Afghanistan Comes to Life with Inkjet Printed Fabric

Photographic exhibition printed on fabric
Beyond the Mountains: The Interior Life of Afghanistan by Lisa Schnellinger chronicles the everyday life of Afghanistan's people. This exhibition at the Sharptop Arts Association's gallery in Jasper, Ga., features hanging photographic tapestries printed on LexJet Water-Resistant Cloth by John Seibel Photography.

Lisa Schnellinger is a globetrotting journalist and photographer whose engagement in Afghanistan goes far beyond the scope of her work. Schnellinger has become involved in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, founding the Pajhwok Afghan News agency and raising funds to build a girls’ school.

Photographic tapestries for a photo exhibitSchnellinger wanted to tell the story of Afghanistan through photography using an interactive art exhibition as the means to do so. Having seen other exhibitions printed on a silk material, Schnellinger turned to fellow Georgia photographer John Seibel, owner of John Seibel Photography in Dawsonville, Ga.

“I did some regular prints for her prior to this project. I was fascinated with her new project. Lisa told me that for the past ten years she’s had a vision of a show telling the story of the people of Afghanistan from a non-political point of view. She knew I had an Epson 7900 printer and wanted to know if I could print it on silk,” explains Seibel. “I did a lot of research, including at LexJet, and they suggested LexJet Water-Resistant Satin Cloth. One of the nice things about LexJet is that they guarantee satisfaction: if it doesn’t work for your purposes and you send it back within 30 days it’s no harm, no foul. I had never printed on a fabric before, so that was good to know.”

Once the primary print material for the show was chosen, Schnellinger and Seibel worked together to narrow the images down from 100-150 to the 20 or so that would be printed for the exhibition, called Beyond the Mountains: The Interior Life of Afghanistan.

Printing photos on fabric for an exhibition“The goal was to have them produced near life-size and floating in the room so that when people walked through they felt like they were interacting with the people she photographed in Afghanistan,” says Seibel. “We did some test prints on regular luster paper and then strips on the Water-Resistant Satin Cloth. Once we felt like we had the profile and adjustments right, we began printing. LexJet does a great job of producing profiles for their materials, and the profile for the Water-Resistant Satin Cloth was right on the money for my Epson 7900.”

Schellinger designed the layout for the exhibition, which included an audio tour. Attendees could grab an mp3 player with an audio track Schellinger narrated that provided background and stories about the images featured at the exhibition. The combination of hanging fabric tapestries and the audio tour created a dynamic, flowing, interactive and three-dimensional experience.

Photo exhibition about Afghanistan
Lisa Schnellinger, journalist and photographer, who created the exhibition Beyond the Mountains: The Interior Life of Afghanistan.

“The color resolution on the fabric prints came out very nice. You could lay it on the table and it looked good, but it didn’t blow you away until you hung it up in the room and then had the light interacting with the prints,” says Seibel. “I’ve done other prints with Water-Resistant Satin Cloth, including an early morning marina scene. I have it lit from behind and all the light areas in the print just glow. It’s a fantastic medium to print this type of project on. That’s one thing that LexJet does for us; they give us great advice on what products to use for what type project. I’d also like to try LEDs behind it to create the glow artificially.”

Sargent Johnson Exhibit: Tapestries of Talent

Inkjet printed photo tapestries
Duane M. Conliffe interpretted the art of Sargent Johnson with photo tapestries printed on LexJet Water-Resistant Cloth.

What do you get when you combine the talent of modern photographic artist Duane M. Conliffe and the genius of multi-media artist Sargent Johnson? The Public Works of Sargent Johnson, a unique interpretation of Johnson’s ground-breaking work interpreted by Conliffe, which just concluded its exhibition on Dec. 15 at Africa House Gallery in Lynchburg, Va.

Conliffe has long found inspiration from Johnson’s work, who is widely seen as the first African American artist of note on the West Coast. Conliffe’s exhibition focused on a turning point in Johnson’s career, 1936-1949, when Johnson began to receive support for public commissions through government funders like the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC). Johnson’s large-scale works were often incorporated into the architecture of the buildings that house them.

So Conliffe set about documenting Sargent’s public works of art, including a section of Johnson’s two-part artwork called Sea Forms. Sea Forms graces the front and back of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Conliffe photographed the slate carving that surrounds the main entrance of the building as the featured piece of the exhibit.

Decorated antique dressing room screen
This was the centerpiece of The Public Works of Sargent Johnson, printed on Photo Tex, applied to acetate and then applied to an antique dressing screen with small magnets.

Conliffe printed the section photo on Photo Tex Repositionable Fabric from LexJet with his EPSON Stylus Pro 9800 and the Ultrachrome K3 ink set. Conliffe then applied the prints onto a thin, clear acetate. The image panels were then applied to the backside of an antique dressing screen with small neodymium magnets.

