2020 was a difficult year for everyone, no doubt about that. While we’re very excited about things starting to get back to normal in the world, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We wanted to take a quick minute to update everyone on our current procedures in the studio.

Our staff are all fully vaccinated now (hooray!), so we’re finally able to all be in the studio at the same time, after more than a year of working short staffed with only one or two of us in the studio each day. Although we’ll miss working from home in our PJs, we’re glad to have our normal schedules back, and to have more time in the studio again. Although we’re all vaccinated, we are staying extra cautious for now, and continuing to wear masks in the studio. We are still requiring anyone coming into the studio wear a mask as well.

We are still appointment only if you’d like to come to the studio. This is to ensure that we only have one client in the studio at a time, as it’s a small space. Appointments also greatly help us plan out our day, and ensure that we never end up with several people showing up at the same time, which is quite hectic in our small space! We will likely continue to require appointments in the future, as it’s very helpful for us to be able to prepare for your visit and have any materials ready when you arrive. We can also accommodate outside pickups/drop-offs if you need a more loose arrival time, or if you need to arrive when we already have an appointment scheduled.

While we do not close at all for a lunch hour, we are currently trying to keep 1-1:30 free of in-studio appointments. Two staff members’ desks are in the main studio area, rather than separate offices, so we are keeping this time free so that they can eat lunch and not be maskless while a client is in the studio. If you absolutely need to come during this time, we will try to plan for an outside pickup/drop-off for you, so that someone can help you outside while others eat lunch in the studio.

As always, we’ll do everything we can to accommodate your needs. Whether you’d like to visit the studio in person or continue working remotely, we can make it happen! If you have any questions, or if you’d like to set up appointment, you can give us a call at 703-684-0005, or fill out our contact form here.

To stay up to date with the latest Covid-19 information and statistics, you can go to the CDC’s website.

As Virginia starts to reopen, we remain committed to ensuring the safety of our clients and employees. We would like to take a moment update you all on our current procedures. 

With quarantine rules starting to relax, we are getting busier once again. (As a side note, we’d like to give a big thank you to all of our incredible clients who have continued to work with us through this difficult time). To be able to maintain our workload, we have switched from having just one employee in the studio per day to two. These two employees work in separate offices, to maintain as much distance as possible, and wear masks throughout the entire day. We are practicing frequent hand washing, and disinfecting surfaces frequently so the two employees in the studio have minimal contact. 

We are continuing to require appointments, so that we have only one client in the studio at a time. After each visit, we thoroughly disinfect all surfaces at the front of the studio that clients interact with. 

Face masks are required for anyone entering the studio. If you forget one, we do have face masks available for you to use.

If you are uncomfortable with coming into the studio, we can arrange a minimal or no-contact drop off/pickup. We have a watertight bin that smaller items can be placed in outside, and retrieved with no contact. Larger items can be passed through the door. We are very flexible, and will do whatever we need to make sure you are comfortable with your drop off/pickup method. Just give us a call at 703-684-0005 and we can discuss details with you. 

As before, we ask that if you are feeling sick, or have had contact with anyone who is sick, please do not come to the studio.

We look forward to seeing you all soon! Feel free to give us a call or send an e-mail if you have any questions about our safety procedures, or if you would like to make an appointment to work with us.  

-Phone consultations. If you want to discuss working with us, but are not quite ready to bring in your artwork to start a job, we can send you a free sample pack in the mail of our papers, and set up an appointment for a phone consult.

-Minimal contact drop offs/pick ups. We are happy to work with you to make your drop off/pick up as smooth as possible, while limiting close contact. We can take payments over the phone, or send secure payment links for online payments. We have a watertight bin for smaller artwork/prints, and can arrange with you to have pickups outside waiting for you, or for you to drop off items outside the studio if you’d like to avoid coming inside. We can set up appointment times for this, so that we can bring items in immediately, so that nothing gets left outside. We can also have prints ready to simply pass through the door to you.

