I’ve covered my entire window in tin foil and laid a huge tarp down on the floor of my room. I have everything from power tools to squeegees on hand; it looks as if I’m ready for a small-scale nuclear war to happen on my carpet.
I’m trying to screen-print in my room.
As someone who has a lot to say with fashion, using words and images as the medium for that expression seems like the next logical step to take. It has, however, been a complicated journey.
I feel like I’m inside a painter’s nightmare. Though the floor is covered in a huge painting tarp, rather than covering a neatly organized floor, it covers a combination of hardwood floor, carpet, sitting cushions and books, resulting in an uneven surface that leads to speedily recurring disasters.
To add to the obstacle course, the tarp is covered in dried puddles from spills and splotches of color from screen-printing frenzies. It hasn’t even been a week since I started screen-printing, and I already need to take it outside and hose it off. Things can only get better.
In screen-printing, these screens, usually made of nylon (though the process is also called silk-screening, most people don’t use “silks”), are stretched across a frame and coated with ultraviolet-sensitive emulsion about the consistency of Elmer’s glue. This emulsion, unlike what’s used in darkroom photography, can be exposed to regular light bulbs.
At first I was afraid to test this, having spent so much time in a darkroom in my life. I was a little superstitious about a light-sensitive chemical that can be exposed to types of light without harm.
I, of course, was terrified to ruin my light-sensitive Elmer’s glue, so I painted this emulsion on for the first time in almost total blackness, at 8 in the morning before my 9 a.m. class. This way, the screens could have the whole time I was in class to dry, and I could come home and “shoot the screens” ““ as the professionals call it ““ to immediately start printing shirts.
Needless to say, it was a disaster. I dripped chemicals all over my feet and coated the screens so unevenly they were practically rendered useless.
After fogging (the photo term for inadvertently exposing) a group of screens, I realized that covering my windows with everything from pillows to cardboard doesn’t block out 100 percent of sunlight; hence the tin-foil covering the entirety of my windows. Pillows apparently aren’t that lightproof or, rather, that big.
Finally, five screens and 20 test prints later, I’m starting to feel like I’ve got the hang of it.
I have yet to print on a real shirt, but I feel like it will take me a few more days to get to that point.
Of course, I also have to get over being terrified of ruining my clothes. That shouldn’t be that hard. If I can take scissors, sewing machines and BeDazzlers to my clothes without fear, screen-printing is just the next frontier to conquer as a DIY seamstress, fashion designer and new-clothing revolutionary.
There is a concept in screen-printing that dictates whatever you’re printing on must be half a centimeter or so from the screen so the ink can transfer through the screen and not get stuck.
Mentally, I can picture this concept. I imagine the screen being pushed down to the shirt, and not getting stuck as quickly as the squeegee slides down the screen, creating perfectly printed shirts.
In actuality, I’m starting to wonder if professionals really can screen-print all the shirts they do without fail. What’s the problem here ““ are the screens sticking to the prints, or are the prints sticking to the screens?
Eventually I’ll figure it out. I’ve learned all of this through trial and error in a matter of days.
It’s actually fairly easy; though on one hand it seems unfathomable, it is at the same time inarguably accessible.
Through my experience I’d like to personally contest the availability of the modern mode (of communication): a printed T-shirt.
The printed T-shirt is the idea of fashion as a communication taken one step further. Fashion communicates in an ambiguous, yet fully loaded, sort of way, whereas printed T-shirts, in all of their double entendre, corporate hierarchy, and scene and counterculture glory, spell out this ambiguity a little more clearly with pictures and words.
And even if no one can tell what you’ve attempted to silk-screen on your own shirts, at least you’ve harnessed that power and you’re on your way there.
Got any ideas for getting that chemical feeling off your hands? E-mail Rood at drood@media.ucla.edu.