PRINT SHOP HOW-TO: RE-STRETCH YOUR SILKSCREEN FRAME
Not too long ago Chrissy and I purchased a hand silk screen stretcher online. I think we were both in agreement that shipping ripped screens to Toronto to have another company re-stretch and ship them back to us was becoming a hassle and too expensive. We purchased our stretcher from a company call ASC365. I’ve recently gone through the process of re-stretching 20 silkscreen frames and wanted to take a moment to share my experience. Even before we begin I’d like to mention that this tool is fantastic and I recommend it.
How to re-stretch mesh onto an aluminum frame:
1. First, take the broken screen and cut a ‘plus’ sign into the mesh. I found that this gave me a good starting point to ripping the mesh off. When I tried using a X cut from corner to corner, it left a lot of remaining screen debris towards the corners. Rip the mesh along one edge towards the corner, then rip the other edge towards the same corner, now rip the corner section off. Repeat this for all the edges.
2. You may see that there are bits of mesh still remaining glued down near the corner, try to remove what you can by picking at it and hopefully you can pull it off. I found that using a utility knife helped in removing the last bits. Don’t worry too much if there is some remaining, when we grind the frame it’ll come off.
3. If you can, go outside and set-up a work table. You will be grinding aluminum and thus creating dust, so doing this process inside the studio was a big ‘no go’. You will need several tools. A metal grinder with a grinding disk, palm sander with 80-120 grid sand paper, particle respirator (not a dust mask, a real respirator, protect your lungs), gloves, clamps, and safety goggles.
4. I clamped the screen down to the table, and begun lightly grinding the frame. The idea is to remove all the glue off the frame and at the same time give the frame tooth to accept a new layer of glue. When you’re grinding the frame you’ll want to be careful not to spend too much time in one spot otherwise you may grind a pit into the frame, and that’s not good.
5. Afterward I used the palm sander to quickly run around the whole frame, this cleaned up some (not all) ink stains, hardened emulsions, or weird glue deposits from tape. When finished rub the frame clean with a rag.
6. Set-up a large station inside, I had to push to a couple desks together. I recommend that you avoid using the floor as a work surface, the mesh is oddly charged with static electricity and will pick up all the dirt off the floor. The stretcher we bought came disassembled in 8 pieces and was really easy to build following the manufacturers instruction.
7. Once the system is set-up and the frame in place, coat the frame with a layer of glue. We purchased the glue from the same company that sold us the stretcher, it is clearly an extremely strong contact cement. I recommend that you open a window and wear a vapor rated respirator mask.
8. It takes 8-10 minutes for the glue to become ‘dry to the touch’. At this point lock into the stretcher your desired new mesh. Crank all the clamps down onto the mesh and begin stretching each side a little bit at a time. You can buy a tension meter which will tell you exactly what tension of the screen is or I compared the tension to another commercially stretched screen we had in the studio.
9. When you’re happy with the tension cut a piece of cardboard slightly smaller than the interior of the frame and place it on the screen. Now apply a second layer of glue to the frame. The cardboard prevents any stringy bits of glue from falling onto the middle of the screen. Like I mentioned earlier the screen has a lot of static electricity and so it tends to attract the stingy glue. Once done let the frame sit for 25 minutes.
10. When you loosen all the clamps and remove your newly stretched frame cut off the excess screen mesh. Finally, use metal foil tape (purchased from a hardware store in the duct working aisle ) to cover the glued side of the screen. That’s it, finished.
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RECENT EVENTS: SGCI NEW ORLEANS
Last week I went on the road to New Orleans for the South Graphics Conference. This was the first time attending this conference, actually this was the first conference Spark Box Studio has ever attended, needless to say I was pretty excited. Sadly, since we had residents booked in I had to make this trip alone, which meant a lot of long days and lonely travelling. Lucky for me tons of like-minded printers attend this event every year so the loneliness was short lived.
The trip began early Thursday with a 4 am drive to the Toronto airport. With just one minor hang-up with customs, I was quickly jet-setting to Louisiana. I arrived early afternoon, dropped my publisher booth stuff off and headed to my accommodations (which I found on Air BnB). The rest of Thursday was made up of searching for groceries and relaxing on the roof top of the loft I was staying in.
Friday was day one of the conference. Spark Box had a booth in the publishers fair so I left early to set-up my table. I took a walk through the beautiful, yet very smelly, French Quarter to the Sheraton Hotel where the conference was being held. I was the first publisher to arrive … which made me feel like a silly eager Canadian. But my eager attitude paid off leading me to meet so many nice people and share information to them about our studio and residency. Because of that minor customs hiccup I wasn’t allowed to sell any prints … but I did get to speak about them and the great printmakers who created them. I was set-up near the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Program and got to met Chris Dunnett and Phil Sanders. I now hope that I will get some time to go to NYC and check out their space.
