Welcome to the FLAX Canvas, our blog. We hope you enjoy it. Check back now and then and you’ll always find something new and different. (Our first blog post – Welcome!)
FLAX Canvas
Art Contest for FLAX Facebook Page
Enter our Facebook cover image contest for a chance to win a $250 gift card and see your artwork on the FLAX Facebook Timeline Cover! Artists of all levels are welcome to enter. Artwork must be original and all mediums will be considered. A new winner will be chosen each month and we are accepting entries now… More »
The Flax ‘F’ and MOMA
News to me. The Flax “F” is in the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art! The distinction came sometime before I was born. As I’ve been wading through industry history from old magazines we found, this gem of information was in a 1962 issue. Harvey Flax, who ran the Los Angeles Flax store, commissioned a young designer named Louis Danzinger in 1949 to create a new trademark… More »
Flax Goes Energy Efficient
We are very pleased to have just completed a lighting retrofit in our building. New Light Energy Design, working under the umbrella of PG&E and San Francisco Energy Watch, replaced 449 energy-sucking bulbs with new efficient bulbs set into retrofitted fixtures. The end result is a reduction in greenhouse gases of 59,168.9 pounds per year, equivalent to removing 5.71 cars from the road. More »
How to Find Fine Art for Your Walls
The San Francisco Bay Area is blessed with more working artist studios than any region in the country, well over a thousand. But if you are looking for some art to adorn your walls, where do you go? Here’s how to surround your home or business with fine art… More »
Classic Ads from Yesterday
We found a treasure. In the basement, unmarked boxes that held copies of old magazines dating as far back as 1952, all issues of Art Material Trade News, a publication from NAMTA that was distributed to those within the art supply industry only; manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Fascinated, over a few nights and a few glasses of wine I went page-by-page through more than 100 magazines and found these advertising gems… More »
Our Proud Year of Bridge Building
Looking back on 2011 makes me proud. We set out to build bridges within our community and I think we accomplished more than expected. With this new website launching last March we had a new way of sharing and presenting all the activities. That set the tone, and here’s our year by numbers… More »
Blackwing Pencils – “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed”
Gliding with ease, the Eberhard-Faber Blackwing was one of the most beloved instruments in the artistic community. It had a cult like following with its sleek design and deliciously smooth 4B lead, and its famous slogan, “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed” was no exaggeration. Now it’s back… More »
Holiday Cards to Cheer
Congratulations to Casey Jones, our stationery buyer. Because of Casey’s keen eye and great taste, Flax earned a mention in this SF Examiner article as a go-to place for cool stationery. This photo at left shows our current display of holiday greeting cards. From humor and whimsy to classic design, Casey has assembled a huge assortment with… More »
New Digital Printing Service
We are pleased to introduce Digital Printing as a new service for our customers. We worked very hard to develop the program to ensure that we deliver a quality product at competitive prices. Create your fine art Giclée on your choice of four surfaces. We offer canvas stretching too. For the Do It Yourself printer, we carry… More »
Bike Art
This photograph has received a lot of attention in our offices. I brought it in to use as a test image for our digital printing service, so there are multiple prints lying about in our conference room, and literally every visitor remarks on this photo. It was taken in August on a ride out to Drake’s Estero in Pt. Reyes. Pedaling along the trail that ends on a bluff overlooking the estuary, we stopped at this gnarly eucalyptus… More »