Jeph, Ellis, jephellis, jeffellis, murals, liquid emulsion, salmon river, cafe123, cafe un deux trois, connexus, photography, black and white photography, muralist, boston, manhattan, New York

Liquid silver prints are accomplished by applying photographic emulsion to a variety of materials. Typically I have done them on stained wood, glass, paper or fabric. They are in fact photographs, though they maintain a unique quality that often makes the viewer question how they are done. They need to be seen in person to understand what an unusual look they offer. As the images produced are black clear (as opposed to black white) they allow the ground on which they are printed to show through. On paper they often look like they were done in pencil, on glass they are ghostly and by staining large sheets of wood different colors with the photograph in mind the results are simply stunning.

This process rests comfortably right between my paintings and my photography, and while it often frustrates painters and photographers alike, my mind is aptly suited to it.

The Process:

A simple way to describe liquid photographic emulsion is ‘photo-sensitive paint'. The emulsion comes in a hard gel, it is first melted and then poured or brushed onto the chosen ground. The prints are created under safelight darkroom conditions. The process involves hand painting the emulsion onto the required surface for printing. The pieces are then developed the same way a black white photograph is developed, through the use of an enlarger and standard black white print baths. For most of my prints, due to their size, I am enlarging them from across the room.

The images I have created either leap from my catalog of photographs, or come from collaboration with a client. For client based work; the client and artist meet to discuss and choose the size, material and subject or theme, then through a series of steps an idea for the image is agreed upon, and I set out to photograph the image specifically for the project. In some instances I have done a full shoot for the project, complete with model make-up artist, others have been chosen out of my large catalog of negatives, or I have revisited a subject or location where I have previously shot.

La Femme de Siecle-

An interpretation of the way woman perceives herself and is in turn perceived today.

This triptych was created for a group show at Hertz' corporate headquarters in New Jersey. This piece is intended to be left to interpretation.

Three pages – Youth, Bloom, Wisdom.

The Bxl series are Liquid Silver prints on stained wood. These seven pieces were ordered for a new restaurant in Times Square in the summer of 2004. The pieces were to include a ‘Wall of Kings'; six images depicting each of the six Belgian kings, and one portrait of Queen Astrid. The design works to fit a space and a feel. In each of the pieces both the color and patterning of the stain and the pattern of the emulsion speak directly to the king, his personality and his rule. They were completed to fully take up one existing wall in the restaurant. Both frames and the work were completed in my studio and assembled on site in BXL.

Leopold II

As perhaps the most notorious of the Belgian Kings, his bloody background and conduct in the Congo earned him the red background and the drip pattern in the emulsion. There was some discussion of leaving him off the wall completely due to his history, but it was eventually agreed that we needed to show the whole royal lineage.

Albert I

Albert is Belgian's ‘hero' king. Responsible for repelling the German's advance in World War I. He is given the blue of victory.

Leopold III

Thought by many to have collaborated with the Germans (yet exonerated) Leopold III's face is cast in partial shadow by the dark walnut of the background.

Baudouin

Baudouin's religious beliefs made him a strong moral barometer for the country. He held true to his beliefs when he refused to sign abortion into law. This was the first time in Belgian history a king had refused his signature to a new law. The color purple denotes his piety.

Albert II

Murals-

Salmon River-

Design process/Installation-

Salmon River was designed closely with interior designer Delilah Henry and owner Jack O'brien. The original concept came from a 50's style illustration Delilah found; a fish-eye's view of a salmon going after an angler's lure. I suggested we go from there and expand to include more of the story. As size of the mural was being discussed, I simply said the more wall the better. So what started as a fourteen foot mural soon doubled. Delilah and I worked out sketch concepts until we found a direction we liked. As there was more wall, there came the opportunity for more story, also the mural eventually stretched to the point where a small portion of it could be seen from the lobby of the hotel. I took this chance to use the fisherman as both part of the story, and as a silhouetted pose to beckon people from the lobby into the restaurant. The dawn colors also draw the eye as guests walk toward the elevator.

From left to right, the mural story goes something like this: The first panel shows the fisherman making his first cast of the dawn. A bear in the background also is going out for breakfast, but both fisherman are so concentrated on the salmon, they make no notice of each other. In the next panel we see the fisherman's line break the surface of the water. This part of the mural is my ‘comic relief' the two fish are more interested in the patterns on the surface of the water that the bait. I named these two fish ‘Rosencrantz Gildenstern'. In the panel below we see life continuing as normal in spite of the fishing taking place around them. The two largest fish in the center are the climax, with a ‘hero' and ‘villain' fighting over the ‘jock scot' lure. Herein also lies a cruel joke as we all know what the prize is for the ‘winner' of this fight. In the end panel we see the same bear that started the piece has been successful. Just below him we see the recognizable scarlet of the spawning salmon. This suggests that life continues on through all of this to once again begin the cycle of birth up river.

Interactive Enlargement-

The Tale of the fish-

One unexpected event that took place three years after the completion of Salmon River, was to find a strikingly similar painting adorning the side of a restaurant in the Boston area. One Sunday evening I received a phone call from the owner of Salmon River. He was in Boston visiting his son and was startled to find a version of our mural on the outside of a restaurant. I just remember him saying “You're not going to believe this, but I'm standing in a parking lot in front of our mural.” Nevertheless, I assumed the phrase to be exaggerated, I gathered my son and a friend and got in my car to go see what this was all about. Standing in front of the painting, I was dumbstruck. To stop short of calling it a copy, I will say that an impartial party when showed photographs of both this image and mine, they were hard pressed to determine which spawned which. I said nothing to the owners of the restaurant and went home, fuming. So, on my wife's advice I contacted the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of Massachusetts. All Massachusetts artists should be aware of this fantastic organization. They put me in touch with one of Boston's finest firms. Within a couple of weeks the wall was painted over. Many facts were discovered which are difficult to fathom, and perhaps speak of every type of behavior that should not be practiced by artists and designers. But the end lessons I would like to share with others are these:

If you are confronted with a situation where you feel you have been unlawfully copied or unjustly treated as an artist, remember there is the VLAMA as well as other organizations to help you. Artists are stronger as a collective, though we work alone there are those out there who want to help. Also, keep your cool until you find help. Confrontation without aid is dangerous.