I left the publisher fair early that day to attend one of the demonstrations being held at Tulane University. The demonstration was being done by our university print professor Otis Tamasauskas. The drive to the demo was longer than I thought so I only caught the tail-end but made plans to go out with Otis later in the evening. We met up at the hotel and together with Gravity Press owner Brandon Graving we went to the evenings art walk. My camera died by this point so I didn’t get any pictures but the night was great. We stopped at the Community Print Shop, the exhibit at the Healing Center and Deborah Cornell and Barbara Putnam’s exhibit at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
Saturday was another early morning walk to the hotel in order to re-set-up the publishers table (they moved us for day two). I decided the smell of the French Quarter at 7AM was a bit too much so instead I walked along the river. Day two of the publisher fair was held in conjunction with the portfolio sessions. It was a great day. I split my time standing at the table and walking around looking at all the amazing and talented printed works. Splitting time between the table and other events was a challenge since I was by myself but next year Kyle will attend as well and we will have more time to go to the lectures and demos.
Past resident Josh Dannin came by the booth just as I was packing up and we headed to the Wolfbat Railroad event that he had been participated in over the week. The BFT Wolfbat Railroad was another printmaking project going on at the same time as the Southern Graphics Conference but not in conjunction with it. Wolfbat Studios (Dennis McNett) & Woodcut Funhouse (Sean Starwars) teamed up with Vans Custom Culture to host a three day customization event that was 100% free and open to the public. As the organizers explained it “The event included the construction of a wooden train consisting of 1 steam engine & 20 box cars. Artist, educators, and college students from across the U.S. tricked out their boxcar with screen prints, woodcut prints, flags, paper mache structures, and what ever else they can come up with. Each artist or team worked with at least 2 local high school and/or middle school kids.”
Saturday evening was the culmination of this three day event and was celebrated by taking the train on parade through the Marigny/Bywater area. After the parade there was a party with a great brass band and tons of dancing printmakers. It was a great time and a wonderful way to end the weekends events.
Sunday was my last day in New Orleans and I spent most of the day hanging out with Josh. We did a ton of tourist like things – walk through the French Quarter market, check out all the great street performers, eat beignets at Cafe du Monde and walk around Bourbon Street. After Josh headed back to Philadelphia I went to the botanical gardens with my accommodations host Andrea and then out to dinner.
It was a great trip and I am happy that we decided to participate in the events this year. We are definitely going next year in Milwaukee.
-Chrissy
THE JOY OF KITCHEN LITHOGRAPHY
As you know Kyle and I made the choice to make our studio as safe and green as possible, so there are some processes, like stone lithography, that we can’t offer at the studio. Of course stone lithography happens to be my favorite print process. So, you can only imagine my joy when I stumbled across a video by French artist Emilion explaining a new technique called “Kitchen Litho”. In the video Emilion walks you through her process of drawing with a grease tool (in this case soap made with animal fats) onto tin foil, etching the image with Coke and printing it like you would a litho stone.
I was amazed at how simple she made the process look and excited to get into the studio and give it a try. I called on a few former workshop participants and a couple friends to see if they would be interested in trying this new method with me and the six of us got together a few weekends ago.
We started our afternoon of experimental printmaking in the kitchen, as to keep with the theme of the process, but seeing little success moved out into the studio in order to use the printing press. Unlike the video the process was a bit more challenging. Like stone lithography sometimes your image doesn’t etch into the tin foil or it begins to fill in after a couple prints. However, unlike with stones you can simple crumple up the tin foil and try again– quick and easy!
We experimented with a number of different drawing tools to see what worked the best. We tried lithography crayons, sharpie markers, touche and Crisco. We wanted to see the different textures we could achieve and if spending the money on lithography crayons was worth it. It turned out that sharpie marker was the most reliable tool while the lithography crayons were a close second.
While achieving a print was challenging, the process itself was amazingly easy. Draw your image on the tin foil, etch it with Coke, rub it with vegetable oil, ink it and print (see the whole process in the video on Emilion’s blog). After a great afternoon several of us left with a some good prints and I plan to keep experimenting with this process in the future.
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FEBRUARY WORKSHOP
Our upcoming workshop is a great place to start learning about printmaking if you have never tried it before.
