BevShots sells microscopic photos of booze as modern art. Here's tequila.
Decorating the walls with your favourite drink was usually something you tried to avoid.
Now people are paying for the privilege.
Enter Bevshots MicroArt, a Florida-based company selling microscopic photographs of various alcoholic drinks as modern art.
Think of it as a classier, more grown-up version of stacking empties atop the mantle.
The prints are like a combination of spiral art and the pictures from your high school biology textbook.
They are created by placing a sample of a beverage on a microscope slide and then allowing it to crystallize, either by freezing or drying.
The slide is photographed with a standard light microscope, which is aided by some additional polarizing filters and equipped with a tiny camera.
As the light passes through the crystals it creates a rainbow effect, like holding a prism to sunlight.
The prints are neither colour enhanced nor photo-shopped, says Bevshots president Lester Hutt, who launched the company in 2009.
The idea sprung from the microscopic lens of Florida State University research scientist Michael Davidson, one of the foremost microscopists in the U.S., who in 1992 first came across the idea of selling his images as a way to fund his laboratory.
He shopped his photos around and the first company to return his call was a necktie manufacturer, which saw potential in his photos of DNA and vitamins, but wanted something a little more novel. What about alcohol?
And so Molecular Collections Cocktail ties was born and the business boomed until the late 1990s, when office culture dropped the tie in favour of business casual.
Davidson's booze prints lay dormant until a few years ago, when Hutt - a businessman with a science background - was hired by Florida State to look for commercial opportunities within the university's research labs.
Hutts came across Davidson's cocktail ties and figured they could work just as well as wall-mounted art.
The company remains small - since launching a year and a half ago they have sold to about 700 customers - but Hutt says their client base continues to grow.
Hutt now has a licensing agreement with Florida State to purchase the rights to Davidson's photographs.
They are planning to launch a line of women's fashion accessories - scarves and sarongs based on the prints - in the near future.
Prices range from $37.99 for a metallic 11-by-14-inch print to $199 for a 24-inch-square wrapped canvas. They also do coasters ($49.99) and shot glasses ($38.99). All prices are in U.S. dollars.
Vodka is the most popular print, Hutts says.
"I think it's a mixture of the fact that it looks pretty cool and it's a pretty popular alcohol."
Charles Reeve, contemporary art professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design, said he wouldn't pay for it, but Bevshots' images are "pretty," and remind him of photography that is both visually arresting and also interested in giving an unusual look at something that is otherwise familiar. The result is beguiling.
"I don't actually know anything more about a pina colada because I've seen this thing, but somehow I feel like I do."
Reeve compared the images to the first pictures of the double helix or images of chaos theory.
"It's not something that is inside the art world, per se, but it's an area of visual interest that is very compelling and has a real life of its own."
To order Bevshots from Canada, email Lester Hutts at service@bevshots.com
Original article published on the Toronto Star on Mar. 3rd, 2011.
