In an orange barn in the woods, in a part of Portland where most of us never go, Jeff Barnum uses an Iris printer to create archival reproductions of contemporary artworks.
Iris printing is a sophisticated cousin of Giclee prints, which is a French term, meaning “to spray.”
Barnum founded a company in 2003 with the vision of providing intensively personalized reproduction services for artists with his business partner, Katarina Weslien. Thus, the Portland Iris company was born.
The exhibition of Portland Iris’ first portfolio, with prints by Sean Foley, Katherine Bradford, Charlie Hewitt, Alison Hildreth and Katarina Weslien was on display at the Bakery Studios on Danforth Street for the First Friday Art Walk.
Barnum met Weslien at MECA where she is the director of the masters in Fine Arts program. Barnum received his MFA in 2003. As the two developed a friendship, an opportunity to purchase two Iris printers arose. The business venture seemed ideal to Barnum, who saw the chance to work at home in a position where his skills would be useful.
“Portland Iris provides the maximum experience for the artist,” Barnum said, “It gives them a chance to work with someone who is a master printer to service the vision for their project.”
Portland Iris inhabits part of the Barnum home; the printers hum warmly in a snug white room and the drying racks, computer work station, desks and inspirational piano share a larger studio area which opens via sliding glass door into deep forest.
The printing process begins when a digital capture of an artwork is made at Russell French Studios in Portland. The file is opened at Portland Iris, and improvements, changes and corrections are made in Photoshop. After the artist approves a proof, the file is broken into a lengthy string of binary code and transferred to the printers.
Inside of the printers is an aluminum drum, which spins as if on a lathe. Watercolor paper is prepared for mounting and rolled with a tacky, lint-collecting tool, which prevents messy ink formations. The paper is mounted to the drum so that the bottom of the sheet wraps around the drum and meets the top of the sheet. As the drum spins at a rate of 130 revolutions per minute, the printing nozzles slowly move down the length of the drum on a track.
The print is essentially a line, printed as a spiral on a revolving 48″x36″ rectangle. The computer mind of the printers interprets color values in the code of the file and dispenses ink accordingly from the four nozzles involved in the CMYK (cayenne, magenta, yellow, black) color configuration.
As the ink leaves each nozzle, it is broken into red blood cell sized particles by a vibrating glass pipette. As the particles shoot towards the printing surface, they are selectively charged with electricity. Particles with an electric charge are blocked by a ceramic knife-edge the size of a hangnail and fall into a waste sump. An electrically charged bib attracts charged particles to prevent messy splashes.
Barnum explains that the printers read a digital file but the ink speed is controlled by an analog signal. This introduces a few variables, such as certain ink particles moving faster than others.
Uncharged ink particles hit the hydrophilic (water-loving) paper and are absorbed into it. After 6500 revolutions of the drum, the print is finished. The richness of the inks combined with the hydrophilic nature of the paper produce a print with a certain depth and luminosity unlike typical digital prints.
Barnum describes the appearance of Iris prints as “a window” of light, much like what you see on a computer monitor.
“Digital imagery lives in a virtual world,” says Barnum, “and there are numerous problems when we make that world physical. When digital images are printed, they come back deadened.”
The ultra high resolution of the Iris prints on the absorbent paper allow a viewer to see what Barnum calls “the air” in the print; that is, space and depth on a two dimensional surface.
“The Iris printing process captures the liquidity of the original artwork. It is lossless. The visual difference from the original is negligible,” Barnum said. Indeed, the prints in the Portland Iris portfolio glow with unlost luminosity.
Among the clients that Portland Iris has serviced is USM’s very own Jan Piribec, who printed a colorful edition of quilted, kaleidoscopic imagery.
They have also printed images by William Pope .L. Pope hired a mall photographer to take photos of him in his underwear with bunny ears and a spray bottle for his confusing “eracialism” series.
As I was wrapping up my interview with Jeff Barnum, he showed me some of the latest prints; huge reproductions made of Katarina Weslien photography, images of rocks in Tibet, dressed in the clothes of deceased Tibetans. Then Barnum’s daughter was tapping on the studio door, telling him that it was time to come in.
The prints can be seen glowing online at www.portlandiris.com.