Boxes Upon Boxes

• May 29th, 2006 • 2 Comments • cleaning, studio 4A •

My husband and I cleaned out the storage closet that is supposed to house most of the studio’s supplies this weekend. It looks painfully small; I couldn’t help dragging my feet when I went down to the studio garage to start sorting out what gets packed and what gets semi-packed (so I can continue to use contents within). The whole month has proved a bit frustrating as I have produced almost no art. Making money to eat has taken precedent over making art; and annoying waves of melancholy idiocy keep washing over regards the studio’s demise.

However, I am a little excited about my supplies being moved closer to the computer. Yes, yes, I wrote a while back about how I liked space between my fine art and my computer. Things have changed a bit; I use the computer more for producing bits and pieces to use in my art. While it still remains true that the computer is not an idea machine, but rather a tool, we’ve wormed out more of a relationship that doesn’t interfere with creative development.

Oh I’m also excited about a FRESH WATER SOURCE. Remember the sink? Apparently the reservoir makes a wonderful swimming pool for cockroaches. Except they can’t get out. So they drown. And decompose. In the reservoir. Gross. You can imagine my delight when I cranked the faucet after being away from the studio in lieu of student teaching only to have a variety of roach bits come pouring out with the water. Now I have a bathtub with a pimp hose hookup with which to rinse out all sorts of things. Oh yeah, the new pressure nozzle is great for filling up waterballoons. As a second-floor resident I feel obligated to have a stock of bombs to drop on my husband’s friends.

Running for my life after dousing unsuspecting guests ought to chase away the “I ain’t got no studio blues.”

 

$4 Pressure

• May 17th, 2006 • 2 Comments • how-to, screen printing, supplies •

A while back, I made a mod for my shower to wash out screens. Well, the whole things works pretty good, but for stubborn photo emulsion, I need more pressure! I wanted to use some sort of garden hose jet as most cheap shower heads just don’t have the blast-your-skin-off kind of pressure I want. Here’s a simple fix I did to add more power!

1) Purchased a 1/2″ to 3/4″ adapter and a ordinary garden hose jet attachment for about $4 at the store. (All showerheads are 1/2″ and garden hose fittings are 3/4″.)

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2) Screw them into existing fitting thusly, and viola you have more pressure.

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For this, there is obviously more splash-back, but I can live with that.

 

Project: Shrink Studio

• May 16th, 2006 • 0 Comments • studio 4A •

Well well well. I did some measuring in the studio: a chalk square that is 15ft x 6ft now engulfs most of the room. When a problem is physically laid out in front of your eyes, it helps to solidify what will happen. Studio 4A, I think, is going to have to be moved completely out of the garage, and I will stop paying rent on the whole place. As much as I loathe them, it almost seems prudent to use one of these:

I’m not at all excited about the prospect of downsizing so that I can’t do anything large or messy for an entire year. However, this does give me the opportunity to organize the entire place in preparation for the massive move out of the apartment. Planning out my dream garage is a project worthy of a year of planning!

I suppose updates will be sparse until I come up with a good plan of action. August deadline looms!

 

More Screenprinting

• May 2nd, 2006 • 0 Comments • experiments, how-to, screen printing •

Screenprinting has been helping me to satiate my printmaking fix; it’s been almost two years since I’ve touched an etching press! Fortunately silkscreening is horribly cheap and easy, and doesn’t require a whole lot of space. I’m sure some of the hardcore old dudes would cringe at my self-taught techniques, but hey, when you’re broke some of ‘em look pretty good!

I figured I would share some of the troubleshooting I’ve gone through (most of it last night) in hopes of some feedback or benefitting others. Back when I was messing around with a lithography press, I made a horrible mistake. See, when you’re working with a stone, you make parts of the stone hydrophilic and other parts oleophilic. Because I was new to litho, my stone wasn’t quite set up right: it was absorbing some ink in areas it shouldn’t have, and water in others. However, it was still crudely workable. My Big Mistake(tm) came when it came to running the stone through the press. When litho stones go through a press, they have a sheet of plexiglas or metal on top, covered with a line of grease to help it squeeze through the press at tremendous pressure. Whoops, dopy me, I ran a newsprint proof through with the plexiglas upside down. This means that the sensitive stone ran through the press at high pressure just SUCKING grease in. I panicked of course, but my prof came by and ran emergency stone resuscitation procedure and fixed my unfixable problem. Point of my long drawn-out story is, “It can be fixed!”

So! A buddy of mine called me up in a panic about her screen which wouldn’t let go of some diazo photo emulsion on a nylon screen. She hadn’t left it out or overdeveloped (as near as we could figure it was either mixed wrong, or a bad batch) but the emulsion stuck fast despite her using an entire bottle of diazo solvent. Hmm.

Analysis: How bad was the damage?
I’m not sure I would’ve attempted this on an ENTIRE screen but my buddy’s screen only had a few stubborn spots. I figured this was workable. We both agreed to try an all out assault at the risk of ruining the screen, seeing as how it was ruined with the perma-spots anyway.

Trial 1: Bleach
We poured straight household bleach into a tub and tossed the screen in to soak for 10 minutes. The emulsion broke up and released a little bit after some coaxing with a toothbrush. The bleach method was repeated two more times, with some success, but largely the spots stayed.

Trial 2: Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
If you don’t own one of these, get one. They’re delightfully non-toxic, require no chemicals and are surprisingly effective at getting dirt/grime/whatever out of tiny areas. We made sure to rinse off ALL of the bleach, as chlorine bleach ruins the “eraser”. Mr. Clean did a pretty darn good job at cleaning out many of the pinholes in the screen! While the eraser didn’t do enough to remove our emulsion spots completely, I definitely will be using it to clean screens in the future.

Trial 3: Acetone
After a VERY THOROUGH RINSING I opted to try alternative solvents. Down in the studio I tentatively brushed acetone onto the trouble spots with an old paint brush. Almost like magic, the emulsion released and dissolved. My concern was dissolving the screen as well, but it didn’t seem bothered. The only problem with the acetone is that it broke the emulsion down into a fine film. I figured that the photo emulsion remover would take this right off.

Trial 4: Photo Emulsion Remover
Nuthin’. Lot of scrubbing and the emulsion film stayed.

Trial 5: Back in the Bleach
SOME spots came clean, most of it stayed though.

Trial 6: More Acetone
Rather than brushing on, I set the screen down so that the actual screen touched a sheet of glass. Then we poured acetone into the middle of the screen so that it pushed any photo emulsion residue outward to the edge of the screen. Worked well! Hooray! I dabbed intermittently with an old rag to work the acetone around.

There you have it, the trials of recovering a screen! It was my concern that there would be enough residue on the screen to cause new photo emulsion or screen filler to not adhere properly, but apparently this was not a problem. I am able to happily say that with a fresh coat of photo-emulsion my friend’s screen turned out perfectly. My only regret is that I didn’t take any pictures! Ah well; this might be a project for a screen with a stencil on it I left out all last summer. Rev up yer toothbrushes!