Feature: Bodden Town Art Shop
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Bodden Town Art Shop
The Cayman Islands have long been an art lover’s paradise and are home to a surprisingly high number of talented artists producing an immensely varied range of artwork from fine art to traditional crafts. The owners of Bodden Town Art Shop recognized the need for a place where artists and art collectors could be brought together to offer a uniquely Caymanian outlet for this vast range of talent and beautiful work produced only in Cayman.
Unlike other retail outlets on Grand Cayman, Krista Silcox, the owner of this beautiful store, decided that unlike her competition, she would offer customers only genuine Cayman artworks, produced locally and exclusively on the islands. Whilst Caribbean art is widely available in several stores on Grand Cayman, the Bodden Town Art Shop is the only place where you can be sure to find only Caymanian arts, crafts and other produce. If you are looking for a souvenir of Cayman, they do not come any more genuine than those to be found here.
Inside this wonderful little store, you will find art from some of Cayman’s leading artists with originals and prints from people like Avril Ward, Charles Long, John Broad, Randy Chollette, Nasaria Suckoo Chollette, Mark Frazer, Leulan Bodden, Horacio Esteban, James Webster, Joanna Austin and Nickola McCoy-Snell along with many other talented Caymanian artisans.
There is more than just paintings and prints however. The store carries sculptures, caymanite and jewelry, beauty products, gorgeous silver thatch yard baskets, handbags, fans and hats– pepper jelly and hot sauces, mango and other island flavored jams and jellies– just to list a few items…. stock is always changing as Krista says, because we are meeting new talented Caymanian artistans every day!
If you have never paid a visit to the Bodden Town Art Shop you will be surprised at the extremely high quality and tasteful range of items available. The owners have made sure that they carry only the highest quality art, gifts and souvenirs and there really is something for everyone – every taste and every budget.
Local people, residents and visitors alike can call in and browse around to their heart’s content and if you are looking for gifts to send or take home to others you really are spoiled for choice. You are always assured a warm welcome from Krista and the shop has plans to open a coffee shop in the near future, so you will also be able to relax and enjoy some great local flavours as part of your visit.
Located in such a beautiful part of the island you will also find a far more traditional island feel and if you are visiting you will thoroughly enjoy the slow paced atmosphere of Bodden Town itself as well as some of it’s deserted beaches, peppered with traditional roadside eateries and friendly local people. If you are driving from George Town we highly recommend a stop in the area to see what it has to offer.
If you are an artist there is another great side to Bodden Town Art Shop as they now carry an excellent range of art supplies too. You will find Liquitex acrylics, Grumbacher Max oils (washable with water– with all the capabilities of oils/ can mix with all oil mediums), Grumbacher Academy watercolor paints, Strathmore paper, Fredrix canvases of all sizes: 3″x5″ up to 36″x48″ gallery wrapped canvases available/ round and oval canvases as well as canvas paper and panels, stretcher bars, Princeton acrylic/oil and watercolor brushes/ drawing pencils and tools. Most artists know that finding quality materials on Grand Cayman has always been a problem but with the opening of BTAS, you now have an option to buy on island at very reasonable prices.
Don’t think however that only serious artists will want to shop here. The store also carries fun supplies for kids: sculpey model clay, watercolors, tempera paint, drawing books, markers… great idea for Christmas gifts! Krista tells us – “If we don’t carry it –we’ll get it in for you- whatever you may need”! We think it is great that this previously poorly served market segment has been filled and that parents and budding young artists can now lay their hands on everything they need to pursue their artistic endeavours.
Bodden Town Art Shop is really a little treasure and a great place to support local artists and at the same time find some truly quality items for your own home and to bring a true taste of Cayman to your own surroundings. With such affordable products on offer, it is now possible for everyone to enjoy some of the finest art that the islands have to offer without having to mortgage your home to do so!
If you are familiar with the island you will have no trouble finding this little artistic haven, which is located next to the Pirate Caves, 293 Bodden Town Road. If you are visiting simply head towards Bodden Town, and you should not have any difficulties -the Pirate Caves are a well known local landmark and if you do have trouble, most people will be able to point you in the right direction!! If you’re driving out to East End/Northside, why not take a quick break and pop in to browse around?
