Welcome to the latest episode of Behind The Print, where we bring you the creative stories of industry leaders shaping the world of professional printing. In this episode of Behind The Print, we’re joined by Ron Golbus of Graphic Encounter Fine Art. With a lifelong passion for fine art and an extremely keen eye for detail, Ron walks us though how he provides art for some of the most luxurious hotels in the world.

Below, you’ll find the transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity to ensure easy reading. If you want the full, authentic experience, make sure to check out the video attached below.

Connor Shields: Welcome back to Behind the Print Podcast, where we feature industry leaders and uncover the creative minds and their businesses within the world of professional printing. Our mission is to provide you with inspiring actionable resources that elevate your business projects and accelerate your journey to excellence in profit and in print.

Today’s episode is Hospitality Art Consultation, and joining me here today is the Founder and CEO of Graphic Encounter Fine Art, Ron Golbus. Welcome to the podcast.

Ron Golbus: Thank you very much for inviting me to be part of your community.

Connor Shields: Thank you for joining us. We’re, happy to have you. So if you are ready, let’s just dive right into it. Sound good?

Ron Golbus: I’m ready to rock and roll.

Connor Shields: So you’ve been doing this for a long time. How did Graphic Encounter Fine Art begin?

Ron Golbus: So when I got discharged from the military in 1970, I started as what turned out to be a full-time job selling artwork door to door in office buildings in and around Los Angeles, carrying artwork in a laminated decoupage plaque format of art prints that I would carry under my arm and go office buildings to see if I could sell the art that I was carrying around.

Connor Shields: And how did that expand into a Graphic Encounter Fine Art, it’s a bit different from door to door sales to what you are now.

Ron Golbus: It’s kind of a long story because I’ve been doing this for 55 years, but at the very beginning I was so successful selling artwork door to door in office buildings that I had teams of young people like myself in my twenties also canvassing office buildings, selling artwork. I met someone whose uncle was an artist, he did silkscreen prints of Victorian homes that were hand colored, and I started selling those framed to Levitz Furniture back in the day, which was a big furniture company that had distribution across the United States. Then I took that idea and tried to sell it to Hilton Hotels back in 1974. That’s how I got into the hospitality aspect of my business, and at the time, Hilton Hotels had me design artwork like silkscreen in colors to match their room decor. That’s how it started.

Connor Shields:  So you serve some pretty massive organizations. What can you tell me about your typical clientele?

“At the very beginning I was so successful selling artwork door to door in office buildings that I had teams of young people like myself in my twenties also canvassing office buildings, selling artwork. I met someone whose uncle was an artist, he did silkscreen prints of Victorian homes that were hand colored, and I started selling those framed to Levitz Furniture back in the day, which was a big furniture company that had distribution across the United States. Then I took that idea and tried to sell it to Hilton Hotels back in 1974. That’s how I got into the hospitality aspect of my business, and at the time, Hilton Hotels had me design artwork like silkscreen in colors to match their room decor.”

Ron Golbus: So over time, my focus was to develop relationship with interior designers and architectural firms that were helping to design projects in Las Vegas. I lived in Los Angeles but Las Vegas was attractive to me because in the early seventies it was very underdeveloped. I went there to try and find out who I could work with, who were the interior designers that were working on projects in Las Vegas with scale and consequence. At the time there were no big hotels in Las Vegas, so I created a relationship with a design firm in Los Angeles that had an office in Las Vegas, and we designed artwork for the first 3000 room hotel called Excalibur. That was the first 3000 room hotel in the world, and we designed artwork for all the guest rooms.

That’s what got me into the Las Vegas arena, so to speak. Then I wound up doing almost every hotel in Las Vegas just because of relationships that I created with designers and architects, because they actually asked me how I could help them with artwork for their guest rooms.

Connor Shields:  So when you’re dealing with these massive hotel chains, what kind of problems do you typically run into when you’re putting in the yard?

Ron Golbus: So if you don’t get in front of what would turn out to be a problem, it will be a disaster. We have the creative division – an art studio in Los Angeles, that that creates original artwork for all the projects that we work on. The art design capability is developed in Los Angeles and my art studio in Los Angeles dialogues directly with the designers and architects for the artwork that corresponds to the narrative that they give us for a particular look and feel of a project’s needs. The art is all created in Los Angeles, but we print all of the art in different parts of the country because we print artwork on paper canvas, die bond, aluminum, laminated glass for the sides of buildings.

