MFA Monday 1/31/2011

I now realize why all of my friends that attended HBCU's (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) seem to have so much hustle and drive.  I promise you I am getting a crash course in extreme persistence!  I spent the better part of yesterday LITERALLY running paperwork around campus. I've decided to move into on campus housing until I complete my degree. Financially and academically it makes the most sense.  The hoops I had to go through were somethin' else though! All the while I'm thinking: "are these different offices not connected by fax?" Luckily I had the presence of mind to get some Orthopedic inserts for my shoes which had me walking pretty close to normal speed.  One more hoop to jump through today and I will be set.  So I said all of that just to say: Here's my Monday post...on Tuesday...again.

I tried my hand at screen printing last week...I love! I used the screen painting technique.  For my first experiment I made a design loosely patterned after a microscopic image of skin cells, which I thought would be appropriate since my work was first inspired by modified skin.

First I drew out my design on paper:

I put my screen (that I made myself) on top of the design and painted the design onto my screen with screen painting fluid.

After that dried I applied screen filler. After that dried I used cold water to rinse away the areas where the screen drawing fluid was applied.  I let that dry and then I was ready to roll.  My first boo-boo came when I forgot that I read somewhere about having to have a different mesh to use paint with glitter in it. Oops...had to re-wash the screen and let it dry again, as the flecks from the metallic paint I was using COMPLETELY clogged my screen.  Subsequent passes got lighter and lighter because of the clogging.

Using my Jacquard fabric paints, I mixed up a deep teal color and took another stab at it:

SUCCESS! I am SOOO getting into this fabric re-design stuff!  Next I want to try the photo-emulsion technique, which allows for more sharp details like lettering and stuff like that.  I once thought it was a technique that required too much equipment, but I found an awesome , low-tech tutorial here.

Well, I went on to mix up a deep plum color and made a few passes with that.  Then I layered it with sheets of cotton cheesecloth that I hand dyed.  I am going to use this fabric to make another art doll, this time using the "cut away" treatment that I used on the clutch I showed you in a previous post.  Here are the parts, pre-snip:

There's a layer of pinkish cheesecloth on top of a paprika colored cheesecloth, on top of the cotton that I screen printed my design on.  I used cheesecloth so that the pieces wouldn't get too bulky and hard to turn right side out.  Also, these layers are going to shred beautifully.

Of course I'll post pics when I'm done...