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| Seigfred Hall |
I really miss Art School sometimes. I was fortunate to go to 2 and they were both awesome. Ohio Northern had a pretty great program and facility, but Ohio University had a beautiful Vandercook press and tons of vintage metal and wood type. That's where I first fell in love with Letterpress. I also loved taking my graphic design, ceramics, photography, and printmaking courses. They had an awesome ceramics studio, a great dark room, and the printmaking rooms were gigantic. Seigfred Hall was a wonderland of art mediums stocked full of the materials to create.
What you don't realize when you are a student is what brand or consistency of ink, clay, cleaning supplies you are using. How easily the ink is cleaned up with gasoline and rags and so nicely placed into a fire proof rag can. I do clearly remember the smell of everything. I love the smell of wet clay, love when the kiln is on, love the scent of ink and paper, love the smell of freshly carved wood, the warmth of a digital printer after a large run, and the chemicals.
I learned long ago that it's really hard to do easy clean up in a small enclosed NYC apartment and also be eco and health conscious. I have been experimenting for years with water based inks for my Press and now I'm doing the same research for Screen printing. It was so nice having stocked open spaces in school. I never gave much thought to what kind of inks and materials we were using. I just bought a lot of paper.
My new project is making baby stuff of course. Cause now we have a baby and I'm all baby minded and such. Plus, my cards are selling wonderfully at 2 baby stores here in Brooklyn, so I might as well stick with what I know. Coury and I started selling a few tee-shirts on
Skreened (which rocks!) so I thought I would attempt to print my designs on onesies and bibs. Well, I've hit serious speed bumps and I have to get it to work since I've invested in this screen, ink, and a ton of adorable Organic cotton onesies. I can already imagine Aria modeling them, I just need to get them printed! I'm thinking hard back to my printmaking classes trying to remember the secret to a good print. I remember the quality was always good, but I really didn't like anything I printed then. I felt so naive and rushed in college. It was my own fault really. Looking back, I was burning the candle at both ends and not taking enough time to form great concepts for projects. I worked and played too much and didn't spend enough time on the Art. It makes me so mad now. I had all this awesome equipment with no clear direction and now I have an end result in mind and have a hard time producing. And well, I'm cheap. What I mean by that is I don't want to buy an entire press for screen printing. I've seen people make really cool stuff with just a screen and squeegee, but it really isn't working for me. I've watched about 15 You Tube videos in the last 2 weeks on proper squeegee technique. My 3 different nights of test printing have not gone so well. I either over flooded the screen and had to move to the next design or I wasn't getting enough ink to lay down. I may have isolated the problem though. I've been laying the screen directly on the paper or cloth. After more videos and articles, I think I need to rig a 1/8" distance between mesh and whatever I'm printing. I'm not opposed to buying clamps and setting it up on my work table, but again I was being cheap and didn't think I needed too. I may have also made it harder for myself by burning the designs too close together. It's hard to squeegee smoothly and miss the taped off other designs. I'm trying to think of anything else I might be doing wrong before giving it another go.
Any advice folks? I'm determined to get this to work. I wish I could just go back to school once a week and print a lot of these.
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| Ready to print |
Also, for those OU folks out there. I just saw this site about
Eldridge's work
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| The contemplating wall at by Eldridge |