Not only we do artwork for guestrooms of hotels, which is always my focus because that’s where all the quantity holds, but we also do the wallpaper for all the corridor. We do artwork for restaurants. We do artwork for spas. We do artwork for Indian gaming projects throughout the country. When we design the art, we have to make sure that the designers sign off on the designs that we do. So we always create what we call an art spec that shows all the imagery that we do and the designers who we never actually  meet. Very rarely do we meet the designers across the country. It’s all done virtually, then they sign off on the PDFs that we send to them that shows the artwork that corresponds to their narrative.

“So if you don’t get in front of what would turn out to be a problem, it will be a disaster. We have the creative division – an art studio in Los Angeles, that that creates original artwork for all the projects that we work on. The art design capability is developed in Los Angeles and my art studio in Los Angeles dialogues directly with the designers and architects for the artwork that corresponds to the narrative that they give us for a particular look and feel of a project’s needs.”

In addition to that, we have to create the actual samples on the different substrates, whether it be paper or canvas or aluminum, and we send samples to the design firm for them to sign off. The next step would be that depending on their timeframe and the scope of the project, they would have us put together what they call a model room.

Once we design everything and print everything and frame everything – whether it be in Los Angeles, New Jersey or Tijuana, Mexico – we ship everything for the model room, then they sign off on it. That helps prevent problems from unfolding subsequent to our delivery of the product, to the job site. The fabrication of the product has to be perfect so that every single piece of a thousand of one unit or a thousand of five units is fabricated correctly in Tijuana, because I’m not at the Tijuana factory, so I’ve trained the production facility in Tijuana, in Los Angeles to fabricate everything perfectly.

Everything we provide to the hospitality industry is individually boxed, and then we box by room. So to answer your question even more specifically, when we did the Wynn Las Vegas project, the Wynn organization asked me to provide five pictures for every one of the 3000 guest rooms that they were building.

So we did 15,000 Andy Warhol prints for the Wynn Las Vegas project. Then we did 3000 images on Canvas for Encore at Wynn Las Vegas, which was the second tier project behind Wynn Las Vegas, and everything was packaged by room, which is one of the distinguishing aspects of my production overview. If there are five pictures required for one room, regardless of the size of the pictures, they’re individually wrapped, but all five pictures go in one box.

In this case there are five labels on the outside of the box. So if we get the room matrix from the hotel developer as to what’s required on each floor, because floors are divided into queen compliments and King room compliments.

So you can imagine a 3000 room hotel when the artwork is delivered to the project site, they don’t install all the rooms all at one time. They probably do three rooms, three floors at a time. So they tell the warehouse what they need for those three floors, and because we palletize by floor, they only get what they need. Typically, our competition fabricates and ships all the artwork and wooden crates, and they’re not individually packed by room and they’re not individually packed by floor. So this a distinguishing logistic paradigm that I created for the factory that separates Graphic Encounter from all of our competition.

We don’t have inventory of art, everything for every project is unique, and so my production teams have to fabricate it correctly for the installation aspect of our business model. There was never one mistake. No marks, no damage. We guarantee all of our products, if anything ever gets damaged when transit, we replace it free of charge.

So in my 55 years of doing this, I’ve identified working procedures and fabrication protocols that eliminate all these problems that you’re talking about.

Connor Shields:  Sounds like you run a pretty tight ship. I mean, you have to in your business.

“So in my 55 years of doing this, I’ve identified working procedures and fabrication protocols that eliminate all these problems that you’re talking about.”

Ron Golbus: I’m in Aspen, Colorado. I’m not at any of the factories. I’m not at the design firm office. I’m not at the hotel where artwork is being installed. The algorithm that I’ve created for all this over time is a set of procedures that make sure that there are no problems, there is no breakage. That’s how I’ve run my company. That’s why we’re successful at that level of market. We don’t provide art to Holiday Inns. We don’t provide artwork to the brand standards. They call it like Hilton Hotels. We really specialize as a boutique fine art consulting company on four and five star projects.

