Utah Arts Festival

I've wanted to go down to the arts festival ever since I heard about it a few years ago. However, we were always too busy to go, until this year. We found some really cool stuff! Here's what Pat brought home:

He's a really cute creature called a Gnome-Be-Gone. The artist is local out of Salt Lake and makes all kinds of other cool stuff out of metal. Check out his website, Sugarpost.

And here's what I got:

Isn't it just perfect for me? A book and a cuddly cat. Life doesn't get better than that. It is a serigraph and is a numbered edition and signed by the artist. It makes me feel all grown up. I bought real art! I had never heard of a serigraph before. This is what the artist's website says about them:

Handmade originals by the Artist, not a Printer

Serigraphy is a complex printmaking process of producing multiple impressions. It is a slow and painstaking hand-operated process.

All limited edition serigraphs featured on this website are created and executed by Michael Leu himself, not a printer. Leu directly creates images onto silkscreens by his own original brushstrokes and makes an individual stencil for each color. The ink is then squeezed through the stencil on to the paper underneath.

Afterwards, the screen is washed clean, thus the stencil is destroyed forever, and the entire process is repeated for each individual color of ink until the work is complete.

Once an edition is sold out, there is no way to reproduce the same image as an original serigraph. The artist carefully examines each piece in the finished edition and only those that he approves are signed and numbered.

Each serigraph of the edition comes with a signed Certificate of Authenticity.

Over the years, serigraphy has developed in sophistication and is a widely accepted print-making technique popular with many collectors today.