Steve Harmston
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My artwork reflects a point of view that I attempt to make both visually attractive and unusual.
Unusual, in that the artistic medium I choose to create with is called serigraphy or
screen printing. Serigraphy is basically a stencil making process, in which each color
is hand-cut, and hand-printed onto the papers surface. With this medium of fine art
printing I try to express my personal attachment to the imagery with simple hand
cut shapes, overlaying with a vibrant palette of opaque and translucent colors. I
really love the physical aspects of creating my art...the stencil cutting, color mixing
and the act of pulling the ink across the screen onto the paper. The medium of screen
printing, while very time consuming and labor intensive, seems well suited for my
creative process. It's still exciting to lift the screen and see the colors build up on
each other. A serigraph is an original fine art silkscreen print. There are a variety of techniques to create stencils, I choose hand cut my stencils from litho-film with an exacto knife and expose the stencils to the screen using a photo emulsion process. The screen is a rectangular frame over which a mesh fabric is tightly stretched. Each color is printed by pulling ink across the screen with a squeegee onto the paper. This process is repeated over and over, sometimes requiring 20 - 40 stencils until the image is complete. It takes between one to two months to complete each edition, which are short, usually 50 or less, and they are never reprinted again, the stencils are destroyed and screen reclaimed. Screen printing creates a unique type of art with a smooth, satin like surface quality, that's almost impossible to create with any other technique. This artwork is not to be confused with mass produced, mechanical, or commercial reproductions or computer graphics. Each piece is a hand cut and hand printed original. And due to the nature of the hand printing process, slight variances occur with each pass so no two are exactly alike. Each print is truly an original, handmade work of art. |
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