ONGOING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE - MOOSEY ART

My duties at Moosey are slowly scaling up in responsibility and requirements as I get involved in larger areas of professional practice in the business. I have also been trying to streamline our practice and make it more inkeeping with my personal views as we go. I convinced Frazer to change over to biodegradable potato starch packing peanuts from the expanded polymer foam type we were using previously. Even small changes like this can have a big impact as corporate contributions to climate change and plastic waste are in fact the most detrimental of all, far far far outweighing any contribution achievable in the habits of a single person. This makes implementations like this of the most paramount importance, and also makes me feel like I am following my ethos in as many areas of my creative practice as possible.

As well as this, part of my work with Moosey involves creative problem solving and negotiation to achieve the high standards we strive for whilst also working to a intensive and constantly evolving program of artists, prints and exhibitions.

I was tasked with cutting round the new prints by Adriana Oliver which we were releasing as a three part series in gradually increasing edition numbers. I began at first with sharp scissors before finding the process easier with a stanley knife and cutting mat.

I found my previous experience with cutting round my own wheatpastes to be very beneficial here as it allowed me to work quickly and carefully through the entire edition and make cuts with confidence. We use the highest quality 250gsm Snowdon Cartridge Paper with deckled edges on most of our prints, but it felt a bit of a shame to have most of this material cut away as wastage on each of these artworks.

I assisted with both the first and second edition in this section over the summer months, and also worked on preparing the initial image into a vector to turn into acetates for print.

I found another way to further minimise wastage in the high quality paper, by finding the perfect dimension of square which would allow me to preserve some of the paper from each of the corners around the head. I ripped the squares away from each corner using a ruler to preserve the deckled edge, and was therefore able to save a high quantity of small equal squares from each edition which could be great for small artworks or test sketches/ other applications.

My next challenge came in the form of our next print from a 4 part series by one of our favourite artists, Kobusher. Having already created abstracted works of Snoopy the Dog and Stewie Griffin, the next instalment was to focus on Homer Simpson and also run as part of our new collaboration with enamel pinmakers, Pinpicked.
The majority of the print was already complete, however Jo our main printmaker had left the multicoloured sprinkles out of the design (which can be seen in the earlier original design on the right) as they would've greatly upped the number of colours and time taken to produce the work. Initially me and Frazer hypothesised that these could possibly be added by hand afterwards, which would also make them listable as hand finished and of greater interest to collectors. However the only way we could know for sure if this was something we could achieve on a uniform scale across the entire edition, was by testing it out.

My first attempt utilized crafting simple foam stamps in the shape of a selection of sprinkles and then testing these to stamp each sprinkle on. I hoped this wood give a relief printed effect. However in practice I found this very difficult to achieve reliably, especially as the design required a white layer to mask the bright pink icing and ensure true colours. After a few successful attempts and many more unsuccessful onto a test piece, I left my results out for my boss to inspect.

Afterwards I got the call that he agreed with me and wanted to try stencilling instead, however had also at this point thrown out my stamping tests before I could photograph them as part of my documentation, however I spoke to him about this and we agreed he wouldn't do this again so I wouldn't have any gaps in my documentation for uni.

I hoped stencilling would give me the clean crisp edge needed for a professional finish, so gave it a quick try on a coloured test piece. It gave me the crisper lines, however when applied with a brush, had a textured surface which looked a little off. I went to source a sponge to smoothen the application and then tried again with both parcel tape and blue masking tape.
Using tape was ideal as I could cut through many layers of tape to make lots of identical sprinkle stencils, then apply them induvidually as completely sealed, self adhesive stencils.

The blue masking tape was much more effective, especially with a white backing layer, and I even attempted a full test on a printed version of the artwork to truly guage effectiveness against the colour. On and induvidual basis it worked perfectly, so I then finally felt ready to go ahead on an actual working copy.

In order for this method to be effective it would also need to be time efficient, which so far it was proving to be. Applying a large number of the stencils was relatively easy, allowing a white layer to be added all at once initially which then made the act of blocking in each colour the only really fiddly bit.

I was hoping for a success, however as I removed each stencil I could see that the more intensive application had damaged the effectiveness of the stencils. I think painting them all on one after the other cased the tape to stretch and warp, exposing thin seams of white on areas around some of the sprinkles. It worked much better than my attempt with stamps, but still just didn't look quite right, which was disappointing as I had thought we were onto something. I got  Frazer to oversee the work and once again he agreed with my initial judgement.

By this point we had experienced a few issues with the level of printmaking produced for us by Print to the People. I began to pick up on a couple of simple communication issues and registration or production errors which could have potentially been avoided which I was able to notice from our print room technician Jess' explanation of how meticulous traditional archival printmakers should be, and just my general experiences within the print room and of the process.

A couple of times in partial jest Frazer had suggested words to the effect that perhaps I would be better to get involved, as it would certainly solve the communication issues if nothing else. I had always been uncertain to entertain this suggestion, feeling massively underqualified to produce such high level printmaking, and was also very unwilling to step on anyones toes or suggest I could do a better job as a student who had not yet even graduated.

However our lead printmaker with print to the people was on a sabattical until mid October, leaving them unavailable to process any more orders until then. So Frazer suggested I could try and add the sprinkles myself, he would pay for me to be inducted onto the facilities, for membership and sessions if it meant we could get the printing process moving faster. By this stage we had a dozen strong list of artworks ready to go, yet no ability to produce them without outside help. I at last agreed as I felt like this was perhaps an easier first introduction to potentially becoming a working printmaker for Moosey rather than diving in at the deep end working on an entire print for the first time. Although I was a little anxious to be taking such big steps down a path of professional and possibly postgraduate practice, I was also becoming increasingly excited and was happy to book in an induction and see where things went from there!