Eco-friendly, environmentally conscious, and using sustainable materials.
- My first screen printing experiences were in a basement studio in San Francisco, using a light box my husband made, a hose and a bucket to catch the water, a cardboard box to protect the emulsion filled screen, and so many new ideas. The beauty of the process captured me, the amazing amount of detail that could so finely, transfer into baked emulsion and then be printed crisp, and cleanly.
Fast forward, having a baby on board, I was interested in alternative, more eco-friendly ways of screen printing without using photo emulsion. That is when Serigraph printing, or screen printing using a stencil was first brought to my attention. It is a similar but different process that challenges me to find new ways of achieving the fragile, delicate details. I have since cut over 100 stencils, and continue to thrive on the unique skill of bridging bits of transparency to one another to hold an image. Despite the one or two times we thought we'd have to resort to emulsion to get the detail, we figured our way around it, and have since committed to never using emulsion or any other toxic chemicals.
-The beauty of masking tape in our job is that it is never used just once, smeared with ink, it will dry, and still be sticky for the next job or two, we reuse it over and over again. Same with magazines. Pages are used and reused for test prints, to do reverse prints that help to clean the stencils after use, and to protect surfaces including the screens.-We try to upcycle the fabric when we can, and buy organic for our baby and toddler onsies and tees.
-And lastly we use water soluble non-toxic inks to print.
Every little bit counts! The intentions behind our work, and the way in which we create is to be awake and conscious to all things around us, and how we interact, and effect our shared space. Realizing that all of our actions contribute to either the greater good, or harm of the planet. Thank you Mother Earth for all that you provide! xo
