Creative Cogitation

In as much as I am decon­struct­ing my can­vases in hopes of get­ting the bag length + height + width under 62 inches so I don’t incur the over-sized bag fee, I have been research­ing pos­si­ble con­tain­ers for the art.  Since my stretcher bars are over-sized the pack­ag­ing is not going to be carry-on because of the length issue-I am avoid­ing the use of card­board, pressed-paper type tubes as I do not think these will be durable enough to sur­vive the bag­gage mon­keys.  Since I have done the research into long hard sided bags I am post­ing it.  Please remem­ber as you read this that I am not affil­i­ated with any of these ven­dors nor am I specif­i­cally endors­ing their prod­ucts. I have never used them. My first thought was sports bags, which quickly devolved to gun bags (golf bags are too long to meet the under 62 inch thing).  The hard sided gun bags I found that will accom­mo­date some­thing 36 inches long and still make the air­line bag­gage size limit:

• Plano Mold­ing Com­pany makes sev­eral gun bags that may fit the bill, Model 1437 is an alu­minum case, Model 10101 is plas­tic and Model 10303 is also plas­tic.  Go on line and enter Plano & the model num­ber to research prices.  I found them from $76 to $150 each. If you have some­thing slightly shorter they do have a really inex­pen­sive bag 153500 which has an inside dimen­sion of 35 inches which retails $31-$42.  I was bummed that it was just a wee bit to short for my needs. There are other plas­tic cases made by Plano which are still rea­son­able which have lengths up to about 53 inches, which would incur the over-sized bag fee but which the air­lines would still likely carry for you as checked bags. I found these bags at Ama­zon, Optic­s­Planet and many “case” deal­ers.  PlanoMolding.com is not easy to nav­i­gate although cer­tain search terms will take you to a spe­cific page that lists their gun cases (and archery cases).
• Pel­i­can Bag (casesbypelican.com/thepelicanstore.com/pelican-case.com etc.) makes one bag that may fit the bill, Model 1700 — the least expen­sive one I found was $155 with­out the foam pack­ing. Pel­i­can also makes a longer bag.  These are very tough water­proof, shock­proof, industrial-grade cases.
• Chicago Case (chicagocase.com) makes one Model 37135 — the least expen­sive one I found was $150.  Googling Chicago Case gun case will lead you to a plethora of legal actions/court cases involv­ing firearms — which makes look­ing for their bag at ven­dors bit tougher. Chicago Case also makes bags in other dimensions.
• Amer­i­c­ase makes a model 4012 which retails from $188. Amer­i­c­ase also makes bags in other dimensions.
• In addi­tion to these ven­dors who had bags that fit my specs there were oth­ers who had larger or smaller bags that didn’t suit my needs, but may suit yours.   skbcases.com, tzcase.com, hfc air­soft rifle cases etc.

Next up, tubu­lar stor­age:  I Googled things like art stor­age tube, art ship­ping tube, tele­scop­ing ship­ping tube, large diam­e­ter plas­tic ship­ping tube, some­times the results of a search sug­gest mod­i­fiers you can use to expand your search.  I found a lot of tubes for blue prints and wound up at some draft­ing sup­ply places, but they would likely work equally well.  Most of these tubes are 3″ in diam­e­ter.  It is some­what harder to find larger diam­e­ters and they do tend to be a lot more expen­sive than the smaller tubes — but I did find one 6″-diameter tele­scop­ing tube that was really cheap.  Please remem­ber I have not tried any of these prod­ucts, I don’t know the ven­dors etc.  This is just infor­ma­tion to give you an idea about where to look.

