Dr Tang .... yeeeechcchch! And you live in Santa Barbara and haven't been burnt at the stake yet? My brother used to sell real estate there, and the old money
folks in Montecito wouldn't even socialize with the new money crowd at Hope Ranch, toward Goleta. But I don't think even they would be tacky enough to use
digitized wall art. And the folks in Montecito can afford not only a real picture frame, but the real Gauguin to go in it!
they don't buy anything local - duh
if it's local..it's not good enough for them
..I have been placing an occasional (tongue in cheek) ad in the craigslist advertising myself as a portrait photographer who..if you need to know the prices..can't afford me
hahahaha
no responses yet
I did a 50-piece traveling exhibit w/ another LF photographer a few years back. OK, more like 15 years back. 16X20 images in 22X26 mats, nielson aluminum frames, under plexi. We had to pay a guy $500 to build a custom crate, and the shipping was a killer. Good thing the institutions paid for most of that. I forget what the plexi cost. We got the frames on sale, but I remember it was still $8-900. And then they and the plexi inevitably got dinged and needed to be retired after a run of 4 exhibits.
About 6 years ago, when you could still trust Light Impressions, I got a bunch Swiss corner clips and gallery clips for the 4 sides of each piece, got new plexi and had masonite cut to fit the mats. I used a router to create a shallow groove for the gallery clips to hang on to. It worked great for two solo local back-to-back exhibits, I think of 40 pieces. Then the humidity here (Hawai'i) began to warp the masonite and I had to trash that approach, along with masonite, corner clips, etc. This still might work if with thin ply instead of masonite for just a few images and with glass rather than plexi, which scratches way too easily.
So ... a couple of years ago, I experimented w/ flush mounting on gator board and coating my inkjet matte paper (Hahnemuhle Photo Rag) w/ acrylic (water-based). Not perfect, but it does have some advantages:
1) With a satin coat, the prints take on a snap and depth I cannot get any other way - without mounting under glass / plexi. I really like the enhanced d-max.
2) The pieces are light, so shipping is not a huge expense. In fact, nothing is a huge expense - just gator board and acrylic varnish.
3) No hardware needed. I used a hot-melt glue gun to attach wire to the back of each piece. I measured and spaced carefully when I attached the wire, so that when the pieces were hung, they lined up nicely on the wall. I could probably have just used velcro to get them all up, but I wasn't sure about paint coming off the walls. Even the images that were 20X40 mounted on 1/2 inch gator weigh next to nothing.
4) I helped mount the current show at a museum last fall. With a laser leveler and some industrial velcro two of us got the show up in a day - about 65 pieces, including text and a few maps.
5) The acrylic adds a great protective layer. If that gets dinged, it is no big deal to add more acrylic.
There needs to be a corresponding list of disadvantages & limitations - one more post coming.
So, I just went to a friend's opening ... drawings, all of them around 11x14", in nice looking white wooden frames. When she mentioned that framing the whole show cost around $200, I started asking questions.
Her answer: Ikea. No joke.
I made a mental note to think hard about using standard sizes on my next project.
(For perspective, my current body of work is big prints in odd sizes, and mounting + framing costs are over $1000 each)
Some of the downside & limitations to the gator / acrylic coating approach I described in my earlier post:
1) Gator isn't archival. This seems a good way to go for large, traveling exhibits, but maybe not so much for prints being marketed to collectors.
2) The corners & edges ding easily, though not as easily as foam core. It occurred to me that a "frame" of thin wood moulding glued on the gator board 1/2" edges might offer decent protection.
3) Gator is hard to cut, let alone cut straight, especially 1/2" Gator. I figured out a modification to the Logan T300 Total Trimmer that enables it to cut 1/2" gator (but not before breaking the trimmer first).
3) Water-based acrylic is hard to apply w/o brush marks and bubbles. It is made for commercial folks who print wedding pictures on canvas, not Hahnemuhle Photo Rag. I've had moderate success with Lascaux, Print Guard (from Print2Image) and Timeless Satin from Breathing Color. BC has a pretty good online video outlining the application process.
4) I have not figured out a way to apply water-based acrylic to an image without first adhering it to a rigid backing, like gator board. The inkjet paper warps when slightly wet and forms hills and valleys which cause the acrylic to pool in some spots. Maybe someone else has had experience here ...
5) Speaking of adhesives, I found that it is not easy to get a print to stay down - permanently. Double-sided vinyl laminating sheets and spray adhesive both proved undependable in the long run, especially when prints went from a venue with 80% humidity to one with maybe 20%. Also, they cost a lot of $$. I just ordered a Daige Maxit hot-melt adhesive applicator and have high hopes for it. Seems to work well so far.
6) With flush-mounted images, the usual place to sign and date an image is gone. I ended up adding a few drops of black ink into white and using a Rapidograph in a corner.
It has proven to be a steep learning curve. If others have had success, I hope they will share info and techniques.
Jan,
I also mount on gatorboard, 3/4" thick in my case. I mitigate the edge-ding issue by using black plastic edging intended (I think) for cabinets. It is a lot of work, since after application the edging has to be sanded flush to the surface. I started doing this some years ago, and so I now have the process down pat and have my own standard for mounting hole positions. But if I were to start all over today I would simply order premade "standout" panels from Coda http://www.codamount.com. My process essentially gives me the equivalent to the Coda product.
Regarding coating with acrylic, you can get nice even coating with a little bit of practice using a cheap (< $100 last I looked) Wagner HLVP prayer. I use one.
You can find lots of threads on spray coating and gator mounting on the Printing subtopic over on the Luminous Landscape Forum http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?board=6.0
Bob
Gator is actually a superior product to most so-called "archival" fome-core boards, which generally just have buffered paper liners, but are otherwise warp-prone
uneven compromise products. Gator is smoother and much more moisture resistant, and is inherently archival by virtue of the way ingredients are trapped in.
You can download the tech sheets from them. But the surface of Gator needs to be lightly sanded prior to use or you risk bonding issues. In other words, you need to give it a bit of "tooth" with something like 180X sandpaper. An even smoother board is Ultramount. Oregon Laminations sells it precoated with adhesive hi-tack liners if you want, something you don't want to try to applying yourself without the right gear and training. Anything like vinyl edge banding is of course very anti-archival because it contains aggressive plasticizers. But really, how many big color prints are going to end up in a museum?
Many thanks for the links, Bob. Iʻll be following them. I like that sprayer idea. Do you use yours with any success prior to mounting prints on gator?
Sanding the gator had not occurred to me. Duhh - one of those no-brainer things. Thanks for the suggestion, Drew. As for the archival issue, it probably makes more sense to worry about the adhesive directly in contact with the back of the print. The Ultramount looks like a great product, but the fine print says it is only available in the 48 contiguous states. I hate it when they do that.
My thoughts exactly. Putting a show together is hard enough without fretting about all of those museum / collector checkboxes.Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Have them ship it to a friend, and then have them ship it to you on the island. Or perhaps they could accommodate you by upcharging their web-published built-in
shipping prices. This stuff isn't very heavy unless you're talking about sheets so big they have to go container anyway. Even if it were for a museum, almost all large color prints are now mounted this way - using hi-tack acrylic adhesives on some kind of premium board.
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