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Me & silkscreen - part1

Back in 1994, After a chaotic few months during which any semblance of a plan for my future was torn apart as i turned my back on competing as a figure skater, i was in need of a new plan. a large part of my world gone, i switched focus to the only thing i could see as a possible path onwards - studying art. I was 18 and headed for a year-long art foundation course at the kent institute of art and design In maidstone.

The course thumped along as we lept from one DISCIPLINE to the next - textiles, photography, sculpture, life drawing, fashion, and then PRINTMAKING…

I loved it IMMEDIATELY!

The printmaking studio was run by the bearded and persistently black-shirted randall cooke and print Technician, terry. the class covered all the main printing disciplines, including lino cutting, etching (dry point, aquatint, open ground), lithography (plate and stone) and screen printing.

What i found particularly enjoyable about the various forms of printmaking were the processes themselves, although by no means all of them. I liked adding the ground to an etching plate but not so much the inking up, i loved grinding flat the surface of a litho stone but not the process of gumming and dusting and etching the surface, the delicacy of which always felt incongruous with the weight of the stone.

I had no dichotomy of thought with the silkscreen process. Admittedly, this was only true when using water-based inks - the requirements of cleaning up spirit-based inks were, to me, off-putting - but give me a sponge and a bucket of water to clean the screen and in my view, everything was perfectly in balance.

The images you see here are the first two screen prints i made. The first depicts elements of a cornish island owned by the wonderful atkins sisters on which my family and i used to holiday and the second, which includes the text ‘qui le voudrait d'une autre maniere’ (who would want it any other way) was possibly a celebration of womanhood, but its actual intended meaning has been lost to time.

In the next part of this blog series, i embark on a degree course in cheltenham…