“Art Buzz: The 2010 Collection”

San Francisco native Marty Martinez started his art career in 1975, when he entered a contest hosted by a local television station to design a logo for an amusement park then known as Marine World Africa USA (now Six Flags). Martinez took first place in that contest, and he’s had an active artistic life ever since. He’s continued to win competitions – a People’s Choice Award for his painting “Indian Warrior” in 2007; selected “Best Of” at Mims Gallery in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, among others – and he’s been generous in donating artwork to charities, from fundraising for the San Jose public television station KTEH to the ambitious “…and the levee broke: meditations on the power of water” exhibition, a touring art show to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

 

But Martinez’s best-known works are probably his “Shapeshifters” series, paintings inspired by Native American folklore and a nod to Martinez’s own part Pueblo Indian heritage. The paintings are an energetic combination of the abstract and the familiar, incorporating organic shapes with interesting patterns and textures, and rendered in fluorescent acrylics that “transform” into yet another image when viewed under a black light. (Samples of this series can be viewed in a slide show of Martinez’s artwork on Art Slant.)

This year, Martinez’s artwork will be included in two new publications: Art Buzz, The 2010 Collection, a hardcover, coffee table-style book of noteworthy contemporary artists, and a hardcover collection for a forthcoming exhibit about combat casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 2010 Collection is now available for order now, directly through Art Buzz; just click on the “buy now” link.

 

Hanson Digital has worked with Martinez to create high-quality reproductions of his work, such as the three featured here, “Stovepipe Wells,” “Buzzed,” and “Harebell.” First, the original paintings were photographed to create reproduction-grade 4×5 transparencies. The film was drum scanned to the size of the originals, and the digital files were carefully optimized for printing. Canvas prints were then made, treated with a UV varnish coat, and stretched onto standard bars, for frame-ready reproductions.

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Marty Martinez

Tags: 4x5, Art Buzz, art reproduction, book, canvas printing, canvas stretching, copy photography, drum scanning, fine art, fine art printing, giclée, Marty Martinez, painting

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Client Work & Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.