Screen Printing

I am exploring screen printing techniques.
I made a pile of screen frames from stretcher bars, picture frames and bits of wood then sealed them with 2 coats of marine varnish. 

I bought a variety of drapery sheers from thrift stores and gave them a good wash.
I experimented with different ways of attaching the screen to the frame. 

I covered the frame and screen edges with duct tape.

Then I left the screens rest for a few days while the duct tape cured.

MISSA Day 5

After completing a screen printing of a wallpaper over the whole cloth, I put on a wash of light blue paint beside the yellow. I put it out in the sun and manipulated it to get the right flow of soft lines.

I added leaves and flowers as resists - the same plants/shapes as the screen printed motifs

Linda working on placement of motifs on her compositional cloth

Judy cutting a stamp to make a motif on her cloth.

We ended this wonderful workshop with our instructor, Eleanor Hannan giving us a critique of each of our cloths as they hung in the stage area of the smaller theater on campus.
In the week everyone had completed their cloth to a stage where they could now add the final layers, whatever they needed to be. I'll keep you posted on how my cloth develops.
I will be returning to MISSA next year and I look forward to another class with Eleanor because among other joyous things, she gave us all permission to just play for a whole week - something I need more of in my life.

MISSA Day 3

The 3rd day was spent mostly on silk screening on our 4 meters of cloth.

I wanted a wall paper effect so combined an alternating band made with a stamp and my silk screen pattern rotated 180 degrees each time. 

I didn't quite get the motifs in the right place to make the pattern interlocking but it worked well enough.

At this stage the 3 layers were looking a bit jumbled up in parts.
But there was lots more work to be done to pull it all together.

MISSA

I attended the 1st week of this years Metchosin Summer School of the Arts out at the beautiful Lester Pearson College campus in Eleanor Hannan's "Compositional Cloth: The Face" workshop.

She showed us a number of ways to make stamps and patterns after a few warm up exercises to get us thinking about the face.

Eleanor showed us how to make a silk screen.

And how to make all the right sounds when using screen and paint.

The first marks we made on our 3 to 5 metres of cloth where to be bold and free.
I was not impressed when, with my first stroke, the too runny paint fell out of the brush to make a red puddle, a heavy-handed start  for my cloth. 

Clare Verstegen @ SDA

Clare has an exquisite body of work called 'Atmospheric Measures', in the Joan Mondale Gallery at the Textile Centre www.textilecentermn.org, here in Minneapolis.

(these are terrible images of some of the work)

She screen prints on thick industrial felt made of wool, which means she can then have fun with her other favourite technique....

...burning.

She takes the burn marks around to the edges of each work, which is most satisfying to discover.
Notice, above, her purpose-build hanging system that is in such harmony with her felt work.

McMullen Urban Textures

More close-up views of works in Articulation's Urban Textures exhibition in the McMullen Gallery, Edmonton.
This is work by Linda Mackay.

Linda Mackay focused on telling narratives with the facades of Winnipeg's historic buildings. She dyed, screen printed and quilted.

Banff Art Centre - March 12

It is still cold up here in the mountains but the days are clear and sunny.

On our last day in the dye studio, I printed with 2 more deconstructed screens.

Last time I put too much thickened dye on the screen & didn't squeegee it on so the dye came off in lumps & I lost the pattern after only a few passes.
I'm learning lots with this opportunity to work long, uninterrupted hours in the dye studio. When something doesn't work, I can repeat the process straight away, applying what I have just learned.

This time I put the dye on more thinly but I suspect too thinly. I embedded different grids which produced interesting patterns.
I do like this technique for adding lots of pattern to cloth. It is much looser than stamping and stencilling and with practice I think I could develop some control of what is happening. It is a real test of one's knowledge of colour mixing.

Banff Art Centre - March 6

Yesterday we spent most of the day in the dye and print studios. After Ingrid's demo on making a deconstructed screen with thickened dyes, I made one and left it overnight to cure. The next day I printed through it onto a length of soda ash soaked cloth. This is the first layer of colour with the 2nd colour, blue, ready to be pushed through.

This morning I rinsed it after it had cured overnight.

...and hung it to dry. I won't be able to see the complexity of the layering and colour mixing until it is dried and ironed. The stringy stuff in front is cheese cloth. I was wanting analogous warm and cool but the warm is too much like salmon so I will be over-dyeing it.