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Southern Graphics Council International (SGCI) is a printmaking conference that brings the printmaking community together to learn, create, and network! There are print sales, open portfolios, artist talks, demos, and more! This upcoming year, the 2018 conference, will take place in Las Vegas. Hope to see y’all there!

I’ll be at SGCI in San Francisco. I won’t have a lot of stuff due to travel constraints but I’d love to meet some new pals! ( and see old friends) . I’ll have these stickers and more at the Open Portfolio. Hope to see you there!

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Kara Faye Gregory will be at the @strangegirlsneverdie holiday sale this Saturday, Dec. 16 with their screen printing company, Ritual Print Co.!

Collaborative intaglio plate with Christopher Alday is filed and ready for etching.

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Upcoming Art Sale: Strange Girls Holiday Night Market

A Conspiracy of Strange Girls is a collective that promotes creative work by, for, and about Strange Girls. Part creative collective, part arts organization, the Minneapolis-based women-trans-femme+ group is open to ciswomen, transwomen, femmes, non-binary, and genderqueer folks that identify with Strange Girls. The Conspiracy currently consists of over 60 inaugural members with a variety of creative backgrounds, including visual arts, tattooing, music, performance art, skilled trades, crafts, and arts organizing.

This holiday season, Strange Girls have collaborated with Interact Center for Visual and Performing Arts to curate a holiday shopping market. On Dec. 16 from 6pm-midnight at Modist Brewing Company, visitors will be able to peruse and purchase the best kind of holiday gifts, handmade art, from Strange Girls, Interact artists and other local artists. 

Artistic wares from over 30 local Strange Girl artists & friends, including: 3 Jäg design: Hand crafted jewelry by Betty Jäger bmf jewelry Bethany Grabert Ceramics Black Banjo Arts Black Spoke Leather Co. Blkk Hand Cabinet of Curious Clay Claybrook Art Seen The Future Haus of Elle Hell& Studio Hush Apothecary Joy Spika L. Buda Illustration Lofty Dog Design Lulu Organics Meg Brown Ceramics Metal Babes Nest and Tessellate OTHERREALM Ritual Print Co. Sassafras Healing Arts & Consultation Scylla & Circe Press Silvercravt Stranger Stitchery Teresa Audet - Object Maker Wreckcycled

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PRINT GIVEAWAY!

I’m doing another print giveaway. These are my test prints on scrap papers from my studio. The prints vary in size (roughly 11″ x 7″) and quantities are limited. All my giveaways are open to anyone! If interested please email me.  karafayegregory@gmail.com

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Rubylith

Screenprinting can be a quick and dirty way to mass produce your content, push out many layers and bright colors. It is a favorite of the DIY printmaking scene with its versatility with material and inks that you can use. However, it requires stencil making, and that can be tricky with paper, especially with detailed imagery. 

Rubylith is a  brand of masking film, invented and trademarked by the Ulano Corporation. It consists of two films sandwiched together; the bottom layer is a clear polyester backing sheet, the top layer is a translucent, red (ruby) colored sheet. The top layer can be cut with an X-ACTO knife and peeled away from the bottom layer. The top layer's color blocks UV light for exposing your screen.

Check out this awesomely detailed rubylith timelapse by Helen Popinchalk!

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Amazing local activist and printmaker, Ricardo Levins Morales! Check out his studio space and shop on 3745 Minnehaha Ave. 

http://www.rlmartstudio.com

By Artist Ricardo Levins Morales.

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“sharpography”

Stone lithography is one of the oldest forms of printmaking, with rich results that are guaranteed to give you a a velvety black image that looks like a charcoal drawing. I’m not going to cover the basics here, if you want that, check out this awesome video demo by the Edinburgh Printmakers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E38B0swb4vo

Though you get a nice black image, it is not feasible to add color layers, especially multiple color layers, because it takes so long to go through the etching process. A nice, quick way to add color layers is actually using sharpies, coined “sharpography” by a few local printers.

Sharpies are frequently used on aluminum and polyester plates, but they can be used on stones too, due to the carbon in the ink. They produce solid flats and ideal for images that will have many translucent color areas. The greatest benefit of Sharpie is the speed for printing successive flat layers. No graining is necessary to draw a new Sharpie layer, the previous layer can hot etched out so you can still see the ghost image. 

