I know I know, time has come to a stop, or so it must seem from outside the bubble of my creative universe that skulks in the bowels of a house by the sea in what is most definitely autumn by now. I can only apologise and regretfully admit defeat (for the short term), my hopes of releasing my first batch of silk screen prints by late summer are completely dashed upon the rocks of grinding and grating difficulties, too many to mention, too boring to mention.
So I won’t mention that I’ve just spent most of the summer hunting down the right equipment, or scraping rust from a print drying rack salvaged from a farmer’s field in the west country. I won’t expound upon financial difficulties that have from time to time meant even if I achieve the impossible of finding the right equipment (i.e equipment that disassembles so I can fit it through a pokey back door), I still can’t afford. I won’t even mention the nightmare of finding the right suppliers, especially a decent local reprographics company who can cope with creating A1 transparencies. I won’t because the nightmare, is nearly over, I’ve ascended from screen printing hell to screen printing purgatory, and you know what, I might just make it to screen printing heaven one day.
So, if you’re interested here’s a quick tour of what almost constitutes my studio (so far)…
So, the studio used to be a basement flat we rented out a few times some years back, it has a bathroom, kitchen, lounge and bedroom – or rather it used to. After one tenant after another doing a runner on the rent and dealing with various thick set brutes claiming to be their debt collectors we gave up on that idea and I commandeered the basement as a studio.
The above image is of a home made stand that an incredibly friendly and helpful guy sold to me on Ebay. Made from wood and non-refractive glass, the back is sealed with a rubber sheet and when open it has two legs that drop to support it rather like a table. This is as close as I will get to an enclosed exposure unit. With some exposure units costing as much as £5000+ I knew I needed an upright exposure unit. The best I could find was a Natgraph 1600W, which fortunately I found (hardly used) at Ebay at under half price and less than a fifth of most enclosed units.
It uses a metal halide lamp and incorporates a timed shutter to make life much easier for me. I am in the process of converting every light to infra-red with a few sheets of red acrylic and an order of blackout sheeting and velcro should arrive in the next few days (again another bargain at Ebay). It means a lot of sewing, but it will afford me a more convenient way of creating a temporary darkroom whenever I need it. In the background is another bargain, an A1 plan chest I managed to nab cheaply, yes another Ebay bargain. Oh what would I do without Ebay?
Here’s that elusive print drying rack I’ve been harping about for quite a while now…
It has 24 racks at A0 size, which means for now I’ll be producing 48 limited edition prints of each work I release. It would have cost me over a grand new but I managed to buy this one at Ebay for £11, although with shipping it notched up to just over £100. Still a bargain, although the month of sanding and painting ruined any chance I had of getting a tan this year, it’s dark at the back of our house, blame the Victorians for that, we don’t have real gardens down here, town houses have yards, and it was a tight space to perform industrial scale cleaning. Still it’s a massive relief to have managed to get this done.
Finally, the love of my life (bar my GF, the cats and art), my screen printing table. It’s enormous, it came to my house as a vast jigsaw, there are a few nuts and bolts left over which is rather worrying, but it all seems to work so hopefully no nasty surprises around the corner!
It’s an old manual table, it’s been around the block, I found it on Gumtree.com, at a studio near The Tate Gallery, and it’s a miracle I managed to get it into the house, but I have.
I’ve just ordered a jet washer, and am waiting for a breakdown of prices from Steve Wood who’s probably the most helpful screen print supplier in the country – check his site at www.steve-wood.co.uk. I’m also about to order a whole load of newsprint and Somerset paper from John Purcell, plus of course all other consumables including inks, cleaners and so forth from Steve.
Of course I will be trialling every stage of the process for a few weeks once I have everything I need, it would help if my local repro house would bother to answer calls and emails in less than a week at a time. Is it so difficult to print an A1 transparency? It’s a shame I’d have given them a plug too but they have got me miffed right at the moment.
Oh well – nearly there!
