Art Fair Preparations

We have been busy bees lately.  For the past week, we’ve put our house projects on hold in preparation for an art fair this weekend where Dain will be selling his wares (awesome, unique artwork).  The Edina Art Fair is this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Edina, Minnesota. It features artwork from over 300 artists from all over the United States and Canada.  There is everything from jewelery and clothing to pottery and furniture.  Dain’s work is in the “mixed media” category, and he sells image transfers of iconic images like the Cherry and the Spoon piece from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.  We thought we’d give you an inside look at how these little treasures are created.

An image transfer is a unique 4.25″ x 3.5″ image that starts by projecting a 35 mm slide onto instant slide film.  Then the exposed emulsion surface of the film is placed onto print-making paper, and Dain rolls it out with a brayer.  When the film backing is peeled off, the transferred image is revealed on the paper.  The end result is a vintage looking image that is completely unique.

Dain puts multiple images on one large sheet of paper and then tears them out to stay with the antique look before meticulously matting each one so they can be easily placed in any standard 8 x 10 frame.  It is certainly a time consuming process, which has made for some late nights, but Dain’s perfectionism creates some incredible images.

Most of the images are of noteworthy places in Minnesota, but Dain also has some from Africa, Puerto Rico, Las Vegas and others.  He sells them matted as well as framed.Our basement has turned into our war room.  While Dain has been hard at work creating more prints, I have been doing things like taking an inventory of his stock, applying price tags, and labeling greeting cards, which are the newest part of Dain’s collection that we will be selling this weekend.

The image transfers turn out really nicely on the paper, but this year Dain discovered that after he has transferred the image onto printmaking paper there is enough photo emulsion left over to place back onto the original photo paper creating a pretty unique photograph (the size of a Polaroid picture that Dain has to refrain himself from shaking).  We thought these were cool enough to make into cards.  So Dain has also been busy spray mounting little photos to blank white cards. He has since coined this process a “double image transfer.”

So there you have it.  That’s what we’ve been doing lately.  If you live in the Twin Cities metro area, come stop by and say hi this weekend.  His booth is number 451 located at 50th Street and Halifax.  The Edina Art Fair runs Friday, June 3 and Saturday, June 4 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, June 5 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  It is located at the trendy 50th and France neighborhood.  The art fair also has food and drink vendors or there are plenty of great restaurants on the surrounding streets (like Barrio, Salut and the Edina Grill to name a few) if you want to make an afternoon of it.  We have our fingers crossed for nice weather (just this once Minnesota).  If you can’t make it, check out Dain’s art on his website, www.dainlarson.com, or in his Etsy shop here.