2004 - 2018What if
I built a funky studio and put Giclee Canada to work?
In 2004, I converted the family three-car garage in the alley into a one-car space, art gallery, and studio. With great imagination, I called the space The Alley Gallery. The area was L-shaped, about nine hundred square feet with an eighteen-foot ceiling. I painted the walls white, the floor sea blue, and hung paintings everywhere. I built a raised office at the long end of the garage to create a three-hundred square-foot work area and storage crawl space.
In 2005, to utilize my Photoshop skills, I purchased an Epson Fine Art printing business. It consisted of a large museum-quality, eight color canvas/watercolor paper printer, a slightly smaller eight color printer and a flatbed scanner complete with computer, monitor, keyboard, ink, paper and a customer list. The four-by-ten-foot storage dolly I had previously built became the printer dolly. In total, it was an expansive and complete yet roll-away work studio.
At night in order to park the car, I rolled my tool and printer dollies out of sight under the office. In addition, I fabricated a set of ten-by-eight-foot walls with a door and display windows facing the alley. On the reverse side of the doors were large painting easels with storage underneath. With the walls on wheels, they rolled into place when the double wide garage door was raised. When Bonnie Rapaport, my better half, left for work in the morning, the doors were put in position, lights turned on and The Alley Gallery and Giclee Canada were in business.
In 2007, Bonnie and I had our kitchen remodeled. When construction was finished in July, we decided to have a party. We chose Saturday, Aug 4th as it was the final night of fireworks for Vancouver’s Celebration of Fire in English Bay which we could see from our balcony. We felt it would be the perfect time to make our wonderful relationship legal, so we organized a surprise wedding to entertain our 56 guests. I knew I would never forget our anniversary as the wedding also happened on my birthday.
I continued produce archival art reproductions for myself and about 50 artists in BC and Alberta until 2019 when we moved to Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island. I’ve lectured on Giclee printing, mixed media, and art theft to various Vancouver area art groups including the North Shore Artists Guild, the Ferry Building Arts Connection and four different West Vancouver Harmony Arts Festivals.
With my new found toys and photos taken on our world journeys, I mixed in some tongue in cheek humour and embarked on several years of mixed media, limited edition and museum quality prints.
