Gary Kaemmer, artist, is a relative of mine who, upon retirement from a successful career as a design agency and illustrator in Denver, Colorado, moved to East Hope on the north shore of Pend Oreille Lake. This is a guy who is past 80 years old now who goes to a small art studio he built next to his home every day, regular working hours, and does art. No phone, no TV, just art, all day, all week. Just because he loves it. Kind of a Renaissance man, he can use just about any medium (oils, acrylics, watercolor, sculpture, charcoal, pastels, scratchboard, graphite...) and does it all very well. Back in the 1960's he helped his brother, a founder of Vail Colorado, to promote the winter resort with a large poster. Maybe ten years ago, Gary found a faded, folded copy of the poster in his archives and he asked me to copy it, clean it up, and make a print of it. The original art was long gone. This turned out to be a considerable job- I copied it in three sections to gain resolution, then stitched those pieces together, then had to correct all of the flaws of a 1960's press run further abused by the ravages of time. Yellowed paper, all of the hundreds of printer's gremlins, the creases and folds and scratches. The large black "VAIL" title font was unusable (not real sharp, not real black and full of spots) and I rebuilt it from scratch. I then made a print at approximately the original size on a beautiful Somerset Velvet watercolor paper and it looked great (after lots of color management). Gary framed and matted it carefully, crated and shipped it to his brother Johnny, who placed it in the window of a small toy store he still has (after a career of several very successful restaurants in Vail). They began to sell right away, and for a good price. This has gone on for several years and I am always surprised when he calls me for five or ten more prints. At this point he has sold many dozens of them and they continue to sell from that one display print. As a retired artist, it helps his budget a lot and I make a few dollars too.