WEEKEND MONOTYPE WORKSHOP
Come and experience the painterly printing method of monotype printing. This comprehensive workshop will introduce you to basic printmaking techniques and processes, as well as, the history of monotype. You will be encouraged to experiment and explore colour mixing, chine colle, stencilling and painting in positive and negative space. You will learn to use our printing press and printing inks in order to create several one-of-a-kind prints. SIGN-UP HERE
ETCHING WORKSHOP WITH MOIRA SECONDARY
In anticipation of starting up workshops again I have decided to reflect on our most recent workshop at the new studio with a group of high school students from Belleville. Over the past few years we’ve worked hard to build a good relationship with the different schools around the area. We see art as a truly beneficial experience for any young person. Art provides youth with a place to express themselves in an open and nurturing space and we love giving a young person a chance to participate in an environment where they can freely be who they want to be.
This past fall we had the pleasure of hosting a two day etching workshop with a group of art students from Moira Secondary. Their teacher Rosanne Duke (a big supporter of the studio) she asked if her class could learn intaglio printmaking with us through the process of etching. We have done this workshop with Loyalist in the past and it has been a huge success so we jumped on the chance to share this very old process with her students.
This was the first big workshop we have held in our new space, making it a bit nerve-racking. With over 20 students we weren’t too sure how the space would hold-up, but to our surprise it turned out very well. We first went to their classroom to give each student their pre-grounded plates and the step-by-step instruction on how to carve their image. Then the entire class came to Picton to print their plates on our press. Each student had the chance to make an edition of four prints in two different colours. During the first half of the studio day students were timidly working with the inks and using the press but by the second half they were experimenting with different application processes and producing some really inspiring pieces.
If you are interested in learning about etching be sure to sign-up for our January Etching Workshop >> find out more here <<
JANUARY WORKSHOP // ETCHING WEEKEND
This introductory course requires no previous experience with printmaking. Students will begin the lesson with fresh copper plates and learn how to transform them into a small edition of prints. This workshop will teach students a non-toxic form of etching and will include hard ground techniques, aquatinting and soft ground techniques. By the end of the course students will have an understanding of the basic principles of printmaking including the above etching processes along with working with printing inks and using a traditional etching press.
Weekend workshop
January 21 & 22
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
$200.00 non-member
$185.00 member
*materials included
WORKSHOPS
We just posted our upcoming workshops for October, November and December. There will be one workshop a month and our October workshop is relief printing. This introductory workshop will provide students of all experience levels with the knowledge to cut and print their own relief print. This three day workshop will take students step-by-step through the process of transferring an image, carving a blank linoleum block and printing a three colour reduction print.
3 day workshop
October 27, 28 and 29th
11:00 – 1:00 PM OR 6:00 – 8:00 PM
$150.00 non-member or $140.00 member
UPCOMING EVENTS
NICOLAI SARAFOV LECTURE AND WORKSHOP
Free afternoon artist lecture starting at 2:00 PM Sunday August 7th
Get to know artist Nicolai Sarafov at this afternoon lecture at Blizzmax Gallery. Nicolai Sarafov studied for five years at the College of Fine Arts in Sofia, followed by six years at the Munich Academy. His etchings are figurative, narrative, filled with a literary references and rich with critical humour. Sarafov has been teaching for 25 + years, he has published a number of catalogues, books and magazines and has exhibited internationally.
There is still one spot open in the week-long workshop running from August 8 -12 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM each evening.
SMOKEVILLE SESSIONS
Smokeville Sessions, a new performance series that will move between different County venues, is holding its first evening starting at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, August 9 at the Tall Poppy Café, 298 Main St., Wellington. Featured are four literary performers, half from the County and half from “away,” a mix that will continue in future Smokeville Sessions as other kinds of performance are featured. In the inaugural evening, County residents Andrew McLuhan and David Harcourt will join Toronto writer/performers Charles C. Smith and John Oughton, with “community” as the common theme.
GUEST LECTURE AND WORKSHOP
We are very excited to soon be sharing our studio space with professor of print and innovative artist Nicolai Sarafov. Sarafov will be traveling from Germany to visit friends at Blizzmax Gallery this August. During his stay in P.E.C. he will be hosting a week long etching workshop, as well as an artist lecture.
About the Instructor:
Nicolai Sarafov studied for five years at the College of Fine Arts in Sofia, followed by six years at the Munich Academy. His etchings are figurative, narrative, filled with a literary references and rich with critical humour. Sarafov has been teaching for 25 + years, he has published a number of catalogues, books and magazines and has exhibited internationally.
About the Workshop:
The etching workshop with Nicolai will be a week long workshop starting Monday 8th and ending Friday 12th. The workshop will walk you through the various techniques of the etching process, including hardground etching and aquatint. You will learn about working with copper plates to create images and using an etching press to transfer your work to paper. The workshop is open to all levels, including experienced printmakers.
