The newly redone Ten High Street Gallery in Camden, ME has an opening this Friday, June 4, from 5-7 pm, with work from a wide variety of artists (many of whom are NE clients). Photographers Freddy Silva and Thomas Birtwistle both have work hanging in the new space (which looks great). I became a fan of Freddy’s work when I became exposed to it from doing his printing and I’ve been a fan of Tom’s work for quite a while (and he’s an excellent printer as well).
I’m looking forward to seeing the work of the other artists as well, particularly that of NE client and painter T. Allen Lawson. It should be a great opening and ongoing show – hope to see you there on Friday.
Copyright Freddy Silva. All Rights Reserved.
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Congratulations to two Midcoast Maine photographers who have been selected for the prestigious Review Santa Fe 2010! Review Santa Fe is the premiere portfolio review event and is juried – only 100 photographers nationwide make it in each year in this highly competitive competition. Sarah Szwajkos and Elizabeth Noble have both been selected for this year in a well-deserved recognition for their work. Their is a small selection of both Sarah’s and Elizabeth’s work available at the Review Santa Fe website, but their own websites (linked above at their names) will provide you with a better sample of their work. I hope the portfolio reviews are worthwhile for both of them!
Copyright Sarah Szwajkos. All Rights Reserved
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I’m pleased to announce that I now offer deckling of fine art prints for a fixed price of $5/print. What is deckling? A deckled print is a print that has one or more edges that are torn instead of being a straight edge. Mould-made papers often had a soft feathered edge where the deckle (or belt) was used along with a mold to gather up woodpulp from a vat for pressing and drying into sheets. When the paper was torn into separate pieces a tear deckle was also created in addition to the natural deckle formed during manufacture of the paper.
So what does this have to do with digital printing? Because of its historical origins, deckling is often associated with fine art papers and deckling of paper edges can add an organic feel to a digital print. While the effect can be overdone, I’ve found that selective deckling can emphasize the ‘print as object’ feel of a digital print. A deckled print is typically framed with the edges showing, such as by being dry mounted without an overmat. Deckled prints can also improve the aesthetic “presence” of a print intended for hanging on a wall without a frame.
To create a tear deckle, I use a dual edge ripper that lets you use either a fine or coarse set of teeth to create a more random-looking tear. Other methods involve using a straight edge and optionally wetting the tear line to make it more likely to tear (or in a factory environment using a high pressure water stream to do so). It is important to use any of these methods after you have completed the print, as a ragged edge could cause feeding problems on your printer or, more importantly, could result in small paper particles cause problems inside your printer. You may have to print a larger border to give you room to make the tear. I also prefer to use thicker matte papers, and usually textured ‘meatier’ ones, though the process will work on almost any paper.
You can see an excellent set of pictures and instructions (and videos) at the Inkjetart site – recommended if you are interested in doing this yourself or seeing how things look.
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Congratulations should also go out to Sharon Arnold, who besides having a wonderful opening at VoxPhotographs last week, is a finalist for the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for two of her images, Royal Flush and Ace of Hearts: M. August 4, 1962. You can see both images at the VoxPhotographs website and the private gallery itself. Best of luck to Sharon when the winners are chosen the last week in June 2010.
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Arla Patch‘s recent book, Finding Ground, has received a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher’s Association for the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards, winning the category of Inspirational/Spiritual Books. Finding Ground: Girls and Women in Recovery utilizes Arla’s unique photographic technique to help the girls and women re-establish a relationship with nature and restore confidence in themselves.
You can purchase Arla’s photographs from VoxPhotographs and you can purchase the book directly from Arla.
Congratulations to Arla on this wonderful honor and recognition!
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New NE client Sharon Arnold has a new show at Portland’s VoxPhotographs private gallery entitled Icons: Women in the House of Cards running from May 10th – June 26th, 2010. The opening is May 13th, 5-7 pm, and if you are interested in attending you need to contact Heather Frederick at the contact information listed here. Sharon’s powerful work is printed large, approximately 20×30 inches, on Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper. It should be a great show and I hope to see you there as I’ll be attending this opening!
Here’s one of her new images:
Copyright Sharon Arnold. All Rights Reserved.
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Coming up next month is the 8th Annual Festival of the Arts at the Hutchinson Center in Belfast, Maine, which is highlighted by a talk by Special Guest Speaker (and NE client) Linden Frederick. Linden’s talk is entitled “20 Years of Belfast Paintings” and is a must-see. The Festival runs from May 13 to May 16 and Linden’s talk is from 12:30-3 on Saturday, May 15th.
Here’s one of my favorite of his paintings, Halloween (and one that is available as a limited edition reproduction):
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Lynn Karlin has work showing in the upcoming Patterns of Nature Show at Belfast, Maine’s wonderful Åarhus Gallery. The Patterns of Nature show runs from May 6-30, 2010 with an opening the evening of May 7th from 5-8 pm. Lynn, a NE client, uses Velvet Fine Art and Canson Rag Photographique for her gorgeous vegetable/pedestal series. Two images from the series are below:
Copyright Lynn Karlin, All Rights Reserved.
Copyright Lynn Karlin, All Rights Reserved.
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Posted on The Luminous Landscape is a short review of the new x300 series of Canon fine art printers. What is interesting is that the author compares the high end new Canon’s with the high end offerings from Epson and HP and concludes that the differences between the printers, particularly the Canon and Epson x900 series, are pretty insignificant in practical usage. For the user, it means that you can choose the printer that meets your capability and price needs without worrying about leaving print quality on the table.
As a mostly happy user of the Epson 9900 printer (gorgeous prints with some annoying quirks), this is consistent with my belief that one is better served by mastering your current tools instead of chasing a hypothetical small increase in performance with an entirely different set of tools. It seems we are reaching this sort of plateau with all types of digital photography technology – there will of course be improvements in each generation, but the meaningful differences between generations of technology are becoming smaller and smaller (as happens with almost every area of technology).
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