Unit 4
January 21st 2025
Roy Lichtenstein
Drowning Girl – 1963
Silkscreen Print
Week 1 Written Response
Through the exploration of screen printing, a couple of essential questions came to mind about both the art of it as a whole and the generated output. My first thought for this project was riso printing – but I decided I wanted to explore a more hands-on tool. Screen printing was the obvious choice here but it raised the question of why anyone screen prints when you can do risograph printing. Getting the same result but with a more controlled, streamlined, and efficient result. Is it the act of creating by hand, of going against the machine? The increased control in the production of each layer?
I also came to understand the level of rigidity and predetermined outcome of screenprinting. There is an intense lack of room for adaptation in a project through process, locking you into the original idea from the moment you create a stencil – or at least for the iteration at hand. What does the output of screenprinting stand to gain from interrupting some of these processes? If the stencil is moved while being exposed to the UV light what can it create? If squeegeeing the ink over the screen is repeated and repeated? How can the rigidity of screenprinting be made unpredictable when altering the constraints and can it lend something to design and screenprinting as a practice?
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