feather2pixels

Will Franken has been mentioned more than once on this website and it my pleasure to mention him once again in the capacity of subject of my latest poster.  It is a set of 42 4-layer screen prints to commemorate his show this Friday at The Purple Onion.  Ten copies were retained for my archives, one was taped to the window of Cafe La Boheme, one will be displayed outside the show, and I am not sure what Will will do with the remaining thirty, but I secretly hope they will be dispursed to guests on Friday.  And everyone knows that when you want a secret to come true, you must post it on the internet.

Now for what you have been waiting for: the posters measure 10×16 inches and were printed with Matsui water based inks on Bristol paper.  As usual, the computer does not do the print justice and as a side note, these were some of the most frustrating little bastards I have ever had to deal with.  Mostly that’s due to a new emulsion that I was experimenting with.  Emulsion is the photosensitive polymer that forms the stencil on the screen and to make a long story slightly less long but probably just as boring, it took me a whole afternoon and two ruined screens to figure out that this particular emulsion underexposes under 12 seconds and overexposes over 13 seconds.  That is fucking crazy.   You can see what underexposed looks like if you look hard at the top layer of dark brown line work.  See how it’s kind of sloppy and light?  It needed one more second of light, probably.  But I somewhat liked its rough quality and very much did not feel like burning a new screen.

If you want to see what the design looked like before I granted it physical manifestation, click here and scroll down.  But only if you promise to believe that any print looks one hundred times better than any lousy digital design.
In conclusion, fuck Ulano QX-1 and fuck computers.

My apologies for the recent spate of secretive posts.  I am glad to report this entry represents a return to my self-centered general-interest ramblings.  Mission open studios was last weekend and as far as I am concerned, it was an indisputable success.  Lots of people showed up to see art, many of them to my corner of the CELLspace warehouse, where they fed my ego.  This is surely the reason I do anything.

To pass the time, I set up a little screen printing station next to my work, which turned out to be a good way to engage people with my process–I learned that many people are interested in how screen printing works.  As they should be.  It is the ultimate in instant gratification.  I even got to print with some kids, which itself made the whole weekend worth it.  Well, that, and the hundreds of dollars people seemed to be willing to give me for my art.  But mark my words: printing with kids is my calling and some day I will see it through.

For right now, my calling is posting digital images of last weekend.  Thanks for coming, everyone.  If you didn’t come, just wire me money and we will call it even.
My corner:

Screen printing in action:

The panels:

Even screen printed a wall decal:

Sold some postacrds and posters for the low rollers:

Shit

Shit!

Success!

After eight months, the printing of this entire project is done!

This is the seventh and final piece:

Since I can’t stand failure (beyond the point of fault and to much unnecessary personal distress), I reprinted my jellies postcards. The results, which were mixed, don’t quite stand on their own since I got rid of the labels. Either that, or this is the best one yet. If you look carefully, you will notice it’s actually a three layer print, the third layer being a light halftone pattern over the jellies. Maybe I will send them.

My silkscreening activities didn’t work out this week. The reason for this minor tragedy is that my screens fell apart. Oh it’s all my fault. Processing a screen involves coating it with a UV-sensitive emulsion and subsequently exposing it to light through an image. The exposed areas of emulsion harden and the unexposed areas are prevented from exposing by the image. These unexposed areas can be washed away, leaving holes through which ink can pass (A positive printing process).

Unfortunately, this week’s emulsion was laid on thick and I didn’t expose the screen long enough to evenly expose my light areas. The result was a blown out screen and seventy-two unintelligible “Jellies of the San Francisco Bay” postcards. Feather2pixels is certainly not known for backing down to a grungy aesthetic, but these suck. I didn’t even bother with the third layer of detail over the silhouettes.

Here is the best one:

Here is the worst one: