On Saturday, September 20, 2025, we spilled a bit of ink in the shop, courtesy of instructor Wendy Murray, and her friend and mentor and 2025 Hatch Show Print Visiting Artist, Earl Newman. It was water-based acrylic ink for silkscreen printing!
Wendy introduced the methods we were going to use by describing how Earl’s practice of using hand-cut paper stencils adhered to his screens saved time and money throughout his career, and during the confinement periods of COVID, gave Wendy a way to keep printing at home.
A piece of paper with a hand-cut stencil that is attached to the screen can be used to get the ink on the paper, as an alternative approach to coating the screen with a light-activated medium and exposing it with a piece of film that allows for the unexposed area of the medium to be washed away easily. A stencil can be economical and efficient.
It also creates opportunity for the printmaking to become more organic and spontaneous and look less “perfect” – but most definitely cool or beautiful!
In his commercial process, Earl did have screens made using the medium or emulsion method for his key line or key art, but Wendy forgoes that “finishing” step entirely, relying on the layering of color and closing the negative spaces down to accent lines, or incorporating the use of letterpress to add some text to a print.
While she was talking, Wendy deftly demonstrated cutting a stencil, and then Earl even got in on showing participants the correct use of the squeegee!
Next, the participants (a small but dedicated group!) cut their own stencils to fit into a particular area of the print that needed more ink – two sides of a barn that looks just like the barn adjacent to Earl’s studio in Oregon. Pieces of thin paper became lacey, and everyone printed a small run of prints to gain an understanding of the basics of screen printing.
The pursuit of excellence, not perfection, was the order of the day, and in this way, even the accidents were opportunities to learn and make something different.
We’re looking forward to hosting more workshops in the coming seasons – if you want to be notified when they pop up in our calendar, just sign up for our newsletter!