• Vil­lage Sup­plies (artstuff.net) has a tele­scop­ing tube with a 6 inch inte­rior diam­e­ter tele­scop­ing from 29 to 48 inches that retails for $17.
• I found a Plano Mold­ing expand­able tube designed for fish­ing rods that is at least 5 inches in diam­e­ter, and tele­scopes from 47 to 88 inches.  It retails locally for about $56, and I found it on Ama­zon too.
• Alvin Co. (alvinco.com) makes sev­eral prod­ucts, Alu­minum tubes retail­ing for $35  to $45, clear plas­tic (ice) tubes retail­ing for $12 to $16 of lengths up to 43 inches (these are clear plas­tic tubes so I was think­ing if I wind up with a soft sided bag they would be use­ful as the cus­toms would be able to see what’s inside with­out open­ing the tube), they also make a tele­scop­ing black plas­tic tube that goes from 27 to 50 inches retail­ing for $19.  In fact Alvin “makes” a lot more tubes — I don’t know if they buy them from Chart­pak and oth­ers and rela­bel them or if they have pur­chased the rights from Chart­pak and Axel Tube, but many of the tubes listed below also have “Alvin” equivalents. I even found a 6″ diam­e­ter tele­scop­ing tube 29 to 48 inches for $107.  Many inter­net retail­ers carry their products.
• Art­bin (art.artbin.com) makes make a tele­scop­ing black plas­tic tube that goes from 34 to 60 inches retail­ing for $47. Many inter­net retail­ers carry this product.
• Dick Blick (dickblick.com) makes clear tubes as well 25″ are $10, 37 inches are $11.
• portfolios-and-art-cases.com has a vari­ety of 6 and 8 inch diam­e­ter tubu­lar art lug­gage from 31 to 50 inches rang­ing from $90 to $175.
• Chart­pak has tubes that you can daisy chain together to make arbi­trary lengths. Chartpak’s Rapid­de­sign has a tele­scop­ing tube that goes from 26 to 43 inches with a 3.75 inte­rior diam­e­ter — watch out though many ven­dors are sell­ing the smaller 3″ diam­e­ter one.  I couldn’t find the tubes on their web­site but I did find their tubes at var­i­ous ven­dors. Recall­ing my com­ment about Alvin I won­der if they have picked up this line from Chartpak.
• Axel Tube also can be daisy chained together in foot long sec­tions 4″ diam­e­ter — the basic tube is $19 and the sec­tions are $8 each. Again it would seem that Alvin now has this brand as well.   I could not find the axle tube web­site; if you Google you wind up with either auto­mo­tive parts or the YouTube wannabe.
• Flam­beau (flambeaucases.com) makes a 3 ” diam­e­ter tele­scop­ing ship­ping tube that goes from 61 to 85 inches for those of you with really long stretcher bars. But were I you I might con­sider the fish­ing rod tube by Plano Mold­ing as it has a larger diameter.
• Displays2Go.com has sev­eral 12″ diam­e­ter wheeled graph­ics tubes  (and even some larger diam­e­ters), which will accom­mo­date art from 31″ to 71″ rang­ing in price from $124 to $230.  Again much of this stuff is over-sized accord­ing to the air­line, but it may pro­vide a means of pack­ag­ing your art with reusable air­line trans­port.  These are designed for road war­riors who travel from con­ven­tion to con­ven­tion.   I think they are a bit pricey for my needs, but you may find their price rea­son­able if you plan to use the bag over and over.

So that is what I have found. I hope you find this infor­ma­tion useful.

As for me, armed with the infor­ma­tion I had about gun cases I started ask­ing a few gun enthu­si­asts I knew if they had a gun case meet­ing my spec­i­fi­ca­tions.  It seems one of my friends actu­ally has a Plano case and he will let me bor­row it.

Another Artist talked to 2007 par­tic­i­pant Ana Bikic. She said that most peo­ple did not sell any­thing at that Bien­nale.  She dis­cussed the mat­ter with the Ital­ian Con­sulate in Miami and appar­ently did have bet­ter luck than I did with the Ital­ian Con­sulate in LA; the Miami con­sulate said that since the art was not for sale, it was an exhi­bi­tion etc, there would be no VAT — of course that was 2007 and this is 2009.  When she trav­eled, she flew with her art & she told US and Ital­ian cus­toms that the art was not for sale and had no prob­lems (at least that is what I under­stood of the email I received).

Of course if you are still plan­ning to ship your art, then other rules may apply.

Ana hung her art “tapes­try style” with­out stretch­ers, but does sug­gest using some­thing like Vel­cro to pin the raw edges back.  She said many artists did this in 2007.   She also sug­gested hav­ing mini par­ties at the show booths, as  in 07 the spon­sors did not mind cham­pagne being present at the booths.

Ana sug­gested some­thing to hand out; her pref­er­ence was cards.  An Aus­tralian Artist, Joy Engle­man, sug­gested bring­ing 1000 brochures.  Just because the Bien­nale is not a sell­ing oppor­tu­nity does not mean that it is not a mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­nity.  So get your kit together and pre­pare some­thing nice enough to hand out.

Well that is where I am at with respect to fly­ing with art etc.  I hope you are hav­ing a great day.

–Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.