An Art Experience

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>Art is just about the best gift that one can give, but also the most difficult because art is so personal.
An art gift certificate from ArtXP is not some magnetic strip card and not electronically sent with little dancing elves. (I admit I did the dancing elf thing, was funny, now hokey.) The art gift certificate itself is a framable work of art. You choose from an assortment of images and we print a giclee of your chosen image and place it on a heavy mat. The art gift certificate is shipped to your loved one beautifully gift wrapped, you know, like an actual gift.

The hugely popular HBO Series Entourage had its season premiere on Sunday night and Vince (Adrian Grenier) has a new mansion. Lucky for Vince, he had a great art consultant, Robin Spear from Robin Spear Art & Design call upon yours truly to provide many of the pieces featured in his new digs.

  The mansion is filled with great contemporary art.  Watch for the billiard room shots, which feature two ArtXP.com exclusive, giclee canvas sexy ladies by Louisville artist Jeaneen Barnhart.  Our company was contacted by Robin, a top LA design and art consultant to HBO’s Entourage, to provide some giclee on canvas images suitable for Vince’s new digs. (We have also provided art for Extreme Home Makeover and the  HGTV channel).  Being a hot young movie star, Vince’s new home needed edgy art, and HBO and Entourage wanted some hip and sexy art of ladies around the decor. Fortunately for us, they loved the “Sexy Moments” series. And fortunately for you, all are available for purchase exclusively through our online gallery at ArtXP.com

 Jeaneen Barnhart is nationally known for her sexy, yet tasteful drawings of women nude or in great lingerie.  The new Entourage season just started, so there should be plenty of chances to see the boys in the billiard room surrounded by Jeaneen’s sexy ladies.  These fabulously sexy canvas giclee prints of those seen on Entourage and other sexy art on canvas giclee can be purchased online at www.artxp.com. Jeaneen has been exclusive with ArtXP.com for many years, and her collection is vast and wonderful. Check out her gallery pages here:

 http://artxp.com/artists.php?aid=57

Giclee, (pronounced “zhee-clay”) is French for “to spray” and, in the art industry, this means a great way for transfer art to paper or canvas. This method is so superior to standard ‘re-print and paste on canvas’ that museums, fine art galleries and artists were offered paper limited editions at $1,000-$2,000 per giclée (even more for giclée on canvas). The good news is out; ArtXP is the first to bring professionals and aficionados alike a chance at the same great quality, at budget price. What makes Giclee so fantastic is in the nitty-gritty of a few steps that produce a transfer far greater than lithographs and prints, at a fraction of the cost.

Here is our process:

Step one: Scanning

Before any printing takes place, the original art must be converted to a digital form. The latest in scanning and photographic technology allows technicians to put what they see on canvas on their computer screen with utmost quality.

Step two: Editing

Once the technician has the digital image, intricate software is used to adjust the color to match the original. Often working directly with the artist, an image can be digitally altered to the exact tailored specifications intended.

Step three: Giclee print

The computer sends the adjusted file to the Giclee printer. Hundreds of inkjets are spraying millions of droplets per second directly onto canvas; the same type artists use for their original work. The average image has been doused with 20 billion droplets of ink resulting in no visible dot pattern. Also, the inks used are lightfast with a 70 year guarantee to not fade in normal light conditions.
For 10 years, ArtXP has been collecting images from emerging artists from all over the US and Canada, paying a royalty to the artist for every giclée sold. To reach out to those that want this quality, ArtXP is making giclee printed art on canvas available to the internet shopper at affordable prices though the ArtXP website.

Is Dan Dry an artist? Yes. Is Dan Dry a perfectionist? Yes. Is he a pain in the ass to work with? No. Working with Dan over the past few weeks to prepare for his show, Dan Dry Captured: Moments in Time, has been a blast from the start.  First, I love imagery.  Thank goodness for that because imagery is what puts gas in my car and provides a living for all the great people that I am fortunate to work with at ArtXP.com. ArtXP.com is primarily an internet website based art publishing company.  Our “corporate gallery” is a large space between my office and Nancy’s (my business partner of 20 years without whom ArtXP would exist). We only have so many walls here so choosing from hundreds of insightful, interesting, artistic, and provocative photographs was time-consuming but certainly not a pain. This is because the artist that created the photographs was so passionate about each and every one.  To Dan, the shots were not product, they were pieces of himself.  There was not that much discussion of whether or not a piece would sell. The discussion was over what the image says, what the viewer will get from looking at it, and how it would translate into the unusually large size that giclee printing can provide. Fun-loving and polite with great taste for lunches that he brought in most every day,  Dan Dry has made what could have been a stressful, ego-conflictive “job” into a light-hearted learning experience for me and everyone at ArtXP….thanks Dan.

 Black and white photography and color photography on canvas has been available since the giclee printing movement began back in the 90’s. (Wow, “back in the 90’s” sounding like a long time ago is a little weird.) Waaay back then, photography on canvas, especially nature photography on canvas was viewed as an oddity as photographers, even the pros, were shooting with film.   Images taken with film just seemed to belong on paper and behind glass. However, photographers and viewers alike could not help but to be in awe of seeing photography without the glass and its accompanying reflection of lights in the background. In addition, it was new and wonderful to see images at 36, 48 even 60″ wide with the crystal clarity and lifelike colors made possible by the giclee process.   As the world of professional and artistic photographers embraced digital, so did the world embrace the new art form of color and black and white photography on canvas and in large sizes. It is a truly remarkable medium and one of the many positive consequences of digital technological advances seen in the past decade. “I’m astounded by the faithful rich color and clarity of my images reproduced with the latest innovative techniques on canvas by ArtXP.”  says Adam Jones a 30 year veteran of professional photography who has shot for National Geographic,   If only advances in energy technology could come so fast and be so fun…

I recently had a really entertaining conversation with a interior designer in Boston. It’s so funny how they struggle to say Louisville - almost makes you forget we’re in the same country. I struggled myself to say Boston and not use three syllables. The designer said that Louisville is becoming quite a haven for emerging artists, kind of like Asheville, North Carolina. I’ve always known that there are many great artists right here in Louisville. It just never dawned on me that other people in the civilized art society (I hear Boston is civilized now) knew it, too. Big confession - I used to not tell art consultants and designers (especially if they were in L.A) that we were based in Louisville (unless they asked). I felt they would somehow think we couldn’t play in the big leagues as art publishers without being in Atlanta or New York or San Francisco. I stand accepted. Don’t get me wrong, I love the town. Arts-wise and restaurant-wise its like a little Chicago sans the wind chill, and yet intimate like a giant Owensboro (Kentucky, population 55,000 and birthplace of moi and my friend Johnny Depp, (He was great in The Aviator and Titanic). I digress. “A diverse art scene…” is one reason that MSNBC recently touted Louisville as one of the Top Ten underrated U.S. cities. Actually, where an artist lives and creates is completely irrelevant, (proven by the fact that so many of the masters were from France), but it is so wonderful that so many great artists are living and creating right in my own backyard.