Here is the step-by-step breakdown of the process:

1. Wash image out with Johnson’s Paste Wax, sponge with water to get the wax out. 

2. Mix a hot etch with 25 drops of nitric acid per half ounce of gum arabic. Pour on the stone’s margins, rub into image vigorously with an old brush.

3. Repeat a couple times until the image is mainly gone, (you will want a bit of a ghost image to see where you want to draw your layers) and wipe off the etch with a  rag and rinse. 

4. Ready to draw! Draw in the Regular Sharpies, chisel tip, and Magnums can be used. Fine tip pens don’t produce an even coat. The felt nib is what helps lay down an even coat. Old Sharpies are unreliable and will require more layers in order to print well.

Deletions can be made using a razor, but ethyl alcohol and a small brush or q-tip is better. The etch won’t use any acid, so parts scraped out with a razor will have the tendency to grab ink and fill in during printing.

5. No etching necessary! Just simply buff with gum arabic.

6. Mix your ink, I would recommend using around 75-90% transparency base or else your colors will be too dark. Sharpie flats require a very stiff ink. If the flats are going to be translucent and layered, make sure to add Setswell and magnesium carbonate to the ink. If the ink is too loose, it may spread and get pushed into non-image areas on the stone during printing.

7. Wash off the gum coat and begin rolling up with ink with a rubber roller. Sharpie flats take longer to ink up, so don’t get discouraged if it takes many proofs.

That’s all! If you want more layers, wash off the current sharpie layer with alcohol. It will take several passes to remove all of the Sharpie and a ghost image will remain. After the stone is completely dry, it is ready to be drawn on again.

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support small business this holiday season!

lowwbones is a one-woman-show, screen printing original designs on shirts and patches by hand. at the helm is me, rhys, owner/operator/designer/printer/troubleshooter/hustler/head-witch-in-charge.  printmaking keeps me buff and happy.

strange girls never die patches and shirts (and a bunch of other designs) are available in my etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/lowwbones

<3<3<3 strange girls forever and ever and ever <3<3<3

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VISITING ARTIST: Anders Nilson

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Anders Nilsen is the artist and author of eight books including Big Questions, The End, and Poetry is Useless as well as the coloring book A Walk in Eden. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Kramer's Ergot, Pitchfork, Medium and elsewhere. His comics have been translated into several languages overseas and his painting and drawing have been exhibited internationally. Nilsen's work has received three Ignatz awards as well as the Lynd Ward Prize for the Graphic Novel and Big Questions was listed as a New York Times Notable Book in 2011. Nilsen grew up in Minneapolis and Northern New Hampshire. He studied art in New Mexico and lived in Chicago for over a decade. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Anders is here in Minneapolis doing a book tour for his new long-form comic, Tounges. Join Anders at Moon Palace on Oct. 28 for a reading and discussion from the first chapter. Set in Modern Central Asia, Tongues follows the intertwined stories of an imprisoned god, an East African orphan on an errand of murder and a young American man with a teddy bear, lost on the tattered fringes of the human world. It is a story of adventure and revenge and a meditation on human nature in the fraught present moment. Tongues is loosely based on a trilogy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, of which two plays are lost and only dimly reconstructed by historians. Key to the story of Tongues is Prometheus’ role as creator and protector of humanity. In flashbacks and in Prometheus’ conversations with the eagle and others, the book will touch on humanity’s deep evolutionary past and its complicated prospects for a future. Tongues is both adventure story and meditation on human nature in our present fraught historical moment. The full-color, large-format Tongues is Ander’s most ambitious work to date and marks a return to something a bit closer to the more traditional comics form he last explored in his multiple award winning Big Questions (Drawn and Quarterly, 2011). The artist is serializing the book in large-format, full-color comics to be self-published and distributed in conjunction with No Miracles Press over the next few years until the story is complete.

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He will be visiting the University of Minnesota Art Department on Oct. 30 at 1pm and Oct. 31 at 9am to give two talks to students studying art. Both will occur in the printmaking studio in Regis Center for the Arts.