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Writer's pictureChristianne Myers

Fabric Printing, Day 4


After not finishing anything to rinse out on Wednesday, Thursday I was a printing maniac, completing six or seven pieces to rinse and dry Friday morning. The piece above is the half yard of experimentation from earlier in the week, with bits of lino printing, my first foam mono-prints, and roller texture from below. On Thursday, I scraped into it with layers of color.


I used the first Arterial Dreams (copyright BioArtography, Greg Dressler, Ph.D., Professor of Pathology) mono-print test sample from Tuesday and printed into the full yard with table scraps and rolled over the snow fencing again.



And then, using the same source, found a different result. First, I used the big doughnut silk screen from the day before to print three big red motifs. Then, using a squeeze bottle, I added a hand drawn chartreuse border on the inside and outside edges of the red blobs. That needed to dry overnight. The next day, I added some bright blue and green texture using a piece of steel wool and the back end of a paint brush. After that dried, I mono-printed a smaller scale of the shape, as above, to break up the composition. The last step was to scrape in the background with both a bright green and a dark brown/black. I got a little carried away with painting over the original red, so I'm curious how this will wash out.


Using Knitting Insulin (copyright BioArtography, Mariana Rodriguez Ortiz, Research Associate- Schnell Laboratory Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology and Department of Computational Medicine and Biology), as another inspiration, I created two different mono-prints. The mono-print is made by applying a thin layer of thickened dye to a flat surface and then drawing in to the dye removing some of it. Then the fabric is carefully placed on top of the dye and rolled flat, then peeled up. For both of these I used the tile scraping tool, twisting it as I drew the lines and wove the lines as is in the research. My first attempt was the small sample. I completed the mono-print first and didn't like the fabric folds that were caught when I printed it. After it dried, I scraped yellow over the twisted bits and burgundy into the background. For the larger piece, I under-painted with a green texture at the end of the day Tuesday and then let it dry before making the print. Since the print paste acts as a slight resist, the mono-print didn't stick as well and the effect, to me, reads as a sort of a snake skin texture. I also think the motif is too thin for the larger scale.


The mono-print prepped on the board before printing with the stamp below.

Returning to Ballet (copyright BioArtography, SunJung Kim, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Organogenesis and Internal Medicine, Division of Molecular Medicine and Genetics), I used the positive and negative foam stamp I made on Tuesday to print onto a green ombre background I scraped on the first day. The ombre effect was our second sample as an exercise to control the dye value by mixing it with print paste to dilute it. I made a mono-print on a maso board by removing the dye using my foam stamp in a random pattern of star shapes. I printed the darkest part of the fabric with it. Then, I used the foam motif as a stamp, both pressing down from the top and placing it under the fabric and rolling over it. Once that dried, I reversed the ombre with yellow dye. Right now, as it's still unwashed, it looks very shiny with dried print paste, but I'm hoping the green will pop through once it's rinsed and set.


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