That’s been my focus over time are the larger projects that have towers. We’re working on two new projects in Las Vegas that are each a thousand rooms. So the design process corresponds to our creating artwork that reflects the narrative given to us by the designers, and that’s the art side, but the, the selection of the frames and the printing of the items on different substrates like paper or canvas or die bond aluminum or glass, is something that I take upon my production team’s plate to make sure that my fabricators do everything correctly.

Connor Shields:  You did go over this a little bit previously, but could you walk me through a bit more of the consultation process? Like how do you determine the type of art that goes into the hotel? And not just the type of art, but like the framing, whether it’s canvas or paper, that sort of thing. How do you determine the type of art and its framing that goes into each hotel.

Ron Golbus: So that’s a perfect question. It’s actually quite simple, but it’s not easy. What happens is the design firm will give us a very abstract narrative. We’re working on a project that has a mid-century look. We need abstracts in colors like what kind of imagery can you provide to us? It’s actually shown on my website, we have an overview of how we work and it talks about the essence of their brand that they’re wanting us to develop that corresponds to their client satisfaction when they see the art. That’s the. Unifying factor in the guest room.

Their focus is how to bring their brand forward. So when we work with Caesar’s Entertainment, or if we work with MGM International, or if we work with Wynn design and development on these projects, their personality is personified by the art in the guest rooms. I mean, yes, the carpets are important, and yes, the bedding is important and the furniture design. But when people walk into a guest room, of course they’re looking at a horizontal display of art. They’re wanting to see art on the walls, and so their narrative that they give to us is interpreted by my art studio in Los Angeles, and we provide to the designers our interpretation of their narrative.

We just did a project for Churchill Downs in Kentucky. So they wanted images printed on die bond aluminum metal. They wanted a different substrate, so we generated these large four by eight foot panels of custom art that was printed on metal and then custom framed. So once the client chooses the art, they choose the substrate they want.

Then the issue of the framing unfolds. So we work with the largest molding company in the United States for the picture frame moldings. There are only two molding types that correspond to a project. You either have shadow box frames, which are used when images are printed on paper. There are canvas floater frames for images printed on fine art canvas.

So the designers don’t really understand how to choose the frame for the substrate, so we educate them. My job is to educate them by providing samples of canvas, floater frames and shadow box frames, and we send these samples free of charge to the design firms. So now they’re looking at the art.

Now they’re looking at the samples of the frames. So that’s how the design narrative given to us for the art design. The choosing of the substrate that the images are going to be printed onto, and then the frames that correspond to the substrate that the images have been printed onto. Those are the steps are what we specialize in, handholding the process for the designer to understand, and then showing them all the samples. We don’t charge for the samples, we don’t charge for the design time, we charge for the model room, but all of our design is all done pro bono. Some art consultants might charge by the hour or maybe they charge by the project. But we don’t do that. It’s just not an industry standard to charge for the design time. So we basically just absorb those costs on our side to get the project going.

Connor Shields:  That’s like you said, it’s easy on paper, but when it comes to like execution, it’s a little more complicated

Ron Golbus: It’s very complicated with all the steps involved. Speed is everything in this industry. I’m looking at a design narrative that just came in yesterday. It’s for 5,000 pieces of art for a project in Las Vegas. 2,500 pieces of two different designs. So we respond within 72 hours to give back to the design firm our vision for those art pieces.

One of the things that separates my company out from our competition is what we call one-on-one art consulting. So my firm has a creative director that speaks directly to the interior designer on a one-to-one basis so that the designer can talk to the artist. It usually takes us like 72 hours. They love that.

“It’s very complicated with all the steps involved. Speed is everything in this industry. I’m looking at a design narrative that just came in yesterday. It’s for 5,000 pieces of art for a project in Las Vegas. 2,500 pieces of two different designs. So we respond within 72 hours to give back to the design firm our vision for those art pieces.”

Connor Shields: That’s quite the turnaround.

Ron Golbus: You have to be fast because they have deadlines and the people they have deadlines for have to have to be accountable to the construction team that have their own deadlines. We did a project for Resorts World in Las Vegas. They needed 10 pieces of artwork that had to be there in four days. So between the time they contacted us, we designed it, we printed it, we framed it, and then we had an someone drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and we did all that within four days. They could not believe the turnaround.

