Strong

Phone Booth Gallery began organizing and curating art exhibitions in April 2008. Migrating all around Southern California, and now located on Broadway in Long Beach, we have since become known worldwide for our unique stable of artists, our modest method of operation, and our exceptional selection of printed art editions. The “Originals” section of the site is a small sampling of the work we have available outside of our normal exhibition schedule, but if you are looking for a specific piece or work by a certain artist, we will do our best to fulfill special requests. Many of the artists we work with are available for commissions, and we love working on new projects. Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay") is a neologism for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclée" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray". It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial "Iris proofs" from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints. The art of Dutch artist Handiedan (1981, Netherlands) involves a complex cut and paste mixture of computer montage and highly detailed sculptural hand cut collages, complimented by conscientiously collected antique ornamental frames. Build out of multiple classic pin-up body parts, the female form stands out over a backdrop of baroque and Victorian Neo-Classicism designs. All culled from international currencies and stamps, antique sheet music ornaments, playing cards, cigar bands, Asian papers with personal items and drawings. Intricate and meticulously crafted, the collages represent the gradual accumulation of both the layers in her work and her work process self. Handiedan first builds up her digital design out of the gathered collage material and drawings. Then she rebuilds the design into a meticulously crafted multi layered hand cut collage with precisely added items. A complex visual puzzle and labyrinth of collage and paper layers, interchangeably intermixed, that stands out in relief. Handiedan works in series. This suffices as an eclectic personal exploration or review of her main design's journey and process. With each piece on either paper, antique wood or rusty metal, or a different size, containing different collage elements and details result in a different story, emotion and time dimension within each piece. When