The Nitpicky Artist
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    • Anti-Reflective Glass
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Anti-Reflective Glass

Recently I've considered protecting my paintings with glass to prevent damage to the painted surface. It seems like every time I submit a piece into a show, it returns to me with some minor little scuff or scratch. The severity is never enough to contact the show's curator, but it is frustrating. So for one of the group shows I submitted to, I decided to cover the piece with plexi-glass or clear acrylic. I chose acrylic because it's clear, easy to cut at home, and shatter resistant. Although the piece didn't win anything in the competition, it was returned to me in perfect condition. It was nice not to have to repair or clean the dust from the painting.

Now that it is time to sell the painting in my next solo show, I wanted to invest in some good anti-reflective glass or acrylic. After some research I found a company called Frame Destination and they offer a product called Gro Glass. Gro Glass is a much cheaper alternative to the crazy expensive prices offered by Tru Vue. Like Tru Vue, Gro Glass also has an entire line of different types of picture glass. For my application, I was interested in a product that was water-clear and had an anti-reflective coating.  I decided to go with Gro Glass's Artglass WW Anti-Reflection and Frame Destination cut it to the exact size I needed for my painting. For a about $40 shipped, I received a high quality piece of glass that looks fantastic and does a good job at blocking reflections. See the difference from standard acrylic and this specialty glass below.  
As you can see it removes nearly all reflections except for leaving a bit of the window. This is obviously not the most ideal place to hang art, but I think it was a good test to see just how much this glass is able to remove reflections. According to Gro Glass, regular clear glass and acrylic will reflect about 8% of light off it's surface. Their anti-reflective glass reflects only about 1%. I'm satisfied with this reduction and once it's placed in the correct lighting, this glass is truly invisible. 

Here is the proof...
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This piece is ready for the show. I bet people won't even realize there is glass covering this painting.

I'm was impressed with both the product and service from Frame Destination so I'm going to give a link to the product page on their site. Talk about free advertisement.
https://www.framedestination.com/framing-supplies/glass-and-acrylic/artglass-ww-ar.html
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