We actually hired someone to drive from Los Angeles in their own vehicle to Las Vegas. We couldn’t even wait for a trucker to like dedicate a truck. We just made the samples in Los Angeles. We drove it directly to Las Vegas and brought them right into the hotel that needed a model room put together. It had to be done in one day. That’s what’s helped me gain market share because I understand the time-driven needs that they have.

Connor Shields: So in addition to your one-on-one consultations, your insane turnaround time, and the fact that you’re one of, if not the oldest hospitality consultation companies, what else really sets you apart from other businesses in your field?

Ron Golbus: Well, we don’t import anything from overseas. A lot of my competitors manufacture things in overseas for less money. But the dependability of timeframes for delivery puts those firms lower on the ladder of a company that these large design and architectural firms want to use because they don’t have time to wait for a lower price.

Connor Shields: Yeah. Going back to what you said about your domestic production, you need a turnaround of 72 hours and your stuff is being made in China, it’s not gonna happen.

Ron Golbus: Right. It’s not gonna happen.

Connor Shields:  And especially your personal approach, it makes you seem less like a company and more personal.

Ron Golbus: It’s totally personal. I’m in charge of everything that happens and when I get ahold of a job. It’s going to be perfect. It has to be perfect. Otherwise you can’t do the next job. So we just finished Paris Las Vegas for Caesar’s Entertainment. They had 18 floors of artwork that was required for the corridors. All the images were custom designed to look like Paris and Versailles, so they had 18 pictures on the floor. But the 18 pictures were divided into six sets of three.

“It’s totally personal. I’m in charge of everything that happens and when I get ahold of a job. It’s going to be perfect. It has to be perfect. Otherwise you can’t do the next job.”

As I told you before, we packaged by floor. We put in six boxes. Each contained three items on one pallet. So they took the pallet to the floor and all those 18 pictures divided into six sets of three were on one pallet. That could never happen if you were buying things from overseas.

So the Paris Las Vegas installation team were able to seamlessly put all the artwork into the corridors because they had been separated by sets. We put each set in its own individual box as though the box was the room. So we had six boxes for each floor, and there are 18 floors, so it was perfect. It all turned out perfect, but that’s because I envision how the installer works.

Connor Shields: Now going back to what you said, you said you have boxes by floor. Do different floors have different art styles?

Ron Golbus: Well, it’s not really different art styles. There are different room types that each have their own compliment of items. So the King Room might have the same art style as the Queen Room, but the King Room requires five different pieces. And the queen room might require three different pieces.

They’re different pieces to one another, but they fall under the same narrative. I see. So it’s kind of, so when we get the room matrix by the floor. We obviously printed per that room type, the artwork required for that room type. And then we separate out the floor by the different room types, and that’s how it’s palletized. So it’s the same design concept, but there’s different images in each room type.

Connor Shields: So you get your own unique experience per room.

Ron Golbus: Right. And again, the artwork is designed to help move their brand forward to court. We’re working on a project now in Las Vegas where we are going to have a Zoom call, not only with the designers and architects, in addition to the architectural firm in Hong Kong are located in different parts of the country, including Las Vegas.

And so that room type and that room design and that coordination of everybody’s look. Corresponds also to the furniture manufacturer being part of that zoom call because they want the artwork fabricator Graphic Encounter to work in concert with the furniture designer who’s designing furniture to compliment their envisioned brand identity.

So when the artwork fabricator Graphic Encounter is working with the furniture designer, the architects and the designers are part of that collective phone call. Then the artwork becomes a visceral part to the furniture. And the furniture is a visceral part to compliment the artwork. So when you walk into the room, everything was done in concert in consideration of the other aesthetic contribution that each of those components provide to the room.

So the furniture, the design of the beds, the design of the armoire, the design of the different components in the room, the different fabrics they use, the different colors that are used. It’s all a coordinated effort by all the players that the corporation has called into. In this case, be on the Zoom call so that each item in the room.

Connor Shields: I guess you could say it’s like an ecosystem of style.

