Surface Design Journal Spring 2006 [Vol 30 #3] Screenprinting

Editorial: The Printing Screen: A Creative Window

A recent segment on National Public Radio was devoted to Andy Warhol and his place in art history. Since this issue then was under construction, a critic’s comments on the meaning of  Warhol’s screenprinted paintings caught my attention. The speaker stated that by using a commercial technique in a fine art context, Warhol implied that images such as familiar faces of celebrities, like his iconic soup cans, were mass produced consumer commodities.

In fact, predating its commercial associations, screenprinting had a long history as a textile art medium. Sources agree that in Europe and Asia the printing screen was derived from printing with stencils, first made of wood and later of paper. In China and Japan, dyeing fabrics with stencils was highly developed centuries before the printing screen as we know it today was patented in England in 1907. Since the mid-twentieth century, fine art printmakers have used printing screens in combination with a range of other processes. The term “serigraphy” was frequently used to distinguish artworks printed with screens from products screenprinted for commercial purposes. Gradually that term, along with “silkscreen,” has been abandoned since synthetic mesh rather than silk is now preferred.

It’s been a dozen years since the Journal last featured “Screenprinting” as a theme. Looking through the 1994 issue on “The Art of Screenprinting,” one can see that what were emerging then as new ways of working are now assumed as unextraordinary options. For example, using the screen as a flexible tool that could be moved around a surface was a fairly new direction in the early ’90s. Explorations in the use of the screen to produce layered painterly and textural effects as well as clearly defined images, were then in their early stages. Both of those approaches are now common practice.

In 1994, water-soluble mediums for printing had recently entered the market; nevertheless, an article on studio safety seemed a necessity. Safety still is a critical concern, but today there is broad awareness that masks, gloves and good ventilation are essential equipment in printing studios. Therefore, safety has not been addressed in this issue.

Present observation of artists’ accomplishments with printing screens indicates that no common “look” identifies the work as the result of a particular process. Some artists—for example, Kerr Grabowski—have discovered that when a printing medium is allowed to flow on the screen, its surface becomes a space for open-ended creativity rather than a passive sieve between the squeegee and cloth.

For other artists, like Piper Shepard, screenprinting is just one step along the way in a complex process. Shepard, by the way, takes the traditional pattern-making function of screenprinting to a 21st century environmental dimension.

Inevitably, current technology prompts  artists like Lauren Camp to add the computer to their toolboxes. But Camp has also found that the obsolete thermofax’s resurrection as a studio accessory has increased her repertoire of printing techniques.

As this issue is being wrapped up on the eve of its journey to our printer in Hong Kong, I glance out the window and see the stark silhouettes of January trees. After the publication process is completed, the Journal will return in a season when lively colors and textures are embellishing skeletal branches. In nature, such transformations take time. In art, they can happen with the pull of a squeegee.