Printerlude

I thought I'd give you a little update on my the screenprinting course I've been taking.  I've had 4 classes, and my final class is this weekend.  (I have to rush home after the class to get cleaned up for my student piano recital, in the afternoon!)

            The first week we made a print of just some normal shape (for me it was red toast).  The second week, we added to our prints with another image (yellow, then orange, tomatoes - which ended up, of course, looking like lemons and oranges - don't know why that didn't occur to me before I did it).

            The third week we all brought in a black and white transparency, photocopied from an image we liked.  I decided to trace/draw my own version of Hokusai's Waves.

We set to work cleaning off our screens from our first prints (toast), then applied the emulsion and exposed the prints on the light table.  All of that took up most of the 3-hour class, so I came back for the Sunday open studio time with my printing buddy Brittany to make many many prints of it in dark blue, then teal, then both.

            Last week, I added a few little purple birds to my waves.  This week, maybe a sun, or some clouds?  We shall see.

            Oh and here's one of Brittany's prints - I'm such a fan!

Printroduction

Yesterday morning, I had the first class of a 5-class Introduction to Screenprinting at the Lillstreet Art Center.  It had been a while since I'd been in an actual art class, so I was a little nervous about what to expect the first day, etc.  It was a small group of students - mostly women - and certainly some crafty individuals, like me.  My teacher, Thomas Lucas, showed us some prints from previous classes, which intimidated me at first because they all seemed so clever and clean, but really got my creative juices flowing.

            He also told us about a few Print exhibits going on downtown right now.  Nate and I were headed downtown to the CSO for the evening (to hear Pavel Gomziakov play the Haydn Cello Concerto in C Major - it was fabulous!) so we decided to go down a few hours early to check out these exhibits.  It was lucky we got down there this weekend because the Printervention exhibit is closing in just a few days.  This was a really neat collection of old fashioned-type political/propaganda posters that were all made recently, regarding issues of today, with a sense of humor.

            The other exhibit, at the Chicago Cultural Center, was "graphic works" by Romare Bearden.  These prints looked a lot less like what you would expect of "prints" and more of what you would call a collage.  And they are definitely a lot more advanced than what I can accomplish any time soon, but it was a really great introduction to what printing can be - so much more than I had thought.  The print I'm showing here (one of my favorites for obvious reasons) is actually a lot more of a traditional print - many of them had great textures that just made you wonder . . . "how?"