Artletics, a New Partner for Fine Art Registry®:
Art, Inspiration and Integrity
by
David Phillips, for Fine Art Registry®
What is Artletics?
When Joseph Cioffi formed the basic concept for Artletics in 1998, it was for him the perfect marriage of his two great passions in life: sports (athletics) and art. Eight years working for Disney as an artist while also gaining great insights into branding, a lifelong involvement with sports, inspiration gained from America's greatest athletes and some unexpectedly fruitful work creating original concepts for Players, Inc., all met at a point and ARTLETICS™ was the result. A key ingredient for Joe, right from the start, was integrity. He has developed this concept to a fine state of maturity and formed a company that is second to none in its field.
Founded in 2003, Artletics is primarily web-based company selling high-end limited edition sports art and related products - with a difference. It has several unique aspects to it that really put it in a league of its own, not to be confused with other companies who are simply selling sports memorabilia.
"It is our sincere hope that through art we can express the respect we have for the personalities and the games that have enriched the American culture for so long," says Joe, who describes his role in the company he founded, as Managing Partner and Creative Director. He adds, "Artletics is an original brand of sports art that 'Celebrates America's Athletic Legacy.'"
The following statements sum up the character of Artletics:
It's about seeing with your heart. It's about the joy of being a kid. It's about time standing still. It's about dreaming. It's about a better time and place. It's about youth.
It's baseball on a transistor radio. It's the smell of a well-oiled mitt. It's jazz and apple pie. It's getting tackled in leaves on a cold fall day. It's an old wooden hockey stick. It's about white picket fences and soda-pop. It's about home.
It's about values. It's about fathers and sons, a mom's healing hand and brothers and sisters. It's about community and friends. It's about simplicity.
Artletics is integrity. It's about the understanding of sacrifice. It is about overcoming adversity. It's about being free. It is about the appreciation of history. It's about certain fundamental truths that shaped an American culture.
Our Mission is to utilize our artistic integrity and creativity to:
provide a quality of sports art that is unparalleled
preserve American sports history
share our vision with sports fans and art enthusiasts all over the world.
These traits and principles are unique to the American culture and help give birth to the people that inspire us, thus Joe decided to base the brand principles of Artletics around these simple observations and truths.
For the last five years, Artletics has offered a variety of high-end sports art and collectibles carrying imagery of a very high quality and aesthetic value, as can be seen in this article. Each piece also carries with it a story about the player or the game or something related to the subject matter, which provides great interest and value and helps preserve a small piece of American sports history. The prints are a visual and written slice of this country's sports heritage. Each image is exclusive to Artletics.
The Artletics Difference
There are some striking differences between what Artletics is doing and what other memorabilia or collectibles companies do.
A major factor is simply that the quality is really outstanding. These prints are noticeably top notch and of a substance that any fan or collector would be proud to own and would treasure and pass down the generations.
The Artletics philosophy is a bit different from many others. "We sell from a biographical standpoint," explains Joe, "Which means that we try to not only sell the imagery but also the story that comes along with it, so there's an inspirational nature to each print. Not only are you buying a picture but you're learning something." Take a look at the Dan Marino piece. Included with that print (and each of the Artletics prints) is biographical information, a little story or sub-story, telling you a bit about Dan Marino that's positive and not negative.
This is a key point. When he founded Artletics, Joe decided to steer clear of the general media tendency to focus on scandal, gossip and negative aspects of the sports stars they cover. "We're not really worried about the extracurriculars that you hear on mainstream media about how somebody got into trouble or they made a bad decision," says Joe. "We worry about the sports and the athletes that played them and the inherent beauty of the personality and the inherent beauty of the game itself."
He quotes author and web-comic illustrator R. R. Milholland: "Our heroes are people and people are flawed. Don't let that taint the thing you love."
Too many times in the current age, people, and kids especially, will have heroes or people they admire and sooner or later they are torn down. We all have faults. "If we let the fact that other people have faults taint the things that we enjoy, before we know it we won't have anything to love or enjoy," Joe points out. "There's such a negative spin on everything. We're trying to keep it positive. Everything behind the product is positive, from the content and imagery, to the stories, even the way it's printed, packaged sold and sent out - it's very positive in nature. We try to deal with things that in the end are uplifting."
