Running out of space in his Toronto facility, the owner of the digital printing company Italic Press opened another one in his home region, Saint John, that is now highly visible from the air because of a large-scale colourful installation by a Toronto visual artist.
Dan Thompson, the CEO and founder of Italic Press, started the company back in 2003, working out of his home in Toronto. Nineteen years later, he’s back living in his home province and has opened a second facility at the Saint John airport. He said he doesn’t consider it a separate location, but rather an expansion of the Toronto shop that can also serve the local community.
“I recognized what the opportunity meant for me, which was we can produce high-value goods here, support our Toronto operations and ship really high-value goods out of [the Saint John] location to across North America,” said Thompson.
“I’m proud to be a New Brunswicker. The best part of all of this is that we’ve been able to teach and train up people here in Saint John.”
Italic Press is a digital printing company that specializes in “creating high-value communication pieces.” He said the company works with different brands, agencies, the retail sector, and the arts and entertainment industry.
In late 2021, Thompson was visiting Toronto and seeing a friend, Leala Hawek, a Toronto-based visual artist. She works in photography, digital collage and painting, construction hoarding and public art. At the time, she was working on a digital plaid series.
“I just started drawing strips of colour, back and forth, up and down and then layering the colour and then I really liked the way it looked and they just reminded me of madras or tart or plaid but any colour I wanted,” said Hewak.
As she showed Thompson her plaid series of artwork, they agreed the designs would look good on a larger scale, such as a building. Luckily enough, Thompson recently purchased his warehouse facility in the Saint John airport industrial park.
When the two decided to go forward with the project, Hawek realized it should be wrapped in something directly related to Saint John. After some research, she saw the city has its own tartan, which she decided to use for inspiration.
“I actually took a photograph of [the tartan] and then started to play with it, enlarge it and stretch it, play with the colour and then the more I enlarged it because it’s a fabric … [you] see these little bits of weave,” she said.
After enlarging the photograph of Saint John’s tartan more, she saw a little shape that looked like a caterpillar. She incorporated this into her design and said the little shape was a mascot welcoming people to Saint John through their airplane window.
Hewak realized the building is located in Loch Lomond and surrounded by water lochs, which led to naming the art installation “LOCH NESS” after the Scottish mythological creature.
With Hewak’s art design and Thompson’s digital printing company’s ability to print on 10-foot-wide vinyl material for outdoor use, the process began.
The process started with Thompson making a 3D model of his building and imaged her artwork on the side to show Hewak the concept. Once that was approved, they printed the panels and made the production plan for the installers. When they showed up, Thompson said it was a bunch of rolls of the graphic and pieces for the panels and the installers work in different sections along the building.
The installation took one workday to complete and will stay up for the summer.
“All art exhibits come to an end at some point. We’re not sure exactly when that is, Mother Nature might tell us but we will have it up for a while,” said Thompson.
Since Hewak is based in Toronto, she said this art installation was an opportunity for her to share some public art in an unfamiliar market.
“I do feel that public art is often misconstrued as something that’s a big city thing,” she said.
Hewak said from her own career perspective it’s satisfying to see a large piece of colourful artwork in the industrial landscape because people don’t expect to see it.
“My attitude towards public art is that it’s really meant to give people a break from their everyday life, even for a few minutes,” said Hewak. “Most people who see it feel good. That’s what I want.”
Thompson said the sole intention of this project was to liven up the area and be viewed by the public.
“There [are] not many times where we work on projects for ourselves,” said Thompson. “When do we ever get to celebrate our own space?”
Jessica Saulnier is a summer intern for Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
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