-We are doing what we can to maintain six feet between ourselves and others. If you are visiting the studio, we will likely try to remain on the opposite side of our studio table when possible, for your safety as well as our own.

-We are disinfecting all touch-points after each client leaves our studio, and being diligent about washing our hands frequently to maintain as clean of an environment as possible.

-For clients who would like to work with us remotely, we are offering free FedEx Ground shipping for proofs and final prints. Additional fees may apply for oversize prints and original artwork.

Please feel free to give us a call if you have any questions, or would like to make an appointment!

We hope everyone is well.

Welcome to the new and improved oldtowneditions.com! Although the bulk of the content is what we’ve always had on our website, this is a pretty big redesign, and a few things have been moved around, so we wanted to make this introductory post to let you know what’s changed and where you can find the information you need!

Relocated / updated pages

The first major change is that we’ve split up the “articles for artists” and blog sections of our website, to make it easier for you to find the information you need. Instead of having to scroll through our many pages of articles, we now have everything broken down into categories so you can go straight for the information you need the most, and easily find an article again later. Just click on the Articles for Artists tab in the header navigation to browse the articles.

The blog section will now be used more for studio updates when we’re working on exciting things, as well as artist features when our artists are working on exciting things! We want to be more active with these types of posts, so keep an eye out.

Mobile & tablet functionality!

If you’ve tried in the past to use our website on mobile devices you may have been as frustrated as we were with how it functioned. The menu bar was unorganized, making it nearly impossible to find the page you needed, unless you already knew exactly what you were looking for. If you’re not already reading this on your phone, give it a try! We’ve tested every page on mobile and tablet to make sure all of our content scales and translates clearly across all screens. Most notably, the navigation menu is organized, and it’s easy to find pages under their correct heading. We’re pretty excited about this, and we hope you are too!

Smaller changes & updates

Depending on how familiar with our old website you were, you might notice little changes here and these as you browse the new website. We’ve done our best to improve everything we can, and to make our website the best version of itself.

Every now and then we would receive a comment that our website could be hard to read, with black text on a gray background. Well say goodbye to the gray, and hello to increased readibility! We’ve switched to the classic black on white.

We’ve added quite a few new photos and updated some older ones to keep content fresh and also give our artists even more of a feature. If you follow our instagram you’ve probably seen many of the images already, but we wanted to include them here as well to share the amazing work our clients do.

The FAQ section all lives on one page now, making it easier for you to switch between topics without having to navigate between separate pages.

We organized our “paper and canvas” page, separating the different paper types into categories, to help you better understand what each paper is best suited for, be it art reproduction, photography printing, or more specialized projects.

There’s quite a few cosmetic changes all around, such as an updated header and footer.

We put quite a bit of love into creating this new website, and we hope you enjoy it!

Image credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team

“On 24 April 1990 the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was sent into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery as the first space telescope of its kind. It offered a new view of the Universe and has, for 25 years, reached and surpassed all expectations, beaming back data and images that have changed scientists’ understanding of the Universe and the public’s perception of it.” http://www.spacetelescope.org

Reston Interfaith commissioned artist Dana Scheurer to create the original painting “Dancin’ On The Dome”, and one hundred limited edition fine art reproductions. Scheurer has created a following from her involvement with groups like Greater Reston Art Center. She also participates in local area art shows selling originals and prints.  She’s created original artwork for Reston Triathlon, Reston Kids Triathlon, and the Reston Home Tour.

Her involvement in the local arts community and her subject matter have drawn attention from several Reston based businesses.  Dana’s involvement in the community has created strong demand for her artwork.  This is evidence that being involved with local art associations, shows, and galleries helps an artist to gain publicity to become successful.  Dana has been creating limited editions with Old Town Editions since 2004.

Selling reproductions allows more people to afford an artists work, and ultimately offers the artist more exposure.  People come to her shows looking for her new prints and originals.  Images she’s created were used to conceal construction around the Reston Ice Rink.  OTE captured her artwork for printing in an extremely large format.  OTE’s ability to push the limits of convention and size has allowed her artwork to gain even more publicity.

