t have to account for 20 percent extra for difficulties during installation.”

Fina also wanted to ensure the fidelity of the blacks and gradients since those can be difficult to hit with a fabric material. Ultimately, says Fina, he was able to maximize the image potential by adjusting various settings in the driver of his Epson Stylus Pro 9800. Fina printed the piece in 32″‘ x 60″ panels, which were applied with the aforementioned overlap to ensure perfect registration.

“We planned it so that we applied the whole left side from top to bottom. When we did the middle section, we started at the center as an anchor; if there was a mistake we could make up for it from top to bottom,” says Fina.

The results speak for themselves and Fina credits Bleach’s long history in the art market, as well as the personal attention he received from LexJet, for making this project work and work well.

“Bruce has been in the industry longer than I’ve been alive and we’re able to combine our strengths on the projects we work on together. Plus, LexJet has allowed me to go crazy so that there are no real boundaries for what we can do artistically,” adds Fina.

Prints that Win: Something Old, Something New

Award winning photographyIt’s rare to find someone from the next generation of photographers who prefers to shoot film over digital. This year’s LexJet Sunset Award winner for Best Quality Print and Presentation at the Plymouth Center for the Arts competition and exhibition, The Fine Art of Photography, is more than just a throwback to traditional photography.

Elizabeth Ellenwood enjoys the interaction of the historical and the modern in both her photography process and in the subjects of her photography. Her winning print of Boston architecture exemplifies this seeming contradiction.

“The image is from a series I started for my senior thesis at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. I started photographing Boston architecture because I enjoy the combination of historical and modern architecture that overlays each other,” says Ellenwood. “I photograph with a Tachihara Field Camera, which renders everything in the viewfinder upside down and in reverse. It’s great to work with architecture from an almost abstract point of view. I’m a film person at heart; it’s what interested me in photography in the first place and it still holds true for me.”

Ellenwood scanned the color negative, printed it on the school’s Epson 9800 on Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper, then matted and framed it herself. Like the image itself, it was a unique blend of history and modernity using analog and digital tools.

Photographing Boston architectureEllenwood was introduced to the Plymouth Center for the Arts exhibition by another Sunset Award winner, Neal Rantoul. A year after Rantoul won the award, Ellenwood took one home.

“When I moved to Boston I started to get involved in the local photography community and met Neal, who became a mentor to me and was very inspiring. He sent me an email about the Plymouth show and encouraged me to enter. It was exciting for me because this photographer I really admire won the same award the year before,” says Ellenwood.