Laura's Aurora

The eery green ink changes color with the light and paper angle.

It's holiday card season in the screen print studio, when special treatments such as metallics, sparkly paper and that extra something are called for. When Laura Kinneberg was commissioned to design and print a greeting card featuring the aurora borealis, she knew she wanted to capture its iridescence. Enter Interference, a special paint by Golden, whose website states: Interference acrylic colors offer a unique "interference flip." When viewed from different perspectives, the colors flip between a bright opalescent color and its complement. Laura adds "It works best on dark paper." The pigment must be mixed with, what else? Golden's silkscreen medium, which can also be the vehicle for other paints when the regular line of screen print colors does not fit the bill. We know the client will be thrilled with Laura's beautiful and unique card.

Golden's "Interference" + silkscreen medium produces magical effects

Laura Kinneberg

Denbo Debut

Torukpa Agbegha describes her process on Oct. 30

In October, Pyramid Atlantic rolled out the Denbo Fellowship Program, a new artistic scholarship founded by Beverly Denbo. Artistic director Gretchen Schermerhorn tailored the program for artists seeking to branch out into a new discipline by offering instruction as part of the package. Furthermore, "this one month fellowship is shorter than our 3 month residencies, appealing to people who may not be able to make that time commitment."

Textile artist and self-proclaimed "doodler" Torukpa Agbegha began the program with a bang in the screenprint studio. She applied herself completely to transforming her drawings and collages with screenprinting. We love the energy and inventiveness of her work, and look forward to seeing more of her in the studio.

Gretchen Schermerhorn and one of Torukpa's pieces.

Denbo Fellowship Program

The Denbo Fellowship is designed to offer artists, from a range of artistic disciplines, an environment conducive to individual and collaborative creative practice. This Fellowship provides a unique opportunity to complete a new body of work at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center.

Selected artists will receive:

• Up to one month of access to a state-of-the-art printshop, paper studio or bindery (specify amount of time & studio(s) needed in application)
• Key to studios and 24 hour access
• Ten hours of one-on-one technical assistance or one workshop
• Storage space and flat file for tools and materials
• Use of standard shop supplies
• $500 stipend to be used for travel, housing, materials, etc.

Technically Terrific

"C&O Canal"

"Caught (Bad Romance)"

Mike Hagan

Just 2 more days to see "Tessalations, Tentacles and Tattoo", Mike Hagan's excellently reviewed show at Washington Printmakers Gallery. Mike devotes himself exclusively to screenprinting his often Japanese-inspired intricate prints. If you love dead-on registration, don't miss this!

Show closes Sunday, October 27.

Washington Printmakers Gallery
8230 Georgia Ave.
Silver Spring, MD

301-273-3660

Re-fuel at Re-Strike

Althea Murphy-Price demonstrates a screenprinted watercolor mono print 

Chelsea Blackman (right), printing her coaster design.

The screen print studio was center stage at Pyramid's print symposium Re-Strike/Re-purpose. Althea Murphy-Price wowed the crowd with an array of applying and drawing methods using water based paint, crayons and charcoal. All produced distinctly non "screen print" results. The event concluded with cold beers and interactive coaster creation by graphic designer Chelsea Blackman.

Re-Purpose, Re-Strike

Dots Nice!

Flowers, Wayne Montecalvo. CMYK screenprint on tengucho tissue with encaustic wax

Spring, Allan Akman. CMYK screenprint with split fountain background.

Wayne Montecalvo and Allan Akman have a thing for spring. Both artists have used flower imagery to explore the process of CMYK screenprinting. Starting in photoshop, a color image is separated into the 4 channels used for offset printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Each color plate is converted to printing dots (as seen in the newspaper) and assigned its own angle to prevent a moiree pattern. These separations are then used as plates for screen printing, and as a jumping off point for experimentation. Montecalvo screenprints his color on to translucent tissue, and then reassembles the image by fusing the layers with encaustic wax. He deliberately tweaks his palette to evoke the greenish cast of chromolithography printing.

Wayne Montecalvo shows his process and pieces
at R+F Paints in Kingston, NY.

      

Puppet, Wayne Montecalvo.
6 color screenprint on gampi paper
with encaustic wax.

Chromolithograph postcard

In his work Spring, Screenprint Society regular Allan Akman stayed true to the color assignments (i.e. printing the yellow plate in yellow), but with a twist: he first laid down a split fountain gradation background. Says Allan: "I didn't know if I could pull this off but liked the results. Started using the color separation approach … but could never get the gradations and subtlety that I wanted. That led me to try CMYK. I also learned along the way that printing flowers using color separations can be done. I visited Lou Stovall in the process and he showed me very pretty flower prints he had done. To capture the color gradations and detail, he used maybe 30-40 screens."

Spring, detail, showing halftone dots

Coaster Queen

Chelsae Blackman has a thing for coasters. In fact, the graphic designer confesses to having a stash of over 1,000, just waiting for art. And so she was drafted to screenprint a cluster of coasters for Pyramid's party event KikiDC, where more than 25 area artists and fashion designers have been selected to create original wearable art to be modeled on a runway before a panel of celebrity judges. We are looking forward to looking under glasses for a truly unique coaster cushion.

Chelsae Blackman

________Kiki DCSaturday, June 8The Fillmore Silver Spring

8656 Colesville Rd  Silver Spring, MD 20910