I didn’t really know what to call this post, essentially it’s somewhat of an over generalisation or perhaps even an exaggeration – the fact is since I’d posted the article Screen Printing Hell a lot has happened and the only (however tenuous) link I can come up with is the wonders of the Internet. I’m not one for community, or rather socialisation on a grand scale, essentially I keep in touch with those I can relate to, sometimes rarely, sometimes more than frequently, but recently my life has started to develop or if you want to be poetic about it, blossom in a series of new directions.

For many months now I have been beavering away in my house, slaving over my graphics tablet, working on the Indoor Street Art series, limiting my contact with the outside world wherever possible in order to focus on my work and produce a respectable portfolio worth garnering the attention of the arts market and the general public. I’ve relied on Imagekind.com to do the "dirty work" of printing up my pieces whilst I sit here and imagine, postulate, frustrate and create my pieces day and night, night and day.

However the frustrations of leaving the process to a print-on-demand company in Denver led to my decision to reclaim the means of production, on many levels I knew it was an essential direction to take, be it economically and artistically, I needed to get down to the nitty gritty of creating what I have envisioned, what I mean to produce and sell it to the wider world.

This frustration was consequentially (combined with) replaced by another form of grievance, the lack of support, facilities, advice and general help from the arts community in my local area. Essentially, if you’re based in East Sussex UK, anywhere other than Brighton, then let me save you the time and trouble and advise you that you…

1) Move to Brighton, or London, or Bristol. Don’t ask me why Bristol seems to be a Mecca for art and crafts screen printing, but it is. They have a particularly good course down there and a thriving graffiti culture, which includes artists such as Banksy and Sickboy for starters. However I have a suspicion, fuelled by a recent phone conversation with Jim Starr, illustrator and printer extraordinaire, that it may all be down to the recession. I’ll expound on that later.

2) Outsource your work, if you can afford it, if you have deadlines to meet such as demands from agents, exhibitions, dealers, clients, then perhaps this is the way to go. I have a great recommendation for you should you be interested in the option, again I will enlighten you further in a moment.

3) Try etching, etchings seem to be all the rage down here, one rather friendly chap I’d recently contacted was Colin Bailey of Ryepress.com, now based in the Old Town Hastings Sussex (previously Rye – obviously), Colin is a maestro at printing, an expert at etching and Glicee prints, we had a great chat, and I’d recommend him for either of these services. However it’s been a long time since Colin has screen printed and so unfortunately I had to continue to trawl the Net for useful contacts, which seemed a shame at the time because he really is a very helpful chap.

4) Give up. I know this isn’t an option for many, it probably depends on the scale you want to work at, there are plenty of places to order Speedball kits, which essentially are for beginners who want to print cards or rather small posters, even t-shirts. In fact there are so many t-shirt print equipment companies out there in the UK if that’s what you want to do then you should be fine. Some places to try are WickedPrintingStuff.com Axit and of course Ebay! If you want to produce large posters/prints on the other hand you’ll be flailing around the quagmire like me.

So what have I done so far to achieve my dream of setting up my own screen print studio, as do all the best graffiti artists out there, including guys like D*Face, who if they outsourced the printing would pay a fortune seeing as they can print with as many as 21 colours and varnish and gold leaf on some of their works?

Well I am still in talks with a group of artists in London, they have an old A1 screen printing bed for sale, I’m currently trying to convince them to dismantle it so I can courier it down and get it through the door. If it all works out I will have saved myself a small fortune (i.e not having to rent a garage/studio, not having to buy a new table), however I will be limiting myself to A1 prints for now (unless I outsource them). However after a chat on the phone with Jim Starr I am convinced this is the way to go, Jim opened my eyes to many details about screen printing gear I hadn’t been aware of, and have come to the decision that the market has far more tolerance for A1 prints, seeing as many of those who buy graffiti aren’t looking for exhibition-sized prints! What’s more I can outsource to the same company that Jim does whenever I need to work to a larger scale.

Talking of which, they are Arien Signs, they are a printing company based in Cheddar who have many years of working with artists including Jim, they’re a very friendly team with plenty of expertise to go around and can confidently produce 3 to 6 colour hand printed A0 artwork at very reasonable prices. If you’re looking for a great printers to outsource your larger scale work to I would totally recommend them, get a quote at their site www.ArienSigns.com.

Whilst I’m at it I also want to recommend Print Club in East Dalton London. I recently took a one day course there after being given the run around by a plethora of courses in Sussex and London, at only £35 for a day’s training it’s totally worth it! Plus if you become a member for just £80 per month you get 9 hours a week printing done and they don’t expect long-term memberships either, it’s up to you how long you want to stay with them! This is a very rare offer in the industry, most studios charge by the hour, usually around the £5 mark which means two days printing can cost as much as a day at the Print Club. I learned a lot there, foremostly the fact that in my current premises I cannot use an A0 manual print table, it just wouldn’t fit. Also I got to see the whole process from start to finish, I have screen printed at college but we used stencils then, now it’s photo exposure screens that make up the core of screen printing and yes I know how to do it! Visit their site and make a booking at www.printclublondon.com.

Anyway whilst I was there I also met Paul aka Eye Saw, he and a few of his mates are in the midst of setting up the Wonderland Collective, a group of graffiti artists in East London who print, spray and stencil their own art and will (hopefully) be selling online in the near future. You can buy some of Eye Saw’s work at eyesaw.bigcartel.com andand also hook up with him on Flickr a www.flickr.com/people/eye-saw/. We had a great time at the Print club chatting about our plans and the graffiti scene in general, he’s in touch with some major names down his way and even showed me a now ruined B-boy by Banksy, local taggers had run amok and scrawled all over it, still you can see it in a better state at ArtShout.net.

I’ve also managed to track down an exposure unit for sale, this is what you’ll need to expose your screens so you can begin printing images, I’m currently moving money from one account to another so I can pay him but it’s well worth it. It’s a top of the line Natgraph Exposure Unit, only 6 months old and Paul, (the guy selling it to me) has even built a vacuum frame (needs a hoover stuck in the back) to hold the screens. What’s more I’m getting it at less than half price, although the courier will bump that up, still, it’s a massive weight of my mind!

Okay plenty more is on the cards, I have a few London galleries emailing me regularly asking when the hell I’m going to have something for them, I should be getting a feature in Urbanism Magazine in or around October and I should be selling my own limited edition, hand printed, signed and numbered prints from this blog by then too!

Phew.

This post is tagged art, art and the internet, Brighton, Bristol, graffiti, Internet, London, Paul Baines, screen printing, Sussex