Ron Golbus: It is. It’s like an orchestration. It all has to be coordinated ahead of time. It can’t be done on the fly, and it all has to be done quickly and perfectly because everybody’s looking at the other person to make sure that if they’re part of the overall assignment that they’ve been given. That your contribution is not only complimentary, but if the quality of the furniture is 110%. The corners of the frames have to be perfect. They have to be hung straight. They have to be printed on the right kind of paper. They have to be in the right kind of frame. It all has to be perfect. It’s simple to say when you see it, that it all looks great, but the protocols on our side to get there to be perfect.

Connor Shields: Absolutely. So when it comes to Graphic Encounter Fine Art, or just yourself personally, what would you say your greatest milestone was or your greatest achievement?

“It’s like an orchestration. It all has to be coordinated ahead of time. It can’t be done on the fly, and it all has to be done quickly and perfectly because everybody’s looking at the other person to make sure that if they’re part of the overall assignment that they’ve been given.”

Ron Golbus: Well, of course the early eighties it was the artwork provided for the Excalibur Hotel, which was the first 3000 room hotel, the design firm that gave us that project. Gate Silverman. We did Excalibur, we did Paris, we did New York, New York, and other Indian gaming properties with Yates Silverman. So that was a tremendous milestone to get into the Las Vegas market. But the most notable achievement again is having worked with Wynn Design and Development. When you’re vetted by Wynn Design and Development, as is the case with Caesars Entertainment, who we work with regularly, and MGM International, when you’re vetted by those three companies, every other company in the country already knows that you’ve been vetted by the best. If you can work with Wynn Design and Development and MGM and Caesars Entertainment, then all the other design firms and architectural firms that are thinking about using you, because they might have seen a project that we did, or they go on to our website, graphicencounter.com, or they see our brochures in someone’s office and not really a brochure.

We call it an art book because we don’t make a brochure. You can buy artwork from our art book is a compilation, by the way, of course, your company printed our art book. We appreciate it and we get compliments all the time. The quality of the work that you did in that art book. This is also the first time I’ve had a visual call with someone who works with PrintingCenterUSA. I’ve spoken to other members of your team over the phone and everyone I’ve interacted with is so personable and so engaged as though they’re so excited to hear from. When my creative director created our art book for PrintingCenterUSA to print, he’s always reached someone who has technical skills that are of consequence, whose customer service skills are above board by a thousand percent. And you print everything within four days and ship it to my company here in Aspen, Colorado, which I then distribute to my sales agents throughout the country. And when they go into different design firms and architectural firms. This 150 page book that you printed for us is so professionally done.

The way you put that together it’s bound so perfectly and the finish on all the pages are so perfectly done. When I print these art books, the names of all my sales agents are in the back of the book, but when they go into the different design firms and they have that as a marketing tool, it’s unquestionably the door opener and the project to qualifier.

Graphic Encounter is a tremendously successful art consulting company because of this art book that you guys printed. It’s, it’s over the top.

Connor Shields: Well, I guess you could say our process is a little bit like yours. It’s fast, it’s personable. It’s a lot of times one-on-one. We do our best and we really appreciate your business.

“Graphic Encounter is a tremendously successful art consulting company because of this art book that you guys printed. It’s, it’s over the top.”

Ron Golbus: Well, we just found you online. And by the way, the article that you printed about my company came up on chat. Qualifying my company as an outstanding art consulting company, possibly the leader in my industry. Because of an article that you printed was quite illuminative for me, that my company’s brand is out there in these different social posting platforms.

Connor Shields: It’s very reassuring to, hear you say that. You guys are great. So what kind of challenges are holding you or your company back right now?

Ron Golbus: I think we don’t really have any real challenges. Our fabrication and creative components are so perfectly aligned. My focus is always how to do a perfect job every time. So I would have challenges if my fabrication wasn’t being done correctly. I would have challenges if my fabricators wouldn’t respond. I would have challenges if my brand was perceived as anything other than what it is, which is a company that’s highly responsive to both the creative aspect and the production aspect.

If you ask me, my focus is to build my brand and to build the size of the company. Certainly one of the ways is that we have always underscored the value of email marketing to designers and architects around the country. It talks about our process. It has links on the homepage to go to different parts of our website, graphicencounter.com, that talks about the different way we work with designers and what our objectives are, brand essence that we’re trying to build for a client, client satisfaction that we’re helping them build for their clientele. I know it almost sounds self-serving, but we don’t have any problems, so our clients have no problems. So there are no challenges there.

