ART BASEL 2007

This show is not for the faint of heart. It truly is a challenge to the mind. I wonder at the definition of the art I saw as Contemporary Art. I think Contemporary means current or of the time you’re living. If this is so, I live in a world without limits, without restrictions, without context. And I guess I do...but wow is it a shock when you face the raw intellectual truth all at once.

The Convention Center's main hall housed hundreds of art exhibits, each in a world of its own. The art is intended to blow your mind...and it works. From the moment you walk in the door you are rendered speechless. This comes from the incredible challenge your mind has in making sense of what your eyes perceive. A sense that I am still seeking. Having spent 20 years as a Giclee printer, I’ve reproduced over 83,000 separate images. Some haven’t inspired me, most I enjoyed, and of course a few I fell in love with. The point is, all the art that I’m used to seeing is art that is intended to be inspirational or comforting or in some way pleasing. The art exhibited at Basel did not strive for any of these familiar artistic effects. Instead it challenged the identity of art. I mean I’m only calling it art because they did; not because I recognized it as art.

The first booth encountered was a dark room that you looked into. At the end of the room was a blurry picture. You could hardly tell that it was a pond surrounded by trees. Slowly, very slowly, agonizingly slowly, the image came into focus. As I watched, second after second, and minute after minute, the image became clearer. As each minute passed, I expected some profound event. I expected to see some image that was worth waiting for. After nine minutes of constantly watching the same image slowly come into focus, I because desperate to believe that I hadn’t wasted nine minutes. At the end of ten minutes exactly, the quite ordinary picture of a pond in a forest was clearly visible. That’s all. That’s it. I presume the point had to do with the art causing me to have an emotion. I did have an emotion. It was a feeling of disappointment and foolishness. I walked away having been affected by the art.

What do you do with a picture in a dark room that takes ten minutes to come into focus? Ultimately it's a picture of a circular pond surrounded by trees.....and what??? I don't know. There is no picture to offer you as cameras are forbidden.

Or what do you make of hundreds of cigarettes glued to a white wall; filter first, in an abstract pattern? The pattern resembled trees, but I'm sure they weren't trees at all. I'm left bothered and bewildered.

Photography was discouraged, so I apologize for the few bad photos that I was able to secure. It seemed absurd to me that they were wasting my time, insulting me, and I wasn’t able to even take a photo.

Notice the shot of the crab-like mechanism which slowly scraped and crawled across a concrete floor. It doesn’t seem that this is a good example of hydraulics or metal work or programming. It’s just a group of plow shovels welded together, with six hydraulic legs that respond to a primitive computer program, making it ever so smoothly; grind its way back and forth. It anyone sees value in this, please e-mail me. It’ll make me feel better.

My favorite was a chandelier mobile made of ice cubes. These ice cubes melted and the drops fell to a think plastic stretched surface. When the droplets inevitably fell, they made a noise. The sound of dropping water on a drum. A microphone picked up and amplified the droplet sound. Presumably, the art event was over when all the ice melted. This art experience was offered in a limited edition of three.

It's all good, but you really have to be eclectic to want or even observe this art. It's a testimony as to the wealth and freedom the world possesses today that we, as a society, can afford the experimentation and unique expressions that a few can demonstrate thoughts which have value in themselves without any rhyme or reason. It's cool that these things can be done, but truly overwhelming when viewed en masse at Art Basel.

TO PRINT OR NOT TO PRINT - THAT IS THE QUESTION

Recently I was asked by Dan Mullen, Assistant Editor for Decor & Volume magazines "Your current opinions on whether an artist should own their own printer or hire a printer". That is a profound question, the answer to which changes based on an artist's objective.

The key word in Dan's question is "artist". I can only presume that an artist is a person that creates original images to be presented in a two-dimensional art print. I phrase these words carefully, because we at Harvest are now pioneering imagery reproduction in three dimensions. So, it's back to an artist who wants to make prints.

