Giclee

"Technique changes but art remains the same." Claude Monet

No where is this sentiment more evident than when speaking of today's world where art and technology meet. It is inevitable that technology play an important role in the progress of civilization and the art that is born from it. Artists throughout their time have used the prevailing technology, whether it was the use of aquatints or a stylus attached to a digitized pad. The artistic process continues and is enhanced by the unique characteristics lent by the use of new technology. One such technological breakthrough has been the advent of Giclee (zhee-clay) printing.

In the Giclee process, a fine stream of ink ( more than four million droplet per second is sprayed onto archival art paper or canvas. Each calculation of hue, value and density direct the ink from four or eight nozzles. This produces a combination of 512 chromatic changes, with over three million colours possible of highly saturated, non-toxic, water-based ink. Since no screens are used in Giclee printing, the prints have a higher resolution than lithographs and the dynamic colour range is greater than serigraphy.

Since Giclee printing made its debut in 1985, many influential artists have incorporated it into their artistic endeavours. David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg (who actually owns his own IRIS Giclee printer), Jamie Wyeth, and Francesco Clemente have made wide use of the medium. Museums have also realized Giclee's vast potential and already have made many Giclee editions a permanent part of their collections. Several of these museums include; The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The British Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum, Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Philadelphia Museum, National Gallery of Women in the Arts (D.C.), New York Library Print Collection, DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, Massachusetts), Corcoran Gallery (Washington D.C.), The Washington Post Collection and Acadian Museum (New Brunswick, Canada).

What these influential artists and institutions value in a Giclee print is an excellent, high quality method of printing that truly captures the artist's original intent. The strong interpretive power of a Giclee is, in part, due to the quality of the inks, which are optimized for fine art applications and which simulate press conditions without the toxic or environmental effects (inks are all water-based). In addition, Giclee can be printed on a variety of surfaces, including archival quality papers, canvas, and silks, giving the ultimate look and feel of an original fine art print. The combination of the ink and paper allows for unbelievable saturation and depth of colour and a beautiful finished product worthy of the respect of artists and art collectors alike.

While the technological aspects of Giclee impart an impression of simplicity and ease, in actuality, while the process follows the same stages as traditional printing, the methods are extremely complex and time-consuming. The Giclee printer is a digital printer that uses continuous ink jet technology whereby microscopic droplets of ink are placed with excruciating precision onto a surface. The image consists of pixels or dots that are formed by these droplets in combinations of each of the four colours (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Data from the computer instructs the printer how many droplets of each colour to place within each given dot. The dots are so small (each droplet can only be viewed under a microscope) and precise that, instead of seeing dots, the human eye only registers a slow tonal gradation. The ink jet travels from left to right along a steel rod while a drum wrapped with fine art print paper is spinning transversely to the ink at 250 inches per second. Each nozzle of ink (four nozzles, one for each colour) produces one million droplets per second, an amazing testament to the intensely precise calibration and mechanical accuracy of which the Giclee printer is capable.

To view the New Giclee Prints released by Sue Coleman Click here