A number of restaurants, cafes and even liquor stores provide a marvelous service both to artists and art lovers by using their wall space to display the talent of Utah artists.  For over five years now, the Oasis Cafe has not only provided wonderful food in a unique environment, but has also served as an alternative venue for viewing Utah art.  Original owner Steve Call began placing art on his walls almost as soon as the restaurant-cafe opened. Joel LaSalle, who recently purchased the cafe and adjoining bookstore, has continued the tradition. Oasis has had great success with the art. Manager Steve Sloan noted that many people come in specifically to see the art, and of course may stick around for a cup of coffee or a salmon-sandwich. Last year, a solo exhibit by Erika Osborne at the Oasis nearly sold out.  Osborne is in the current exhibit at the Oasis, a group show featuring Utah landscapes by Osborne, Royden Card, Willamarie Huelskamp, Jenni Christensen and Kendra Fehr. 

The Oasis Cafe is located in Salt Lake City at 151 South 500 East and is open 7am to 10pm.

if you know of an alternative venue please let us know.
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UNOFFICIAL GOLD continued from page 1

The exhibit features better known artists like Randall Lake, Frank Anthony Smith and Lee Deffebach.  A number of younger artists are also shown, including Ani Heinig and Anthony Siciliano, both of whom have been featured in our pages in recent months.

The success of the exhibition has been due in large part to thousands of hours of dedicated volunteer help.  Throughout the first week of the show, an exhausted Michael Hullett could be seen daily scurrying around the building continuing to make improvements.  His and others' efforts on the exhibition space have been well rewarded.  The Norman building, named for Norman Lamph and Norman Van Wagenen who worked in the building for over forty years, has been transformed from a machine shop into a beautiful exhibition space, filled with architectural delights and bathed in light.  After the UtahArt2002 exhibition,  the building will be used for another exhibit, featuring one of the largest private art collections from the turn of the century.

   One interesting aspect of the exhibit to note is that of the fifty-seven artists exhibited only sixteen are actually Utah natives. A number of the artists come from surrounding Western states, the others from all over the United States and as far away as Poland, France, Russia, Spain and Germany.  Which proves that the world has been coming to Utah long before the arrival of the Winter Olympics.  The directors says that Utah's "location between both coast has somewhat buffered its artists, allowing them to develop apart from the constraints of the compulsively-driven contemporary art world."  Though the mountains may seclude us, a steady stream of immigrants has kept our art world strong.

So, for its high scores both in grass-roots community effort and professional execution, UtahArt2002 receives Artists of Utah's gold medal.
Would you please stand for the national anthem . . .

UtahArt 2002 is open daily February 1 -28 at the Norman Building 780 South 300 West, SLC.  For more information and samples of work visit their website: www.utahart2002.org
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COLLECTOR'S CORNER: We are presently developing ideas for our collector's corner -- the area of our website that will be devoted to the needs and interests of Utah collectors.  Currently we have pages that allow collectors to buy and sell works by Utah artists. If you have any ideas or suggestions for our collector's corner please let us know at artistsofutah@netzero.net.

SUBMISSIONS TO 15 BYTES: We are always eager to receive submissions from the community.  Our editorial staff is eager to help and will provide editing assistance if needed.  Do you have a flair for writing but are not sure what to write about?  Let us know, we may have some ideas.  We are also looking for individuals who will write regular columns.  Email us if you are interested in helping.

How it Works: Iris Giclée Prints
Giclée means "to spray," so even desktop ink-jet printers fit into the category.   The Iris printer is a high-end version of the process, which uses hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of superior image-producing technology. An Iris Giclée print is produced by a system of camera-scanners, digital files, sophisticated color correction, vibrating crystals, highly-stable inks, almost any flexible material as a printing surface, and a highly-trained and talented craftsman.

To create a giclée print requires that the original art first be converted into digital form. This may be done directly, by high-end digital capture (often a drum scan), or indirectly, with a large-format camera. The digital image is then cleaned up and color balanced against the original piece – not always an easy process.

Next comes the actual printing. The material to receive the image is attached to a large drum. A variety of archival papers as well as canvas are most commonly used.   However, artists can choose literally any material up to 34” x 47” that can be attached to the drum, including leather, foil, silk, veneer and other exotic surfaces. The drum rotates at a high rate while cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks are sprayed onto the surface. 

Simple, right? Hardly!

The four print heads mix and spray ink through vibrating nozzles of quartz.  The nozzles spray 4 million droplets of ink per second onto the substrate paper or canvas, each one smaller than a human red blood cell. Each of the four colors is being sprayed continuously, with varying ink density producing the amazing range of color. The results, at 1800 dpi, are incredibly accurate color renditions of hue, value and density in 7 million colors - effectively continuous tones. Neither serigraphy nor color lithography can touch it. With inks stable to well over twenty years, a Giclée print can even outlast an original watercolor!

Making it work in Utah

Photographers like Mark Weiler love giclée because it offers them a printing method that can actually reproduce all of the stops that their film originally captured! And it opens up a whole new world of print surface textures, previously out of photography¹s grasp.

Luckily for Utah artists and art lovers, Mark Weiler not only produces his own giclée prints but also offers his services to other artists.  Mark, the owner of  The Art Is In (formerly ImageQuest), has been credited as one of the best Iris Giclée printers in the world, both by the company that manufactures the Iris and artists who have used other top Iris printers. 

Weiler charges $200 to pre-press a print job, including shooting the artwork and correcting the digital file (balancing, clean-up, etc.), and $150 per 34x47 sheet (or $180 if printing on canvas). If the finished print is small, multiple copies can be ganged on one sheet, greatly reducing the per-image price. At these prices, it does not take many sales for an artist to recoup his/her original investment.

Even though many prominent museums, like New York's Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, and the National Museum of Mexico, display giclées as part of their collections, many galleries are still opposed to them (and other forms of reproduction). Some feel that, by offering prints of their work, artists end up reducing the value of their originals. 

Mark Weiler disagrees. He believes that, because artists have to generate income, most end up having to sell their original work for less than they feel it is worth anyway. He also points out the difficulty for most artists in selling expensive artwork in Utah. 

Consequently, Weiler encourages artists to explore the possibilities of the print market, beginning with a few of their very best pieces.   The unique giclée process allows an artist to get started without a major investment. Then, the artist can offer originals at full price and have high-quality, lower-priced reproductions as an alternative. 

As prints are sold, it is easy to order more in small quantities.  The artist pays only the $150 per sheet price – the pre-press job has all been saved on digital file.  The artist gets on-demand additional prints, avoiding the burden of storage that comes with a lithography run. The art lover gets an affordable piece of art that can be proudly displayed and shared with friends and visitors.

Mark sums up the benefit of giclee printing simply:
“What it does is make great art affordable”.

You can call Mark at 801-466-2858, or visit The Art Is In studio just west of Franklin Covey Field, at 1425 So. Jefferson, Salt Lake City.