While U.S. copyright law dictates that the moment you have finished a work, you own it until you sign that right away, there are huge advantages to registering your copyright with the Government. This can be done at:*****. While it was clear in this case for me that I owned the original rights, had I registered the work there would have been minimum statutory damages ($20,000) as well as the might of the U.S. government on your side. In most cases, the copier must pay all legal expenses of the original artist until they prove (if they prove) that you have not been copied.

Sketches-

These are sections of the final sketch for Salmon River.

Poisson-

Before After-

Design Process-

Poisson was actually done in three stages over a period of nearly two years. I was first brought in to soften some horizontal lines that had been painted for the then named “Cafe Au Lait”. “Cafe Au Lait” was to be a simple breakfast and lunch place serving French style dishes. They had a company paint large brown stripes for them and were very unhappy with the results. I was hired to patina the stripes and soften and warm the color. This was one of my first jobs and I was taught how to rag and soften with latex paint by one of the designers, Lanie Powers. Lanie had showed me how to do ragging in another restaurant on 44 th street: Yum Thai. My favorite quote from him during that period was after teaching me that the ragging look we were going for was to “remember marble”. After an hour he came to check my work and said to me “Perhaps we could remember marble a little more fondly”. By the time I had completed the many walls of CafeAu Lait my faux finishing skills were well on their way.

Cafe Au Lait opened its doors with little more decor than the stripes. I was then asked if I could do a mural for the large wall. I said yes, not fully understanding just how big eighteen by fifty feet was. I went from the name Cafe Au Lait, and worked very loosely from Juan Gris' “Le Petit Dejeuner'. Two months later I finished the mural, working at night and being greeted each day with praise for the work I was doing but pressure to get more of the white covered. Georges and Gerard were very happy with the finished results, and so it was for a year.

A year later I was asked to finish the restaurant, they wanted me to paint every last inch of it. They were going to close their doors, put in a full kitchen, and reopen under a new, as yet to be determined name. They also were confident in my abilities by now and simply asked that I make the room colorful. I showed them one sketch of what I wanted to do to the columns and was off. This time, they were closed so I was able to work during the day.

I approached the room from view points, allowing lines on the walls and bits of the image from the main mural to come through the columns in the middle of the room. Depending on where you stood you could see lines on the columns continue on the walls behind them. I had also painted a little girl being carried away by balloons on the front page of a newspaper on the main mural. In the picture she had two balloons. I decided to paint her again, larger roughly life size, on the underside of the sloping ceiling in the dining area. I gave her three balloons and put her higher in the sky. She appeared to be falling. The story was that she was losing balloons by the time she had her picture in the paper.

The acoustic tiling on the ceiling was painted along with the trim between. The duranautic alumminium in the windows was also painted, as well as gold stripes on the glass to hide part of the kitchen and accent the glass doors. In short, every paintable surface in the room received treatment. The restaurant re-opened under the name ‘Poisson'.

Connexus was a company selling a point-of-sale system. Their concept was to have a mural depicting a store front for their conference room. After talking to them about what it was they did and realizing that they sell this system to a wide variety of retailers, it seemed to me that if we did a storefront of a clothing store, it might alienate a sports store, or if we did the storefront of a sporting goods store it might alienate a the owner of a jewelry store, etc. I suggested I do a composite storefront, one that would be made up of a number of different types of retailers with different architectural storefronts. They loved the idea.

To find reference for this, I took my camera to Newbury street in Boston. Although the mural was in New York, it seemed to me I would find the widest variety of actual store fronts on Newbury. I submitted a sketch, and with some revision and a second sketch, I had the go ahead to begin painting.

The painting appears three dimensional and wraps around a part of one corner. When painting on site I prefer not to allow the physical aspects of the room to govern the design, but to run onto adjoining walls if necessary. The effect usually takes the viewer out of the room and puts them somewhere else.

South Dakota-

Design Process-

Working closely with designer… I was asked to produce a mural for a home in South Dakota, and to base the mural on the seasons there. During the design process it became clear that the area we were looking to capture only truly has three recognizable seasons, or seasonal effects. After a meeting with the clients themselves, and a brainstorming session I came away with a list of things that reminded them of South Dakota as well as a few personal snap shots of the home and its surroundings.

One of the first intents was to show the presence of people without showing people. A wooden swing on their property became the center piece of the first painting, set in the evening surrounded by twinkling fireflies. The deer in the second image also invoke memories of the wildlife they love so much. For the third, they told me a story about having a bonfire every Thanksgiving as there is a state law that prohibits open fires unless there is snow on the ground, and there is always snow for Thanksgiving. The turkeys darting across the ground are also a nod towards Thanksgiving as well as to their presence in the wild right there on their land.

These paintings were designed to fit a space in the living room. The interior designer had originally come to me with the intent of commissioning a mural to fit the space, but as the design went on and began to take form, the idea of a triptych turned a single mural into three paintings. This also fit nicely with shipping constraints, something that also needed considering.