In the early days of printmaking, it was uncertain as to whether an originals reproduction would be pleasing. That is to say, no one really knew what an image was going to look like, when printed on paper or canvas. I remember the first print I ever made was the color test pattern off the IRIS printer in 1988. I sincerely felt the test pattern was art in itself. It just seemed like a miracle, that all those colors could be displayed on a 30"x40" piece of paper. Each time we received a new artist and prototyped their image on to a paper print, we were eager to study it. It required study, because there was many unproven variables in the digital process that made it impossible to predict the end result. Bit by bit, component by component, there has been introduced control tools expressly for the purpose of predicting a color rendition. Everything from the recording device, it's optics, it's resolution to the monitor it's color correctness and stability to the color management software running the calibrations to the printing machine and it's drop size as well as it's consistency to the post coating materials that are currently used greatly improves the likelihood of a predictable outcome. So, one reason that artist's used to have printing machines, was because it was their only way of controlling their final product. Today there are number of Giclee printers who can do a more than adequate job, and give most artists a more than adequate product. There should be no reason why an artist would want to take control of their printing due to quality concerns.

That brings us to economy. Perhaps an artist would need to own their own printing machine so they could make prints cheaper. Of course, the answer to that question would be in the definition of cheaper. There's material cost, labor cost, time costs, depreciation costs, defective product costs, but most important of all, there's opportunity costs to consider. One would expect, and indeed it's my experience that an artist has more free time and makes more money than a printer. Or, you might think that if an artist had a certain amount of time to dedicate to the development of his career and brand name that his time would be better spent painting rather than printing. I've never seen an artist get a promotion to being a printer. But I have seen printers who have received a promotion to be an artist. This would imply that an artist's time is best spent at the creation of his craft and development of his customer base. Time spent in the print room is time wasted. Most of the printing companies that I've known over these years, have evolved into publishing companies. Or, gone bankrupt being a Giclee Printer. When they go bankrupt it's usually depreciation that gets them. That is to say, technology evolves and changes, it takes more of an investment one might think to stay current. If the technology improvements occur before you have the opportunity to pay for your last purchase, you end up broke. Many Many Artists are locked into Epson 9500's without the ability to work on a 9600 which was followed by the 10500 which is now the 9800 which will be replaced this year by a new Epson model, the 9880. This one example of Epson Technology evolution has left many owners of printing equipment "high and dry". The manufacturer can't afford the integration of an upgrade path. That's called depreciation costs. The very definition of a Giclee print is "The Highest Quality Print Available to This Culture at This time". This was decided many years ago in the Giclee Printers Association (GPA). So, dealing with depreciation is an important part of being an art printer and a good reason why artist's would not want to own their own printing machine.

THE FULFILLMENT OF GICLEE PRINTING

As markets naturally mature, there’s an on-going demand for consolidation as well as innovation. Who would ever have imagined the services that a Giclee printer needs to render today, only a few years ago. I guess it all comes down to streamlining, and efficiency and reducing waste. Over these many years, Harvest Productions has routinely had customers pick up completed prints or most often, we would ship to them, in tubes or boxes, prints on a global basis. It used to be that they would have their own stretcher and framer and shipper/delivery service in order to be able to complete their sale and collect their reward. More and more customers are demanding that this service be all in one, all in-house. Many times I believe it was expected that the way to contain costs was to do as much as you could yourself. In principal, I think this is still correct, in fact but it doesn’t pan out at all. If each customer had a constant sales rate, thereby manufacturing a constant number of prints per day or per week, then they could staff for that consistency. If you didn’t include their management time, you’d save money. But that’s not a world that many of us live in today. In truth, what happens more often than not is that sales are delayed, sales are advanced, sales are below, sales are above – whatever it is that we expect. It’s a global marketplace and on average, things are better than ever but any specific seems to be able to change at any moment. Hence, Harvest fulfillment.

It was in January of this year that Harvest began its first all-inclusive fulfillment services. It was a specific customer who had offices and personnel as well as packaging space and a relationship with its vendors and freight carriers that wanted to close its operation. They had evaluated their cost of operation over the last three years, and knew what their “per unit” fulfillment costs were. They made me a simple offer. We’d be happy to pay you what it costs us anyway if we don’t have to manage it. Quite honestly, I didn’t know what my costs would be and I went on their records and agreed to bring fulfillment under our roof. It’s worked out well for both parties, but for reasons we had not anticipated.

Instead of us making money on fulfillment and them saving money, we ended up enjoying more print orders and they ended up enjoying more sales. Turns out the time that they were spending on customer satisfaction, delivery and accuracy issues, was better spent finding new markets. Their overall sales have increased 23%, which I’m told, relates to a 37% increase in gross margin. Our additional print orders further saturate our overhead costs, allowing us to have lower average rent expense. All in all, a Win Win.

Today, we service six companies in total, some with “white label” as well as some that require the actual installation of the final product. It’s a big chore to keep track of costs, but in the end I think its good business and I’d recommend it.