Skyart® Incorporated

Skyart Productions, Whirlwind Books
Founded 1979, incorporated 1998
Location: RR3, Elmwood, ON Canada N0G 1S0
Owned and operated jointly by Arjen Verkaik (President) and Jerrine Verkaik (VP)

Company history

Skyart Productions was founded in 1979 to handle a variety of requests related to the sky and weather photographs of Arjen Verkaik. In 1996, Whirlwind Books was established By Jerrine Verkaik to publish high quality books on weather. Both companies were absorbed under Skyart Inc. after incorporation in 1998. The registered U.S. trademark “Skyart” covers a wide range of products and services related to photographic images and weather subjects in two classes.

Summary of key achievements

The Skyart Collection - over 100,000 photographs related to weather, sky and clouds, the largest and most diverse resource of its kind in the world.
created a number of highly acclaimed popular books and products on aspects of weather, emphasizing severe storm awareness and observational meteorology
wrote, illustrated and designed training materials for Environment Canada’s Severe Weather Watcher Program
images used in four U.S. postage stamps, plus numerous other commercial and editorial uses by hundreds of prominent corporations worldwide
We (Arjen and Jerrine Verkaik), have a high media profile and have been featured in TV documentaries, public spreaking tours, etc. (see A&J Verkaik personal site and bio for details)

Products and services

stock photography via our stock photos of weather website
fine art prints via our Skyart fine art prints website
books published by Whirlwind Books, e.g. “Under the Whirlwind”
paper products such as sky cards and a “Watching the stormy sky” poster-wall chart
writing and editorial support for selected projects of interest to us
consulting and project development related to sky projects
public speaking to a wide variety of groups about our sky adventures
educational materials and outreach related to sky and weather subjects, with websites dedicated to exploring severe weather education on our Skychaser site, and cloud types and identification on our Cloudwise site.

Plans for the future

We hope to continue producing top quality printed and electronic materials for education and public interest. Key projects include a comprehensive, user-friendly, practical guidebook on reading the sky, a book on lightning, a large, lavishly illustrated coffee table book on our passion for sky and a work to offer an alternative to the existing cloud identification system.

We also plan to develop an extensive web presence to bring our writing and photography to a wide audience. We want to inspire, educate and share our experiences with others and encourage the world to engage and delight in our atmospheric environment.

Our vision

We are driven by a passion to explore the sky and bring the fruits of our efforts back for others to enjoy. We sell products or the use pf photos in order to fund other projects or educational activities. The three facets of our efforts are inspiration, education, and scientific exploration.

We want to promote the power of sky to transform lives and spirits. Our purpose is to inspire others to appreciate the atmosphere, thereby fostering respect for our fragile environment, the planet and each other. The beauty and infinite variety found in the sky deserves to be seen and appreciated. Its universal nature makes it an ideal communicator of many concepts and scientific principles. The sky speaks with one language to all nations.

A love for weather and clouds holds many secrets and surprises for the uninitiated, and we want to spark an awakening to this in others. We will also continue to challenge the present meteorological knowledge on clouds and storms as we explore sky and discover its many unanswered questions during our photography travels.