OTE:  How do you use prints to help advance your art career?
Scheurer:  To sell of course…people that can’t afford the originals can afford my work, ultimately to return at a later date to buy an original.

OTE: What words of wisdom or advice do you have for anyone looking into creating giclees from their original artwork?
Scheurer:  Find yourself a reliable printmaker. One that you can depend on having the highest quality, and  will always be there for you.  Always look for ways to promote yourself like having small card size prints to hand out for someone to take away at a point of sale to establish connections.

About Reston Interfaith:

Since 1970, Reston Interfaith, a nonprofit, has reached out to 250,000 neighbors-in-need, helping them overcome tough economic times in an already high cost-of-living region. Reston Interfaith helps people build more stable lives by connecting them to vital resources that solve their needs for housing, childcare, food or financial assistance.

This week we met with Alexandria Recreation Outreach rep Michael Johnson and TC Williams printing program teacher Bob Trout. This meeting set the framework for Old Town Editions to mentor high achieving students from the TC Williams print program at our print studio.  We want to give the students a chance to learn printmaking and how it applies in a real world business environment. We have 2 excited students lined up for the program.

Soon, these select  students will come over during school day for 2-4 hours a week to learn digital fine art printmaking. This time will help these students prepare for their full time internships starting with us in May. Since the students are seniors, and the school has a special student placement program, they will spend their last month of high school working as full time interns with Old Town Editions.  This is a unique opportunity that we are excited to be involved with.

During the meeting we uncovered the fact that the TC Williams printing program will be coming to an end at the completion of the 2014-2015 school year.  We are currently trying to gain media attention to garner the community’s support in an effort to raise the funds to update and save the print program at the high school.

Yesterday, at approximately 9:30AM we unplugged our last IRIS printer. This was a bittersweet moment for us.  (Don’t get us wrong, it’s a great feeling to be out with the old and in with the new.) Bitter because these machines originally cost $40,000 each. It pioneered the industry we are in today and still creates beautiful prints. Sweet because the benefits of using new printers including larger color gamut, more durability, and prints being more archival far exceed the cost and other faults of the IRIS prints.

This is how we got the IRIS machines into our studio in Old Town Alexandria

The last of our IRIS printer fleet decommissioned

New York artist Jay Hart came to us with a special request to print his image on transparent film for an installation at The Science Center in Ithaca, NY.  The vision was to have two prints, one overlaying the other. When lit from the front you see a satellite image of the continental United States.  When lit from behind you see all the major waterways.  We had to order samples of several types of film to test the best material for producing this final assemblage installation. After lots of testing we found that front print back lit film was the best material for the project. This film allows for rich colors with the transparent qualities required.  When lit from the front the image looks like a rich fine art print. When lit from the back the hidden underlying image brings the assemblage to life showing the rivers and waterways of our United States, creating a beautiful interactive final installation for the Science Center.

We always require testing for new materials to make sure the final choice is the best. When it all works out, like in this case, it allows us to offer this material to other artists in the future for their creative projects. Just because it is not listed on our web site does not mean we will not work with you to find the material that is best for your art.

Our newly lit workspace

That idea was to install John Brown’s imagery in the windows as if there was a tree on the outside with light diffusing into the room through the frosted color of the transparent film.  After a little trial and error we figured out how to prepare his images to fit the window panes. We printed and installed the images in the windows.  Now, not only do we have bright light filling our space, we have beautiful art to enjoy during the day.  At night the patrons walking the side walks of Old Town, Alexandria, VA get to enjoy the John Brown art being lit from our lights on the inside.

Keep your minds open and come in with your ideas.  Old Town Editions will spend the time developing ideas and testing materials with our clients to get the best, most unique final product available. Realizing their unique vision is essential for each artist to set themselves apart from the rest.

Washington DC based artist John Brown images used to bring new light to our space at Old Town Editions in Alexandira, VA