“The translucency of the Photo Tex means the artwork changes throughout the day, according to the light levels at the time. This is a very compelling feature of this material when it’s backlit,” says Conliffe. “The acetate was the perfect substrate to apply the Photo Tex for just the right effect. However, I ran into some problems with bubbles when I was applying it, so I went to the LexJet site and found a video about how to put the Photo Tex down, so I used a squeegee, which made it a lot easier. It all worked out exactly like I had envisioned it; I’m very pleased with this piece.”

Inkjet printed art tapestriesThe exhibit also features six photo tapestries printed on LexJet Water-Resistant Satin Cloth. The four portrait-oriented pieces are 44″ x 72″ (image area is 40″ x 60″) while the landscape or horizontal pieces were printed at 70″ x 44″ and 60″ x 40″.

The tapestries were hung using SNAPRAILS from Popco USA, which Conliffe was able to find thanks to his LexJet customer specialist, who found the right product to finish off the tapestries.

The Public Works of Sargent Johnson in Lynchburg was the third large-format photography exhibit of Conliffe’s interpretations. The first was commissioned by the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, Calif., with a grant from The San Francisco Foundation. The second exhibition was held at the Canessa Gallery, which resides across the street from the Transamerica Pyramid building in San Francisco.

Inkjet prints of botanical photography
Duane M. Conliffe's botanical work was also featured at the exhibit.

“I originally printed the tapestries on the Water-Resistant Satin Cloth; it’s very lightweight, very portable and wouldn’t cost me a fortune to get it to the East Coast,” says Conliffe. “These were originally done in a very compressed time frame. I traveled around the Bay Area to capture the images, and then processed and printed them. Each part of the process was quite intensive.”

Brenda Waller, MD, of the Institute for Integrative Medicine & Comprehensive Rehabilitation (IIMCR) in Lynchburg, is a long-time collector of Conliffe’s art and arranged an introduction to Ann van de Graaf, owner of the Africa House Gallery. Waller would end producing the exhibit at the Africa Gallery House.

Inkjet printed tapestries
Brenda Waller, MD, and Duane M. Conliffe at the Africa Gallery House exhibit of Conliffe's interpretation of Sargent Johnson's work: The Public Works of Sargent Johnson.

“I also sent [van de Graaf] some of my botanical and Ferrari images so I could show some of the other things I do at the exhibit; as people moved through the gallery they would also see my work, which worked out well,” says Conliffe. “People walked into the reception and were stunned by the dressing room screen on Photo Tex. They told me they had never seen anything like it before. It’s definitely a step up for me. I also love the Water-Resistant Satin Cloth and that I can print on it as large as I can with such great visual impact, yet it’s so light and easy to move around. LexJet has great products, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

To find out more, check out the videos embedded below: An introduction to artist Duane Conliffe and an overview of The Public Works of Sargent Johnson in Lynchburg…

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.

Cash, Prizes and the LexJet Sunset Award at the Fine Art of Photography Exhibition

Photography competition in MassachusettsAt the Plymouth Guild’s second annual Fine Art of Photography Regional Juried Photography Exposition in Plymouth, Mass., more than $1,500 in cash and prizes will be awarded to photo artists whose work is chosen for Best in Show ($500), Best Color ($250), Best B&W ($250), Achievement in Color ($100) and Achievement in B&W ($100), along with five honorable mention ribbons and Special Sponsor Awards.

In addition, LexJet will award its Sunset Award for the Best Quality in Print and Presentation image entered in the exhibition. The winner of the award will also receive a $200 gift certificate that can be used to purchase any of the exceptional photo papers, art papers and canvases included in LexJet’s Sunset portfolio of inkjet materials for professional photographic printing and fine-art reproduction.

To qualify, the entries must be digitally printed and meet Plymouths Guild’s submission requirements. Submission of digital images with completed entry forms and fees must be received by Feb. 29 and accepted work delivered, framed and ready for hanging March 25-26. Artists will be notified on March 16 and selected work must be delivered, framed and ready for hanging March 27-28. The opening reception is April 1 and the exhibition closes on April 30.

On Thursday, April 12, from 7-9 p.m., the Plymouth Center for the Arts and Canon USA’s Explorers of Light present photographer and author Stephen Johnson, who will give a lecture on digital photography.

Further details can be found at: http://thefineartofphotography.org/. For more information about the LexJet Sunset Award, contact Tom Gruss at LexJet, 800-453-9538.

Distorted Perceptions that Reveal Reality: A Gallery Preview

Creating multiple=

John Reiff Williams’ work from three signature photographic series – the La Jolla Beach Project, The Edge of Collapse Series from Mexico City and the Hollywood Boulevard Series – will be printed and on display at Thomas Paul Fine Art in Los Angeles in February.

Printing photography for an exhibitionAn exact date and time for the exhibit has not yet been announced, but you can find updates on it at tpaulfineart.com as the time for the exhibit comes closer. Williams has already started printing the exhibition on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308g from LexJet on his Epson 3800 inkjet printer, also procured through LexJet. “Almost everything I have – my monitor, color management devices, printer and paper – is from LexJet,” he says.

