Camp Silkscreen Wrap Up

(Thanks, Sarah & Josh, for the title suggestion. :)

Wow. What a truly fabulous, fun, inspiring week of silkscreening that was. I am so so so glad I did that. Getting to spend every day last week in an art studio, leaning stuff and making stuff and spending time with fun, cool, creative folks was just what my soul needed. I didn't want it to end, and I'm not sure how I'll adjust to not heading to class on Monday.


Thank you, Kat, for your incredibly insightful instruction and gentle guidance in practice. You are the BEST. And thank you Christina, Jordan and Marge for making class so much fun (and for enduring my goofy stories all week).


In all - here are the highlights of what we learned this week:
- Stretching and taping our own screens - tedious in some respects, but also very meditative - I loved it!
- making stencils - I loved this! Playing around with an exacto knife is a lot of fun to me.
- Painting screens - a great method that gives a nice "woodblock" quality to the print.
- using filler and drawing fluid to get an image on a screen. I loved this one, too, because I loved painting with the drawing fluid. My screen from this method turned out great.
- painting/stamping wax on screens for prints - I actually didn't end up trying this one, because I spent so much time on the paint screen and filler screen, but it looked really cool
- photo emulsion! FUNFUNFUN!


And then, of course, we screened our little hearts out. We did a few prints each day, but yesterday was a full on print-a-thon. It was a total blast.


I'd write more, but after spending a week doing something for myself, my house is a PIT, the laundry is mountainous, and our fridge is bare. It's time to take care of some domestic issues for a while. I'll go ahead and let the pictures from this week speak for themselves. If you are in Austin, I can't recommend Kat's classes enough. She's moving in to a new studio this month, so keep an eye on her web site and email her to get on her email list for updates on her revised summer schedule. (photo captions are down at the bottom)




Picture Captions:

1. My Barack Obama Heart Pillowcase - the blue one is glow in the dark paint.
2. My printing table in full action
3. Average Jane Crafter and a spool of thread. The AJC part is actually something I burned to go with another screen (meaning I could mask the spool and just get the AJC part) but I like the way it looks with the spool
4. My spool shirt!
5. E.T. table action!!!!!
6. I printed a few E.T. shirts, and I think this one is my favorite. Ironically, this was a t-shirt I really didn't like anymore, but one screen print later, it's a favorite.
7. Really, one of my favorite things I made. I burned a photo emulsion screen with a vintage embroidery transfer from Floresita. It's one of my favorite transfers, and I've actually been meaning to stitch it for my daughter. Instead, I screened it on a shirt for now. It came out great.
8. Sunny downtown Austin. Our last day of class was absolutely gorgeous. Mid-70s, clear skies - it was heavenly. When I came out of Dougherty, downtown looked about the way I felt - all sunny and happy - so I had to snap a picture. I love this city.