For example, Babe Ruth had a notorious appetite for certain undesirable vices and one could concentrate on that, but he also took a lot of time with kids, he never turned down an autograph and he would go into orphanages on a regular basis. Artletics prefers to concentrate on those things, especially as he is no longer here, and let kids and people gravitate towards the legendary and positive aspects of their hero's persona. Joe suggests that is what is so intriguing about people - we can be so fundamentally flawed in some areas, but so inspiring in others. It makes our heroes human and accessible, but at the same time inspiring.
Limited Edition Exclusives
An exciting new concept for Artletics is a new series of prints: Limited Edition Exclusives. Joe explains how the concept came about. "We looked at the imagery that was available on the market from some larger companies and it seemed so run-of-the mill. I was dealing with some vintage photography and I wanted to move into more contemporary subject matter. I was introduced to a Tarpon Springs photographer, Al Messerschmidt, who has been photographing sports for over 35 years. What makes him unique is he photographs just about all sports. Many sports photographers will find a niche like maybe tennis and golf and they'll primarily shoot within that limited field. Al does everything, and he has covered so much of the American sports scene over the course of the last 35 years that he has a very wide variety of subject matter to choose from.”
Joe personally works with artists like Al Messerschmidt to choose images, which have the right content but also have artistic merit and are a little bit different. The main objective is to offer imagery that is unique for a fan that is looking for something different. An example is a photo of Tiger Woods silhouetted on a driving range before a tournament and in the foreground is his bag with his Tiger head covers and all you see is this undeniable silhouette of Tiger Woods. The generally available images of Tiger Woods seen on TV and in the media tend to be of him out amongst the public and on the fairway. This, on the other hand, is a beautiful shot of a theme one would not ordinarily see. Another print shows Dan Marino before a game coming out of the tunnel, a tight, dramatically-lit close-up of his face. The fact that these were captured on the fly - not staged - is a testament to Messerschmidts artistic approach and talent and makes them even more beautiful because the viewer really is immersed in the setting and involved with what an athlete might experience pre-game, post-game, during the game - moments that usually pass us by.
The limited editions are of 250 each, in most cases 11" x 14" high quality prints, each individually signed by the artist. There is so much fraudulent activity in the realm of athlete autographs on prints that Joe prefers to stay away from it; with the exception of some material that he knows for sure is legitimate. The purchaser can take the beautiful Artletics print and get it autographed himself or herself and have the certainty that it is a real autograph.
There are close to twenty Limited Edition Exclusive prints available already with more on the drawing board. The idea of these Limited Edition Exclusives is to present a different view of the athlete than is available anywhere else. There are the ones of Tiger Woods and of Dan Marino as already mentioned. Another example is the shot of legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Troy Aikman. Usually great chaos surrounds the quarterback, but in this picture Troy is under center with beautiful colors from the stands in the background, blurred because of how the shot was composed, and it looks completely calm even though he is just a second away from being rushed by 300 pound linemen - there is a serene quality about the photo.
They have artistic merit, biographical value, and are of historic importance and are part of a limited, signed, numbered edition. This makes them very collectible.
Joe also plans to reproduce some imagery from other photographers that worked for notable publications, like Marvin E. Newman, who produced some great material on Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle doing spring training in St. Petersburg and many others, all, again from that different perspective which is a key hallmark of the Limited Editions Exclusive series.
The full launch of the Limited Edition Exclusive line is scheduled for mid to late September of this year. The World Series will begin at that time, and then football and hockey will be starting the first week of October, making that time of the year the best for sports fans, with all these sports going on for two or three weeks with a game every night and a huge significance to those games. Everyone will be really excited.
There are a number of other products due for release at the same time, which will make this a major step forward for Artletics expansion.
Artletics and Fine Art Registry®
One of the most important aspects of Artletics, which conclusively sets it apart from any other publisher, or producer of sports memorabilia or art, is in the area of authenticity. This is a major issue in the sports collectible field and has not previously been tackled head-on successfully.
But now Artletics has formed a partnership with Fine Art Registry and will be tagging and registering each Limited Edition Exclusive print before it is shipped. Joe Cioffi stumbled across Fine Art Registry when he was researching labels for his products.