Connor Shields: That’s great to hear. Going back to what I said, you run a tight ship and you absolutely have to. So, you already partially answered this before, but how has print helped elevate your business?

Ron Golbus: I used to print brochures or pamphlets in the past. But they were done in Los Angeles and it was fine at the time, but as my company became more prominent and we worked with design firms and architectural firms that were consequential and the projects that we were garnering were of more consequence, like Wynn Las Vegas or Encore Las Vgas, or Bellagio or the Cosmopolitan or Paris Las Vegas.

The need to bring together the look that we wanted people to embrace, we can provide for them, required that we search out, which we did online, your company as it turns out, to be able to bring together the look and feel, the aesthetic that we offer. And the set of standards exemplified in the art book that you printed so perfectly, actually provided a variety of assets to us. My sales agent goes in with the book that you printed for us and a sample, an actual frame sample of what we do so they can see the quality of how we manufacture things. Your printed art book on our company brand, together with a framed sample when they go in and make a presentation. The response from the designers and architects is “We’ve never seen a book like this. It’s the only one we’ve ever seen.”

And of course the brand book that you printed for me has the Wynn Project and has Bellagio and has Encore, and has Paris and has Churchill Downs and has all these five star and six star venues in the book. So I understand that people say the print world is being outdistance by social media. Virtual presentations and no one has time to look at things, get it on their cell phone, and the world has become desensitized to things that are printed at some level.

“The set of standards exemplified in the art book that you printed so perfectly, actually provided a variety of assets to us. My sales agent goes in with the book that you printed for us and a sample, an actual frame sample of what we do so they can see the quality of how we manufacture things. Your printed art book on our company brand, together with a framed sample when they go in and make a presentation.”

But this business is really a show and tell business as a company. Graphic Encounter Fine Art has a printed art book that shows the projects we’ve done. It has testimonies from Steve Wynn inside. It has testimonies from notable designers and architectural firms. There is something about this industry that appreciates the touch and feel of a printed book. They have resource libraries in each of the design firms that has everything from carpet, tiles, fabrics, catalogs of every company that sells anything to the hospitality industry.

Connor Shields: Absolutely. It’s one thing to see something like on a screen, it’s another thing to have a physical copy of it that you can hold in your hand.

Ron Golbus: So that book, when you feel it, feel the weight of that book. It’s got some heft. You can’t dismiss that. It’s not a pamphlet, it’s not a brochure. It’s a table coffee table book. When we give that to people, I would find it hard to believe that they would throw it away.

If you gave somebody an eight by 10 saddle stitched, 12 page view of your company, they don’t have room to keep it. But invariably, they’re not going to throw mine away. They’re not throwing that away because the projects that are in there. You’ll see Bellagio in there. You’ll see Paris in there. You’ll see Churchill Downs in there. You’ll see these projects that we’ve done in Macau. There are pictures in there. Different installations, but there’s also information there about the art industry and there’s fashion in there.

We represent the original paintings of Dennis Hopper to the hospitality industry. Do you know who he is? No, you’re too a little too young.

Connor Shields: Haha, I’m a little too young for that.

Ron Golbus: Did you ever hear of Hunter Thompson?

Connor Shields: Absolutely. He’s one of my favorite authors.

Ron Golbus: Well, after his cremation, his ashes where shot out of a cannon at the Roadside Bar in Woody Creek, Aspen, Colorado. Hunter Thompson’s whole thing is about Aspen. He had a big Aspen footprint, so he’s in the book. We tried to make the book personify the credibility of Aspen being an art community, it has a page about Bauhaus, which is an art style that came here from Germany. That the philanthropists that helped founded Aspen, created here in Aspen.

So there’s things in the book besides what we’ve done for projects. We’re always trying to portray the personality of our company because it’s more than just art on the wall. It’s the personality of the company behind the art that’s created. In concert with the narrative given to us. If you have a high performance Ferrari, you’re not going to take it to the corner Grease Monkey service station to do a tuneup on your Ferrari. They’re, they’re incompatible. So my goal is always to create a reason for designers to come to us because there’s a, a resonance there that’s synchronicity, so to speak.

Connor Shields: So, kind of a different question for you here. If I was, if you had a day that was completely free to spend however you like, how would you spend it?

