Week 10 - Screenprinting - 19th to 23rd April

Screenprinting - Cremation

During week 10 i only had one day of studio access which meant I was only able to create a limited amount of work, I did however spend most of my time in the studio preparing my design for screenprinting, and then did a few small resin experiments too. 

I spent the afternoon on Friday in the fiber and print room and managed to make roughly 30 prints, some weren't great as I needed time to get used to the pressure and processes again. 

Below are some photos of the work I did, showing some of the processes - like putting the design onto acetate, mixing the inks, and flooding the screen. 

The whole process took around 3 hours after preparing the screen and materials and I had originally wanted to experiment with colour also, but decided to make a warm dark grey for the print as I thought black would be too far from the original design (below). This worked well as I wanted the piece to be warm and inviting, rather than feeding into the stereotype that death is scary, bleak and dark. 

I named the piece 'Cremation' and there are 20 prints of this design which I hope to sell or submit to open calls. I named it cremation because the design incorporated smoke which I scratched in using my fingernails and I wanted this to represent my own unhealthy relationship with smoking, but also my own ideas for my funeral/burial, my family have a rich tradition of only wanting cremation and it followed through in all of us as the most ' eco-friendly' alternative to being buried or put in a family tomb. Cremation is very common in Britain now, with over 50% of Brits opting for it. I wanted to represent all of these factors in the name 'Cremation' because as a society so repulsed by death and funeral care, we do actually have a very modern way of caring for our dead.