Silent Partners

Papers matter.

Les addressing opening night audience.

I’m writing this post on October 15, halfway through a retrospective exhibition of some of my work. It’s a big show, covering a huge space, ten separate walls and some 40+ prints.

So far we’ve had visitors from Maryland (the state I call home), New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., more than 175 so far. Sales have been better than anticipated and I’m in the process of working on some custom installations in private homes that are a direct result of the exhibition.

The Silent Partner

It’s funny/strange to me (and Bob) how viewers hardly pay attention to the fine art papers that hold the images they are seeing. It’s rare for a visitor, or even a buyer, to ask me what paper was used, even though that makes a significant contribution to the final display. Of all the prints on display in the exhibition, only three were not printed on Moab Fine Art paper. All the rest - 38+ - were printed on Moab Entrada Rag Natural, Entrada Coldpress Textured, or Moab Moenkopi Unryu (a washi paper).

As demonstrated by the list of papers above almost all of our fine art work is printed on natural base Moab fine art matte paper. All of that work is either mounted in a traditional way with frames, matting, and glazing or alternatively in custom crafted open-face frames that higlight those materials; in other words the methods we teach in our Matting + Framing workshop or our Advanced Awagami workshop. The vast majority of the exhibition is represented by these papers and elevated modes of presentation.

I chose to include a few previously printed images on Moab Anasazi canvas. We typically use canvas for commercial installations and for client affordabilty. Adding this material to the exhibition and using simple mounting was a bit of a challenge while keeping the various collections coherent. We were successful in designing the layouts and using the wall space to make everything look great and clearly deliniating the various bodies of work.

40in x 60in Moab Anasazi canvas print.

Including canvas prints turned out to be a GREAT IDEA as we not only sold those previously printed canvas pieces but had a few orders for copies. Not all customers can afford more elaborate mountings or limited edition prints. Selling more affordable versions of your work in no way dilutes or lessens the value of your more expensive pieces, it merely allows more people to own artwork and bring them into your community.

And A Welcome Back Choice

Another twist we added was using work that I sparingly show in a “fine art” exhibition. Specifically I decided to use one blank wall to engage attendees with my NatGeo type travel work of “People From Around The World”. In a welcome-back decision, I used Moab Entrada Bright dry-mounted on gatorboard for these prints. The punchier color rendition of that bright OBA paper was perfect for these mostly color, more documentary oriented prints. So I created a contest for attendees to guess the country location of the people I photographed - winner to select any print in the collection they wanted. Again the Entrada Bright paper was perfect for this type of work and drew lots of entrants.

Portraits from around the world printed on Moab Entrada Bright.

Not immediately obvious, but critical to a busy photo studio, is that aside from Moab’s top-of-the-line quality, its papers are dependable. They are consistent from batch to batch, so we never have to worry about profiles or other issues when we are on deadline. And, boy, were we on deadlines for this event!

Marketing

In my next DIY (the 3rd in the Exhibition series) I’ll cover the topic of marketing an exhibition, with real-life examples of what Bob and I did to make the exhibition work well for visitors and buyers. There is no way to point out highly enough what strategic marketing can do to boost success, from name recognition for beginners to critical sales for pros.