$250 (includes material fee) Monday, August 8 – Friday, August 12 6:00 – 9:00 PM
About the Lecture:
Here Sarafov will speak about his work, his founding of the “Institute for Bagonalistik” and his publications.
Sunday, August 7 Starts as 2:00 PM FREE *limited seating*
Please contact chrissy@sparkboxstudio.com to book for the workshop or the lecture.
ONLINE FINDS: JAPANESE POPSTARS
embedded by Embedded Video
vimeo Direkt
We recently found a great video on the Montreal blog BLDG//WLF.
The video gives you an inside look at the animation process of the Japanese Popstars music video “Lets Go”.
CREATIVE KIDS CAMP
Soon after Spark Box opened its doors we began receiving inquiries about hosting a children’s art camp during the summer. However, the thought of a bunch of paint-covered kids running around our small studio space was enough to keep us up at night. When we expressed our dilemma, our supportive community stepped forward to provide us with a camp location! Mia Lane, and her daughter Becky Lane, offered to host the camp on an amazing wooded property by Fish Lake. During the week of August 16 – 20, 8 kids from all over the world came to print, paint, draw and sculpt in the woods.
Not only did we have a great location, we also got great help. Becky Lane, a local designer, helped Chrissy Poitras plan, organize and run the camp. While the kids had fun creating their art, they were also taught and inspired by the art history each of their projects was drawn from. The campers learnt about the impressionists while painting en plein air, the earth art movement in the 1960s by creating sculptures out of natural materials, and the history of street art when making their own graphic text pieces, to name a few.
By the end of the camp the kids had created an impressive array of remarkable art works, installed their own exhibition in the woods, titled and priced their work, and made personalized invitation for their family and friends. They had a great turn out and some even sold some work!
SWOON
With an upcoming day workshop in relief printing (July 29) and the screening of the Bansky film “Exit Through the Gift Shop” at the Regent tonight it seemed appropriate to do a short blog about a pretty amazing relief printermaker /street artist in NYC. Her name is Caledonia Dance Curry or better known as Swoon and she has taked the art world by storm with her wheatpaste drawings, large scale installations and fleet of make-shift pirate ships that made sailed down the Mississippi River and crashed the 2009 Venice for the Biennale.
I first found out about Swoon through The Run Up interview series. Her interview was really inspiring because not only is she amazing and talented but you can really feel the passion she has for what she is doing. I think that Swoon is one street artist that illustrates the power of taking art to the streets and making art an experience for everyone to enjoy.
On top of everything else her relief work is absolutely stunning. Each piece is a highly labored portrait of someone she saw in a park, met on the streets or has known for years. These relief prints are detailed, captivating and remarkably well executed!
SQUARE2 LAUNCH PARTY
Join us for a night on the town! We will bring Prince Edward County’s newest arts & culture magazine to life June 10th starting at the Regent Theatre at 6 PM.
Performance art, poetry readings, live music and visual art will be occurring throughout down town Picton.
Participating locations include:
Spark Box Studio
Purchase a numbered limited launch edition of Square2 that night!
Event will be free of charge.
Sponsored by Angeline’s Inn and Restaurant
RSVP: info@sparkboxstudio.com
MOLD MAKING
During the month of March, Tim Synder owner of the Galloping Goat hosted a mold making workshop at Spark Box Studio. Participants learned how to cast a mold from a clay object. Tim has quite the background in mold making. He has spent considerable time making dinosaur molds for various museums around the world. There are many different mold casting processes, for this workshop Tim used a two part silicone for making the mold and a white resin plastic for casting the objects from the mold.
The process begins with sculpting a 3 dimensional objects from clay. During the the first class everyone was given a brick of clay to sculpt. The next class the students built little walls around their objects and poured a two part silicone mixture that harden over 24 hours. This mixture is what will create the mold. The final class session was spent cracking open the molds and casting the objects. The group poured a resin mixture into their molds that hardens quickly and when the mold is pulled apart the final object pops out. The mold can then be reused many times to cast the object over and over.
SHADOW CABINET
This week Spark Box Studio hosted an etching workshop for a group of gentlemen. The workshop started in the late morning and finished in the mid afternoon. Seventeen individuals came to the workshop, 9 participated and the others watched. The morning was spent transferring images and drawing into the hard-ground covered copper plate. While the men ate lunch at Currah’s restaurant Chrissy and Kyle etched their plates and got ready for an afternoon of printing. When they came back from lunch Kyle demonstrated how to ink a plate, clean the plate, and print he plate. Soon enough it was gloves on and the men were inking their plates. It struck us that we probably should have mentioned to the men to wear or bring some old clothes they did not mind getting ink on, as the men came dressed up and were looking quite dapper. Luckily no one got ink on themselves and everyone who participated had a chance to print the plate they had created and left with at least 2 hand printed images. We had a great time running the event and the gentlemen had a fantastic time as well.