Bodden Town Art Shop’s fall/winter hours are Monday-Saturday 9:30-5:30 – closed Sundays and public holidays. You can get in touch with Krista on 943 2827 or reach her via email at btascf@gmail.com
If you tell Krista that you found them through this article, you will also get a 10% discount on all purchases, so please mention us when you visit.
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Cayman Islands Art Videos
We have just uploaded a couple of videos of some of the beautiful art by Cayman Islands artists, using the work of Nickola McCoy – Snell, Randy Chollette, John Broad, Renate Seffer, Nasaria Suckoo Chollette, Gordon Solomon and Sue Widmer.
The first concentrates mainly on the sights and past of the Cayman Islands and can be seen below.
The second video contains a lot more abstract work and features the work of just three artists – Nickola McCoy-Snell, Gordon Solomon and Randy Chollette. The variety of art in the Cayman islands is well represented by these two videos and hopefully gives readers an idea of just what is available for all art lovers.
We hope you enjoy the videos and will share them with others. We welcome your comments and questions.
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Giclee Printing On Canvas : A Guide For Consumers
The term fine art giclee is very loosely applied and overused nowadays. There are a lot of misconceptions, misunderstandings and straight untruths spread around on the internet which can make it very difficult for people to understand and judge the quality of the printed work they are buying, whether as a retail customer or an artist getting into prints for the first time.
A lot of people will be familiar with photography stores and printing shops that offer prints of photographs transferred to canvas but what most do not understand is that this does not necessarily qualify as a giclee print. In fact in all probability it is not even close.
Specialist giclee printing requires a good deal of equipment and time if a quality reproduction of an original Painting is going to be produced. This is why we recommend that artists seek out a specialist when ordering prints of their own work.
The printing process requires that the print maker is familiar with colour profiling and has both the hardware and software, along with the knowledge of how to get the best out of them, to ensure that the finished print will match the original as closely in tone and colour as possible. Working with digital images requires knowledge and experience as well as costly programs if the job is going to be done right. Of course it also requires a wide format giclee printer utilizing specific inks/pigments to ensure the longevity of the finished work.
Here at Arteccentrix we only produce giclee prints for artists. Unlike the photography/print store in town or the local industrial park, we are not a mass production facility, we are a husband and wife team, and each and every giclee we produce is carefully prepared, printed and finished by the same person. We do not print flyers and business cards and everything in between – our printing business is geared solely to producing quality art prints.
For canvas giclee prints, after the image has been satisfactorily edited for best/most accurate reproduction we normally produce an in house proof just to ensure that there are no issues with tones and colours before printing the full size work. Once this is done, the print is allowed to dry for at least 48 hours.
After this waiting period the canvas is cut and trimmed and then sealed with a UV protectant, sometimes sprayed, sometimes applied by hand. Although the canvas used is waterproof and acid free, this sealing process is very important and is what you should expect from any giclee printing service working with canvas. Once the sealant has been applied the print is left to “cure” for at least another 24 hours.
Once the print is fully dry it is then stretched onto stretcher bars – all our prints are gallery wrapped so that they can be hung without framing if preferred. A gallery wrap ensures that the image wraps around the stretcher bars so that no bare canvas is visible. You will see many sites online offering “gallery wrap” on canvas prints advising that you will lose an inch or more of the image by choosing this option! Rest assured that we know how to produce a proper gallery wrap and will prepare the image correctly prior to printing so that none of the original painting is lost. (Services that suggest you have to sacrifice any part of your original painting are doing you a disservice. The reasons and excuses for this could be numerous but laziness, incompetence or “rush jobs” are the most common).
After a very careful final inspection the finished canvas is then sealed carefully in a protective clear bag and labeled ready for sale/delivery.
As you can see, the time and work involved in producing a fine art giclee on canvas is quite considerable. You can now also appreciate that anyone who claims they can produce a canvas giclee in a morning while you do your grocery shopping, or “while you wait” is being a little economical with the truth. Prints on canvas vary hugely in quality so you should never assume that canvas automatically translates to high caliber giclee fine art print.
It is not uncommon to see prints labeled as “giclee” that are, in actual fact, lithographs printed on very poor quality paper. There is nothing wrong with lithographic prints of course, but we have often seen blatantly poor quality “cheap” prints touted as something they are not. This adds even further to the misunderstandings surrounding reproductions and the pricing/quality/value equation.