Ron Golbus: Well, I’m lucky. So when I moved to Aspen, Colorado 30 years ago, even though I had skied here in the seventies, my goal was always to move here one day. So when I was in my twenties, I said I, I want to move to Aspen one day. So I moved here 30 years ago with my young family and had my youngest child born here.

But my perfect day unfolds every day. So in the winter, I ski every single day. So last year I logged a 102 days, 2 million vertical feet. I know you’re a skier too. So every day I get up at 4 in the morning and I have a gym in my house. I work out every day. I leave the house at a quarter to six. The mountain opens up at 8:15a.m. for first tracks with the instructors. I ski every day at 8:15 and I usually leave the mountain at 1o’clock and I come home and then I work. So for a hundred days, virtually in a row in the winter. That’s my perfect day.

Connor Shields: That sounds like, that sounds like my perfect day.

Ron Golbus: And in the summer, although it’s smoky here because of the fires. I rode bike up into the mountains to maroon bells, which is a very famous and very photographed spot in all of Colorado. So my year is divided up into two seasons, and every one of those days is perfect.

Connor Shields: That’s great to hear. I’m definitely think I’m going to be checking out Aspen this winter.

Ron Golbus: We’ll do some turns.

Connor Shields: Sounds good. Sounds good. Alright, so one last question for you. How can our listeners get in touch with you to learn more, to collaborate, anything like that?

Ron Golbus: Well, ours is really easy. Our website, graphicencounter.com or graphicencounterfineart.com, we’re pretty easy to find. You wanna know where the name came from?

Connor Shields: Yeah, sure.

Ron Golbus: So I went to Beverly Hills High School and I used to sit next to Richard Dreyfus, you know, from

Connor Shields: Jaws.

Ron Golbus:  Jaws, yeah. So Richard, we called him Ricky sat on my right. And do you know who the actor Albert Brooks is? He was in Taxi and he was in quite a few movies. He’s a comedian, Albert Brooks. He used to sit on the other side of me, but his name was really Albert Einstein. That was his real name at Beverly Hills High School. But his brother’s name was Bob Einstein. He used to write for the Carson Show.

You know who Johnny Carson is, right?

Connor Shields: Yes.

Ron Golbus: Okay. So anyway, so when Ricky did Close Encounters of the Third Kind, do you ever heard of that movie?

Connor Shields: Yes, I’ve seen it.

Ron Golbus: Okay. So I was selling art at swap meets and I didn’t have a company name or anything like that. So when someone rented me a space for a swap meet, they said, “well, we can make a sign for you above your, your booth” So what would it be called? So I kind of manipulated the Close Encounters of the Third Kind and just cut it off at Graphic Encounter. And that’s how I got the name. So if, if he hadn’t have done Close Encounters, I probably would’ve a different company because everybody thought I was in the graphics business.

But I took the name from the extrapolation of that and just made a Graphic Encounter, but it was because Ricky was in Close Encounters of the Third

Connor Shields: That’s a very interesting story, man. That must have been really cool going to high school with two of these actors. Jaws is one of my favorite movies. Did you happen to know, Robert Shaw?

Ron Golbus: Haha,1600 people went in and only 400 came out. Yeah, he was great. Yeah. And, and, and you know who else went to Beverly High was Rob Reiner. So when the movie came out with Tom Cruise, so he directed that movie. A Few Good Men Rob Reiner was in one class behind me, so he’s one year younger than I am. But, uh, such a, you know, famous director. You know.

Connor Shields: Next thing you’re gonna tell me, you also knew Jack Nicholson.

Ron Golbus: I met Jack Nicholson up here in Aspen, but only, no, I didn’t really meet him. There were a lot of parties here that I would go to, you know, and I went to a party that was at his house, but I had never really met him.But Jack Nicholson, he was an easy rider too. He was on the back of the motorcycle, was kind of a football helmet.

Connor Shields: That’s quite the story. That’s a really good story about how you got your company name. That’s interesting that you just grew up with these actors. Well, I’d say that’s a wrap on another episode of Behind the Print. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to get your sample pack today from PrintingCenterUSA.com and share it with your fellow business enthusiasts. Until next time, keep those creative sparks flying. And remember, there’s always more to discover behind the print.

Ron Golbus: Thank you so much, Connor.

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