Joe recalls, "I had read an article earlier about the fraudulent activity involved with prints and with digital technology these days, so when I found out about Fine Art Registry, I thought this was really a fantastic service, which would really increase the level of comfort for the end user from the standpoint of authenticity, ownership, investment or just perceived value. All the way around it conquered a lot of bad things that could potentially happen in the collectibles industry."
As a result, Artletics is our latest partner, which means they are set up to tag and register all of their Limited Edition Exclusive prints and any other products they care to use the system to protect. This means that sports fans that buy Limited Edition Exclusive prints have a unique product in yet another way. It will be uniquely tagged and will be registered in the Fine Art Registry database along with information about the print and the edition. This will protect the edition from being forged or faked in any way and owners will be secure that they have the real thing. Ownership will be transferred when the pieces are bought and the new owner will also have a portfolio on the Fine Art Registry website for the prints that he owns.
No one else in the sports print field is doing this. Artletics had the foresight to predict the added value that tagging their limited editions will bring. In a world where limited editions are not always so limited and unscrupulous publishers, not to mention outright forgers, abuse the production of multiples, and any one can buy a scanner and inkjet printer and set up shop, Artletics products will stand out for the integrity with which they are produced, managed, sold and preserved.
This is going to provide an independent body that's going to vouch for the authenticity of the product, giving the consumer a level of confidence that they are purchasing something which is what it says it is, whose ownership can be tracked and where the edition can also be kept track of. This all adds real value.
"As we look maybe 50 years ahead, certainly transfer of ownership is going to be recorded and one will be able to tell, for example, that the edition is 250 but maybe only 75 of these sold. That increases the value, especially if they’re out of print," Joe points out. "It will also prevent any unauthorized reproduction. If it's not tagged and registered, it won't be the real thing and that will be very clear."
He adds, "I was looking for something like this because you run into so many different people who are involved with collectibles and memorabilia and many of them, for lack of a better term, are crooks. They even take advantage of kids in the baseball collectible market, as far as the cards go.
"What I've tried to do with sports art is say there's a different way to look at it there's a different way to do it and the Fine Art Registry has given me another brick within that foundation to offer a really solid product."
Joe is justifiably proud of being the first in his field to adopt the Fine Art Registry system. His customers will be the beneficiaries.
Plans
The future looks bright. Artletics has just come to an agreement with Bruce Stark, sports cartoonist for the New York Daily News in the 60s, 70s and 80s, who was voted sports cartoonist of the year several times. Mr. Stark has come out of retirement to do a series of five prints for Artletics that will be commemorating the closing of Yankee Stadium, done in his unique style, which mixes caricature and editorial style cartoon. Bruce Stark is a legend that has done work with the Elvis Presley estate, presidents of the USA, and has many other claims to fame.
Artletics is currently in development on a high end collectible which takes advantage of how print technology has progressed while maintaining time honored traditions. Joe hints it is in the trading card realm, but will possess a real special appeal for all collectors from a design and branding standpoint, something that can and will be passed down for generations.
This is part of a trend on the part of Artletics to move further into the field of collectibles - not just image based art. The cards will be a great novelty for sports fans that are collectors.
Conclusion
Joe Cioffi sees Artletics as having a major distinguishing feature from all other related brands: "We're looking for alternatives in terms of what technology offers from a printing standpoint, from a creative standpoint, and from a security standpoint, so as to offer unique high-end items to sports fans. There's so much to be taken into consideration in terms of communication, print technology, creativity, that you can create so much more these days at such a reasonable price, that there should be more available to fans than is being handed to them. We talked about the fraudulent activity that goes on in the collectibles industry and now into the print industry and the fact that FAR® is offering its service to the consumer solves the problem of fraudulent activity."
Stan Savran, legendary sports broadcaster from Pittsburgh, PA. who ushered in the 'Golden Age of Pittsburgh Sports Talk Radio' and is a member of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, sums it up: "What Artletics is doing through imagery and imaginative efforts to preserve American sports history will provide inspiration and joy for future generations of sports fans to come."
— by David Phillips
| August 22, 2008 |
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