As with quality, pricing varies enormously but in general you will get what you pay for. there are plenty of sites online that allow customers to calculate the cost of a giclee print on various substrates and in various sizes, framed, unframed etc etc. If you spend time comparing like for like products on a number of sites you will probably be very surprised at the range of prices you are quoted.
Our own research has proved that there are people out there who are ripping customers off pure and simple, others are cheap but not offering true quality and those who are charging a fair price for their labours. Some can offer a complete service from scanning the image right through to framing and others offer less comprehensive services. Whatever your needs, shop around to get the best deal you can for your needs and remember that in the world of giclee printing, the caveat of “buyer beware” should always be kept in the back of your mind. As an artist, If you can get the work done locally we would recommend you do so. This will enable you to be far more closely involved and less likely to end up with something you are not happy with.
We have not yet published our retail price list on the internet for a variety of reasons and promise to do so soon but judging by what we have seen elsewhere we do consider our work extremely reasonable. We have deliberately tried to keep our prints affordable with a high value for money quotient and without compromising quality in any way. As a small family operation we keep our overheads to a minimum and try to pass on our cost savings to our customers.
As a guideline, at the time of writing, a stretched, unframed canvas giclee measuring 24″ x 18″ normally retails at CI$135.00 (that is approximately US$165.00) Bear in mind too that these reproductions are all of original works by well established and widely collected artists. Don’t take our word for it though, shop around for the same item online and see what others are charging.
If you are an artist having prints of your own work made that you intend to resell you have to consider your own profit margins too and how much you can command for prints of your work. So, as an artist you should really be looking to work with someone who will offer you a wholesale deal if at all possible.
Arteccentrix is currently the only service of its kind in the Cayman Islands. We are here to serve artists, retailers and direct customers, negating the need for work to be shipped overseas as has always been the case in the past. We only use the finest quality acid free archival papers and canvas – we do not do cheap alternatives.
(Due to our close working relationships with the artists at Arteccentrix, we sometimes produce signed limited editions as well as hand finished prints on occasion or if specifically required. All signed limited editions would be numbered, hand signed by the artist and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity also signed by the artist).
Further note for artists:
In order to produce a truly high quality print, a high resolution digital scan or photograph is essential if a printer is to do your work justice. If you do not have a high res image for us to work from we can produce one from your original work for a small one off fee. If you prefer to provide the digital images for us, digital photographs should preferably be in RAW format – this will mean large file sizes but it makes the process of preparation far simpler for us and will produce the best results. If you have a quality DSLR camera and tripod and a reasonable understanding of lighting there is no reason you cannot produce these yourself. The ideal is to produce three photographs, one correctly exposed and one on either side, one stop up and one stop down. A lot of DSLR cameras have this bracketing facility built in and it can be very useful when preparing a final image for print. The other alternative is to ask a professional to take the photographs for you. If you have access to a high resolution scanner it is another option you may consider although much will depend on the physical dimensions of the original work!
If you have any questions at all, please contact us and we will do our very best to help.
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Artist Nickola McCoy-Snell Limited Edition Print – Lassie’s Sanctuary
The Painting “Lassie’s Sanctuary” has just been released as a signed, limited edition (1000) print by artist Nickola McCoy-Snell.
The prints, measuring 12″ x 9″ come on high quality archival textured fine art paper and are unframed and unmounted. All prints will be hand signed by the artist. They will be numbered and will include a certificate of authenticity also signed by Nickola.
The decision to offer these prints unframed was taken to allow purchasers to mount or frame them according to their own preferences and as a result they are very reasonably priced and affordable for everyone who would like to own their own copy of this famous painting by Grand Cayman’s highly respected and most prominent female artist.
This is a great opportunity to acquire a beautiful and rare print of this famous local landmark, the home of the late “Miss Lassie” , artist and poet, who lived in this traditional Cayman dwelling until her death. Now considered a national monument, the property, situated along the coast road south of George Town, is undergoing complete restoration in order to preserve this slice of Caymanian culture and heritage.
The original painting, an acrylic on canvas, resides in the Cayman Islands National Museum for current and future generations to enjoy.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any other questions you may have and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Order Your Signed Limited Edition Of “Lassie’s Sanctuary” Today For Just $30.00 plus shipping. (If you are on island please contact Nickola before ordering online)
Free Prize Draw Entry For All Customers – Win A Nickola McCoy Original Painting
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