The images will be printed at 13″ x 19″, though the image size will be a bit smaller since Williams sticks to the one-inch archival rule of leaving at least an inch of margin on two sides, or all four sides, depending on the image.

Printing his work helps bring its full effect to life, as printing provides added depth, color and emotion that can get lost in the pixels of a monitor. “There’s so much subtlety that disappears when you display them on the Web; you’re not getting all the juice,” he says.

The dynamic visuals Williams created in the three series that will be featured at the Thomas Paul exhibition require the “juice” of pigments. They look fantastic and require a second look (at least) even when displayed on-screen, as they are here, but the exhibition will show the true depth of the compositions.

Shooting multiple=The style of the featured work is difficult to describe in a single word or phrase. They allude to movement and interaction that reach beyond time, place and circumstance. Perhaps the best technical term would be multiple exposure, which is certainly true of the earlier series while he was a graduate student, the La Jolla Beach Project, that Williams created in-camera with multiple exposures on film.

The Edge of Collapse and the Hollywood Boulevard Series are his most recent “multiple-exposure” works, with the multiplying done in Photoshop. The concept, however, remains largely the same: the interplay of movement between the photographer and his subjects.

“I’m using several images taken during the course of a day. Then, I see how they work together as layers. I don’t work in a formulaic way in Photoshop to do that; I just go from feel,” Williams explains. “I started off doing window reflections where I was looking for natural elements that would obfuscate, distort and transform images to bring out the otherness of the objects I was photographing. I’ve gotten more toward the idea that everything is a reflection anyway; that’s the nature of photography. I don’t need windows because everything is a window. If I accept that as an idea, I can start to play with that and layer images that happen either sequentially or randomly.”

The body of work Williams will display at the exhibition breaks the barriers between photography, fine art and perception. The concept is bigger than the medium used.

“There are over 50,000 photos uploaded to Flickr every hour, and when you consider the volume being generated, it’s becoming difficult to find that new animal under a rock that hasn’t been photographed before. So I’ve turned more to the imagination in my photography and the relationships that develop over time at a certain place,” says Williams. “Then the camera becomes a recorder of something you’ve already set into orbit.”

For a preview of what will be displayed at the exhibit at Thomas Paul Fine Art, as well as an entertaining and illuminating explanation of his work, click here. We’ll follow up with photos and a re-cap from the exhibit after it opens.

Directing the Coast Guard with Durable, Vivid Graphics

Printing trade show graphics

Printing effective trade show graphics is a real balancing act. They need to be durable for the length of the event, economical and high-quality. Plus, they usually need to be ready yesterday. Sure, that’s the case with most wide-format graphics, but it’s especially true for trade show and exhibit work.

Registration area graphic panelsBill Harriman, owner of Custom Signs & Graphix in Brooksville, Fla., just north of Tampa, is a seasoned pro who specializes in producing the best possible trade show graphics for his customers. Harriman launched the company with a vinyl cutter, right before large format inkjet printing came into its own.

Harriman has been through the entire evolution of the trade show market and now plies his trade with the latest printer technology from HP, four that run aqueous inks and one that runs solvent.

A good example of the quality output from Custom Signs & Graphix is a recent project Harriman completed for a Coast Guard trade show and conference in Orlando. The event needed a lot of graphic panels for the entrance, cyber cafes, directional signage for the conference component and a smattering of vendor booths.

Harriman estimates that he printed 150 panels, ranging in size from 22” x 28” to 4’ x 10’. All of the panels were printed on LexJet 8 Mil Production Satin Photo Paper, laminated with LexJet 3 Mil Gloss UV Premium Low Melt laminate and backed with LexJet RubberMount Clear Adhesive so they could be applied to Sintra at the show.

Trade show graphics printing with photo paper and a laminateFor extensive print projects like this one, Harriman says he’ll usually print the entire roll and then laminate it all at one time. In addition to the production processes Harriman has honed over the years, he says material choice is just as important.

“If I don’t like it, I don’t send it out. It’s a matter of using the best technology and materials. The materials I buy from LexJet are not the most expensive, nor are they least expensive. What they do is put the ink on the paper and make it look good,” he says. “I’m not interested in finding a cheaper product. I try to find materials that are economical and as close to the top-of-the-line as possible. That’s where your value is, and it’s what I’ve found with LexJet’s products.”

For the Coast Guard trade show, Harriman was after the perfect balance of economy and quality. He says the LexJet 8 Mil Production Satin Photo Paper finds that balance for this type of application.

“I had been using an older, similar paper. When this newer material was suggested to me, I was a little apprehensive at first about changing over since it’s important for me to have consistent performance from project to project,” explains Harriman. “When I tested it I found that it was consistent and performed far better. It dries almost instantly so it allows me to laminate right away. Plus, you can handle the material and not worry about keeping your hands off of it; it’s not super fragile like other papers.”