Exit 82 Art owner David Melancon shows the artwork for one of the business’ best-selling coasters.[/caption]A decade ago Louisiana-native David Melancon was setting up a booth at an art festival where he was selling prints of photos he had shot while backpacking through Europe. On a whim he said he created a few coasters to sell along with the prints.
When the coasters sold out in a day, Melancon said he knew he was on to something. He kept on making coasters, and quickly switched from his European images to those of local landmarks.
In 2007 Melancon quit his day job flying planes for an oil company and moved to Austin to devote himself to the coaster business.
Now known as Exit 82 Art and operating out of a warehouse in Spicewood, Melancons company supplies photo-imaged coasters and other products to more than 75 retailers throughout the nation, he said.
Melancon has photographed local landmarks in more than 50 cities and with a few exceptions he shoots all of the images himself. Taking photos remains his favorite part of the business, he saidthough he said he considers photography an accidental career.
A native of Crowley, Louisiana, Melancon said he grew up dreaming of becoming a pilot. After graduating from LSU, he secured a pilots license and launched a career that included flying cargo planes, banner planes and aerial mapping planes.
During flight school Melancon said he picked up photography as a hobby.
A few years into his career as a pilot, Melancon said he concluded that flying was not all that he had imagined it to be.
"I felt like a taxi driver in the sky," he said.
Disillusioned with flying as a career, he leapt at the chance to build a business around his photography, he said.
Since creating the original coaster prototype, Melancon has evolved and refined his production methods.
"There are so many variables," he said. "What kind of stone, what kind of glue, what kind of paper, what kind of sealer. You name it, Ive tried it."
Melancon and his production team create coasters using tumbled porcelain tiles and a process called sublimation, or dye-subbing. The dye-subbing process, which requires a heat press to turn the ink from solid to gas, results in the printed image actually becoming part of the tile rather than simply being glued on top.
The process allows Exit 82 to create a coaster with an image that runs edge to edge. This full-bleed style is a hit with the Austin market, which still makes up a sizeable chunk of Exit 82s business, Melancon said.
Though he is constantly taking new shots of Austin, Melancon said the most popular sellers—the I Love You So Much sign; the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue; the Live Music Capital of the World mural; and the Austin skyline—remain constant.
