Celebration VI Art Show – First Looks Round 1

StarWars.com posted a first look for 10 of the Art Show prints that will be available for sale at Celebration. One change this year is that Acme Archives will be offering a pre-order for pick up at Celebration VI. Individual artists who will have their own booths will also be offering pre-orders from their respective websites.

We had speculated that Acme Archives would be more involved with the sale of prints outside of the convention since ShopStarWars.com is now out of business. After previous Celebrations, leftover prints were offered for sale online at SSW.com so we may see that again, with Acme taking over.

One thing we are sure of, the serious art buyers should have an easier and shorter time picking up their prints this time around..

As for the individual prints, so far we are not overly impressed. It feels like we’ve seen these before because they’re similar in style and theme to what the artists have released at previous Celebrations. Jerry Vanderstelt is offering a Return of the Jedi themed print which adds on to his theme of The Empire Strikes Back poster from 2007 but the Grant Gould piece is very similar to other works he’s offered in the past.

We were so certain some of these felt familiar that we spent some time looking over various art sources last night and found Russell Walks is reusing a piece of art that was first included in Star Wars Galaxy 5 release of trading cards from Topps (card 53). The Stephen Hayford piece also appears to be a larger, and slightly rearranged, version of a photo he has had posted on his website for some time.

While we don’t feel any of the artwork is subpar, we do with there was a fresher feeling to the subject matter and style. There are a couple of artists new to the Celebration Art Show family that we have yet to see prints from so there’s still a chance we’ll be blown away by something.