ART OF WOODCUT
For those who do not understand what woodcut is, it is when an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood. The parts which you carve out remain white while the parts that are not carved will later be inked up and printed. Woodcut is the oldest printing technique which dates back hundreds of years, actually well over a millennium ago. Originating first in East Asia and it is not until the 15h century did Europe begin to really develop the technique.
For our workshop with Peter and Norm, we discussed the history, the practice, the tools and the techniques. A major portion of the workshop was dedicated to the practical experience of carving the block where we could troubleshoot problems while carving and discuss the conceptual issues that come with working in a medium that is naturally high contrast.
ETCHING WITH LOYALIST COLLEGE
This week we held an etching workshop for the Art Fundamentals class at Loyalist college. Last week we visited the class and discussed the principles of hard-ground etching; how the process works, how to draw into a plate, what things to avoid etc. A copper plate is coated with a thin ground, traditionally wax or at Spark Box we use an acrylic ground. Using a sharp needle the ground is scraped into and the underlaying copper is exposed. You draw your image into the ground and when finished the plate is submerged into an etchant. The etchant will begin to corrode any exposed copper and leave V shaped trenches in the copper plate that later will hold the ink. In addition to talking about etching, we left each student a coated copper plate and a few tools. A week later the class was to visit our studio to print their copper plates.
The students plates arrived a few days before the students were to come so that we could have ample time to etch and prepare the plates for printing. On a Tuesday morning Into our studio marches 20 students along with Robert Kranendonk (their professor). Organizing the large group of students into a cohesive group was not difficult, they were all eager to learn the next steps on the process and we gladly proceeded to demonstrate them. We showed the students the steps of plate preparation and moved on into how the ink the plate and how to print the plate.
Quite quickly students were inking up their plates and getting into the line up for the press. Everyone managed to ink up and print their plate several times. The students really did enjoy themselves and were all quite pleased with being able to produce an etching. By the end of the session everyone’s hands were covered in black ink and surprisingly only a few students got printing ink on their faces.
Photos shot by Kelly Taylor.
ART LESSON: PERSPECTIVE
For a while now we have been teaching a drawing to an eliminatory student after school. Our lessons mostly consist of learning basic drawing techniques and skills. Amongst theses lessons we’ve focused on topics such as transferring a drawing using a grid, learning different pencil weights, and shading. In our last lesson together we studied one point perspective where we drew a image of a road with telephone poles receding into the distance. Along with showing perspective with the telephone poles we had her also draw a small house beside the road in perspective and had her shade it according to a light source. It is impressive to see the amount of insight she has gained in being able to understand, comprehend and discuss her own errors and successes.
CENTENNIAL SCHOOL PRESENTATION
We have been working on making connections with the local high schools for some time now. We were finally given the opportunity to speak at Centennial Secondary School in Belleville. Thanks to Bill Tomlinson we were invited to give a presentation his intermediate and senior art classes. The goal of the presentation was for us to explain Spark Box Studio, give the students an idea of who we are, what we do, how we got to where we are, and why we are interested in working with youth in the area. Being graduates of an art program are quite aware of how scary it can be to consider entering a field where you may become the ‘starving artist’. Being an artist is difficult road to travel, but it is a possible line of work. As part of our presentation we outline how we are trying to help young artists get started by providing many resources such as: out online guides, the Art School Guide, and the Emerging Artist Guide, a volunteer/mentoring program, portfolio consultations, residency awards and a community space to work in and interact with seasoned artists. This talk at Centennial was the first in it’s series. Thank you Bill for helping to arrange this presentation we both had a blast talking to your students.
LOYALIST COLLEGE TALK
Robert Kranendonk and Sherry Martin are the teachers of a new Art Fundamentals course offered at Loyalist college. The course topics ranging from graphic design to fine art. As part of their course we were invited to teach a print demonstration. We brought down linoleum blocks, prints from our archives, and some printing supplies. This qualified as our first real teaching demo at an institution and we had a lot of fun. We began with an overview of different printing techniques and their associated histories. The class gathered around us on the floor as we spoke about printmaking and studied the many different prints we had bought with us. This was followed by a demonstration in lino-block printing. A fantastic day of teaching and we would like to thank Sherry and Robert for this opportunity.
