Jacksonville, Fla., recently hosted the One Spark Festival, billed as the world’s first “crowdfunded” festival. During the course of the five-day downtown festival, more than 480 creators and artists promoted their projects.
The “crowd” voted for their favorites via smart phone, casting more than 50,000 votes. Jacksonville’s own Douglas J. Eng Photography won 2nd Place Overall and 2nd Place in the Art category for the studio’s renditions of Douglas J. Eng’s fine art photography splashed across downtown buildings.
These fine art photo splashes were installed in boarded-up window alcoves near Eng’s old studio. Eng has since moved to a new studio space, but always wanted to do something with those empty facades and the One Spark Festival provided the perfect opportunity. He wanted to “change the nature of the space.”
To accomplish this, Eng called Danny Chalmers for some direction on inkjet printing materials to use that would hold up for the festival and beyond and would work well with his Epson Stylus Pro 9900 aqueous inkjet printer.
“Danny has been very helpful. LexJet’s unique in that we have a rep that’s available to help us out when we need it. This project was a departure for me, since I mostly do fine art printing,” says Eng. “I recently received the LexJet Product Reference Guide, and that’s very helpful because I can see all the different things we can do with our printer.”
Eng didn’t want to try an adhesive-backed material on the plywood that covers the windows of the empty buildings because the plywood surfaces are extremely rough and inconsistent.
What Eng did instead was to print on LexJet Poly Select Heavy coated with LexJet Sunset Satin Coating, and then fastened the inkjet-printable fabric to the plywood with screws.
“It was about 2,300 square feet of printing; the biggest job we’ve done. Some of the windows were huge, up to 20′ x 15′, so we had to rent a lift,” says Eng. “The color and imaging looks great on the fabric, even after three weeks of being in the elements. Fortunately, people have left it alone and there’s no graffiti on it.”
The buildings where Eng applied his fine art photography are across the street from each other. One building features a series by Eng called City Reflections and the other is called Building Nature. If you’re in Jacksonville be sure to go to Laura Street and check out Eng’s work while it’s still up.
For a detailed look at this project, go to beyondthefacade.com.
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