Segura Publishing thrives in topsy-turvy business

The print art world can be a risky place to invest your dollars. Sometimes you win and sometimes you can be financially devastated. Joe Segura, a master printer, artist and owner of Segura Publishing Co. of Mesa, has experienced both the ups-and-downs of the print art industry.

Today, however, after 25 years in the topsy-turvy business, he — and his company — are considered a success, both from an entrepreneurial as well as an artistic perspective.

For example, the works of the artists Segura represents are exhibited in major museums, including 300 of their prints in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and his company’s bottom line is flourishing.

Other exhibiting museums are the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Fogg Collection in Boston and the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco.

The average selling price for his clients’ artwork has increased from between $200 and $300 each when he first opened his business to $1,000 today.

Some have sold for as much as $15,000.

“The price of art — printed works, paintings, drawings and sculpture — has gone up dramatically in the last 10 years,” said Segura. “A lot of people can’t afford to buy them, so we also try to fill that gap by providing printed art at reasonable prices. We also sell expensive works, of course.”

His company has worked with and represented about 100 artists, both well-known and some emerging artists over the years and has a half dozen contracts with companies and art galleries.

In 1981, when he opened his combination studio, art gallery and publishing company in Tempe, his list of clients could be counted on one hand.

“Its not so much that the number of our artists has grown, it’s the higher prices their works are drawing and the increasing number of prints we’re able to distribute,” said Segura.

Many of his client-artists work directly with Segura in his studio, which is adjacent to the new Mesa Arts Center. He moved from downtown Tempe to the 4,000-square foot Mesa location in 2002.

Together, Segura and the artists combined their respective skills to create a finished product that Segura distributes.

Most printed artwork peices has the artist’s signature as well as the number the print represents of the total printed. A number — 30/300 — for instance, shows the particular work is the 30th of a total 300 printed.

However, a concept generally believed by art buyers is that the lower the number on the print — the more valuable the print — is not always true, explained Segura.

“There are a lot of other factors that determine the price of a print,” he said, especially the artist’s popularity.

Segura, who also teaches art at Arizona State University, traces his journey to the upper, brighter regions of the art world back to his somewhat economically darker childhood.

“My grandparents were illegals (undocumented immigrants) who came from Mexico to work in the steel mills in Sterling, Illinois, about 100 miles west of Chicago,” Segura said. “My father was born in Illinois and, looking back, we struggled.”

The Segura family lived in a low-income neighborhood and included his parents and four siblings, who, like their brother, later .went on to earn college degrees and successful careers.

Segura graduated from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill., where he attended classes given by the famous creator of the geodesic dome, architect and inventor, Buckminster Fuller.

He earned a master of fine arts degree in 1976 and the next year attended the Tamarind Institute, a printing school, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque where he earned his Master Printer title.

He joined and initially managed the Print Research facility at ASU the following year, where he began his teaching and film-making career.

“All of my films deal with both art and the cultural, political and emotional issues dealing with art,” Segura said.

One of his films, “Pasa un Angel,” featured artist Claudia Bernardi of Argentina who created a printed artwork based on the 1981 massacre of children in El Salvador. It won the Golden Spire Award, the top honor in the Arts category of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Segura worked with Bernardi to create the artwork which depicted images of buried bones of children among other items.

But it is the printed artwork created by Segura working directly with artists that has helped him build an international reputation as well as financial profits.

Joe Segura

Resides in: Tempe

Business: Founder and president, Segura Publishing Co., 51 E. Main Street, Mesa

Key achievements: Established a fine art printing company 25 years ago in the Valley that today represents contemporary artists nationally and internationally

Taught art at Arizona State University for nearly 30 years; founded Encanto Films, a local production company for art and politically oriented documentary films that have won international art festival awards

Success philosophy: Support art and artists that offer political, social and cultural dialogues — Joe Segura

Information: (480) 894-0551 or www.segura.com