Celebrating old art works
When I pick an image for a phone case—and it’s almost always an image that’s quite old and long since in the public domain—I like to think about the artist a bit. I often imagine that if I could bring that artist back to the present time, I would say this:
"Our world today is TOTALLY different from yours in ways you can’t even begin to grasp. We have electric motors, airplanes, television, movies, photography, email, chess playing machines, automatic translation, cars, antibiotics, cell phones, computers, artificial knees, air conditioning, robots, electric lights, and a hundred thousand other things that are beyond your comprehension and that must seem like the work of either gods or devils.
"And yet: here I am using a work of art that you created, many decades or even centuries back … because people still like looking at it. People still appreciate your choice of line, color, and composition, and the overall visual harmony that you created so long ago.
"I can’t possibly explain to you what a “smartphone” is or how it works, but I can tell you this: today, people carry them everywhere they go like devotional objects—and they’ve decided that they want your art work to be on that object, so that they can look at it, and smile at it, and be pleased by it, countless times, every day."
When I think about talking to long-gone artists like that, I actually get goose bumps. And I’m completely confident that the artists—if I really could bring them back to show them these smart phone cases—would be one hundred percent, totally and absolutely, thrilled to find out how their work has endured for so long a time, through so many changes—and that it still has value, even today.
If you buy a case from my shop, I hope you’ll remember to think about the wonderful artist who created the image, and be appreciative of their work, as I am.