I got back in the print shop this week to work on some new designs. I mentioned my Chinese paper cuts in the last post and now you get to see how they turned out! After much deliberation and tinkering around I decided to pair the butterfly with the french word for hope, "l'espoir." It felt appropriate as I think there is nothing more delicate and beautiful than hope, and this is shared by the essence of the butterfly.
I took more photographs of my printing process as I didn't do it justice last time. Unfortunately there aren't any good action shots of the ink pulling, since I fly solo most of the time. But then again, it's literally just pulling a squeegee back and forth across a piece of mesh. Magical, right?
The photos show (in order) the films I make on top of the fabric I pre-cut for each bag. I make the films cheaply and quickly with thin acetate on our studio laser printer. The film goes onto the light table and the screen goes over the image. This gets covered with light proof fabric and exposed for about 8 seconds on the high intensity UV tube lights you see there. By the way, the yellow light is from the safe lights that must be used while working with the unexposed screen. The screen gets taken to the sink and rinsed to reveal the printing image.
I'm also including my printshop portrait - a pretty classy polaroid that shows the dark circles under my eyes! That is thanks to my Russian heritage as well as my willingness to forgo sleep for the sake of art. Gotta live it up while you're young, right?
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