Art of gicleé

Still in its fledgling stages of acceptance into the world of fine art and photo reproduction, gicleé prints are the path to the future for any high-quality, digitally produced, fine-art print. This is the service Michael Nelson, owner of Grafx 8 in Minden, provides.

During Carson Valley's Second Saturday Gallery presentations, Nelson offered a demonstration of the gicleé process and the benefits it can offer to any artist interested in reproducing their work. The demonstration was also for the layman or art collector as Nelson explained just exactly what a gicleé is and the process it takes to create one.

What started in the 1980s as a means of providing full-color proofs to check color and get client approval in commercial printing plants and pre-press shops was soon recognized as a high quality, relatively inexpensive way for artists and photographers to provide exact reproductions of their original work. Instead of amounts of 500 to several thousand on a press run, an artist could reproduce their work in high quality definition, a few at a time and make their art more affordable.

First known as IRIS prints, proofs or just simply IRISes, coming from the name of the type of printer that produced them, they have had many different names in their search for viability and respect in the art world. Words like "computer" and "digital" brought a negative response to the new medium and it wasn't until 1991 when Jack Dugganne, a Los Angeles based printer for Nash Editions, went in search of a name that would give the proper elegance to these reproductions.

Taking a clue from the French word for inkjet (jet d'encre), Duganne focused on the technical process the inkjet printers performed and that was to spray the ink. He looked up French verbs for "to spray" and he found gicler which literally means to squirt, spurt or spray. The feminine noun version of the word was gicleé (pronounce "zhee-clay") and an industry "brand identity" for digital art was born.

Nelson has proven himself to be a digital artist. With a keen eye for detail and exacting perfection, Nelson has raised the bar on gicleé printing and is sought after and trusted by Valley artists to provide reproductions that qualify as fine archival, museum quality, art editions.

In the past few years Nelson's Grafx 8 has produced the artwork of nationally and internationally known artists like Charles Muench, Reiko Hervin, Peter Chope, Sandra Baenen, Buz Schott and J. Renee Ekleberry. Even Gina Gigli, who had been steadfastly dedicated to the "hand-pulled" prints of her work, done by her husband Ruggero, gave in to Nelson's work for special-edition prints.

For Nelson, Grafx 8 is more than just a print shop. It has become a full-service agency for many artists in search of producing and marketing their work. Over and above his work with art and photographic reproductions he has also done photo restoration as well as creating custom wallpaper from original art and photographs for several businesses, including 88 Cups in Minden.

For more information about the gicleé process or any custom print job, contact Michael Nelson at Grafx 8, 1614 Highway 395, Minden or call 783-1985.