The Chicken of the Egg? or You Asked For It

C

It's difficult to know where to start explaining what I do with my textiles as everything overlaps so much, but it has a lot to do with photography and images I capture with my camera.  Back when we were just young women, I took a wonderful photo/darkroom class at Carroll College, not far from the old Niddy Noddy. I loved the whole process of printing images, so imagine my delight when I discovered photo silk screening some years later. Silk screening has been around forever. In fact it dates back to 1000 AD in China when ink was pressed through a "screen" of silk mesh fabric to create patterns on paper and fabric. Flash forward to the present. Screens are now made with polyester and can be coated with a light sensitive emulsion. Images are placed on the screen and exposed to light. Wherever the image blocks the light, the screen stays "open" . The rest of the coated screen hardens and becomes impermeable. As you can see from my photos, the end result is a picture screen that I can squeegee thickened ink or dye through onto my fabric.

Back to the images. In the old days before I had a computer and photoshop, I created all the prints and patterns in a darkroom. Instead of exposing my negative to paper, I used a clear sheet film called a kodalith. The end result was a black image on a clear sheet that could then be applied to my emulsion coated screen. It was quite laborious but some of my best screens resulted from this. Today everything is digital, so much easier and so much more fun. I can capture an image, load it into photoshop, clean it up and print it on clear film with my printer. You can see a pile of my many images on the table on the right.

Some women buy Prada...I buy equipment. My light box is one of my indulgences. It sits there in all its glory making shooting a screen a pure pleasure. You can also get a glimpse of another favorite tool, my rolling mill, but more about that another time. Recognize anything else in the picture?

R