Big Fag Press Artist Residency Programme 2013

* Flier design mine

Supported by Artspace and Australia Council for the Arts, the Big Fag Press got to host an Emerging Artists' Residency for 3 weeks in January with two artists, Laura Hindmarsh and Pat Grant.

Both artists were looking at introspective notions of art work, and it was great to be able to do test printing on the Press and spend time mentoring the artists and helping them create works that really took into account the unique functioning of our machine.

Here are some images from the residency and launch.

 

 *All photos are mine

HOMERUN

So I'm in the last week of my honours major project! Not getting much sleep, but every day gets me a step closer. I've set my print deadline for next Monday or if I have to, Tuesday. Then I have two weeks while proofs and prints are happening to put up the rest of my Street Art, work on my website, load things onto The Loop and update various social media platforms like my facebook page, twitter @LouiseKAnderson, and Instagram (LouiseKateAnderson).

I've joined in to work on promoting our year group through our social media pages as well. @utsfashion, #utsfashion, #futureoffashion, and UTS: Fashion, not to mention our continued fundraising from raffle tickets, & cupcakes every Monday in the DAB building, and our Pozible page.

Our catwalk is the evening of the 4th December in the UTS great hall. The exhibition there at #fashionspace runs for a week.

*Instagram photo mine. Cupcakes by Amanda Algeo

PRINTING!!! (and web stuff)

So I finally finished designing my Street Art - I'm proud to say it's almost all my own work, I just got a little bit of feedback help with things like fonts and layout.

I got my plates made up the other day at Imagination Graphics. I'm glad I checked everything as (LITERALLY) the last second because my QR codes didn't work!!! Thankfully I was able to fix them in time.

I spent the last two days printing, and got everything done. And let me tell you, 2 colour plates x 160 sheets on our press in 2 days, not to mention chopping them all in half and signing the limited edition of 12 - is not an easy feat!!!

Here's a bit of a documentation of the process:

Choosing my ink colour for the fountain (and making sure the middle mixes to a nice purple):

Putting the ink on the inking rollers:

Getting the plate all ready and properly dampened:

First print, colour no.1:

Day Two: Black Ink

Plate no. 2: Black plate

Sorting out some "too much water" issues:

Drying on print racks:

Sorting out some registration issues:

Chopping!

And some videos to explain the whole process (excuse the dodgy "self-camera" work)

*Images & videos all mine.

And that's the printing.

Website work has been a whole new world for me. I've never built a wordpress before and suddenly I've had to look up things like CSS codes. I think it's looking pretty good though! Don't you?

Thanks to Lucas Ihlein for all the help.

Mamamia

I was recently directed to this article by Amanda Dallimore on living with Anorexia via The Butterfly Foundation on facebook. It's great being connected to all these people doing fabulous things and telling true stories about body image - such a contrast to anything you'd find in any magazine.

I looked at doing an internship placement with mamamia.com.au earlier in the year when I was researching Mia Freedman as one of my inspirations. I actually just read an interview with her in the latest Dumbo Feather. I think the work she's done is amazing, and I may apply for that internship next year when I have more time.

Trampoline Day!

So today was Trampoline Day, which was actually a lot of fun.

 First Pat, Steve & Caroline introduced themselves and the day and how it would all run (notice people holding the fliers).

  The we "set the grid" by adding ourselves to the board and choosing what other topics to attend. Anyone could speak about anything - and the topics were as diverse as raw dog food diets to "how to learn MAD skills".

Here we have a passionate lady called Kylie who told us how she raised $33,000 on Pozible to get a whole lot of Australian wool processed in Australia, and talked about the impacts of wool processing in China on sustainability. I got a few hints about why my own pozible campaign wasn't successful! She really marketed her idea and "sold" it to everyone from politicians to knitter's guilds.

Similarly this is Tom, who also spoke about reasons why crowd-funding fails, I think he was from Kickstarter, or just knew a lot about it.

And another session I attended by Adam who spoke about 3D printing, which I'd never really heard of before - basically the idea that a printer can "print" an object out of plastic or metal, after being given a design to print. He seems to think this could be a huge revolution in the next decade - apparently it's possible that everyone will have a 3D printer at home, and any kind of object we need, we either design for ourselves, or download a "design" for. According to Adam, there is a kind of 3D printing "napster" type site, and that one day we will be able to "print" ourselves new livers, or indeed for a 3D printer, to print an iPhone, or just another 3D printer! No doubt this could change a lot of things about creativity and intellectual property.

A 3D printed duck:

 An intricate metal ball-thing:

And a mechanical contraption I'm still not sure what to call:

And of course we gave a presentation on the Big Fag Press, which got us a few interested parties wanting to work with us!

All in all, I've learnt a lot today.

*All photos are mine.

Trampoline Printing on the Big Fag Press

I'm writing this post without the intention to post it until after the Trampoline event on the 15th April 2012.

So basically I was approached through Lucas and the Big Fag Press by the people who run Trampoline, about designing and printing a flier for the event on the Press. Trampoline is a free art-like event where anyone can come along and give a 15 minutes speech about anything they think is "amazing".

For something roughly the size of an A5 piece of paper, this job would usually be sent to the Rizzeria or Blood and Thunder, but I agreed to take on the job to see a design through from concept to print as a practise for what I'll do for my major work.

I was given a basic outline and things I needed to include, so I came up with a design in three different shapes.

My "trapezoid" shape seemed to be the most resolved, so after a lot of back-and-forthing of emails, fonts and logos, and whether to include an exclamation mark, and how to spell "harbour" and many other things, my final design of the front ended up looking like this:

I then created the map on the back which wasn't easy, perhaps my orienteering skills need a bit of work, but google maps is a very useful tool! I basically ended up tracing over screen prints of google maps and shifting it around to fit my design.

The next step in the Big Fag Press print process is to layout the design on a metal plate. This is done at Imagination Graphics, a place in Marrickville. The designs need to be converted to greyscale, as the ink in the end is what puts the colour on the paper. Ie, 100% black = 100% blue, 50% black (grey), = 50% blue (light blue).

I decided to put in some more time and save money by making one plate only and putting both the back and front of my design on the plate and turning the paper over to print on the back. This meant registration had to be worked out exactly, which I tried to do myself by mirroring the paper placement, designs and crop marks etc, all from one central line. As you can see the template gets very complex.

In the end, I didn't trust my layout enough, because although the "snap to" functions and guidelines in illustrator are awesome, Imagination Graphics just has mathematical software which can lay something this complex out easily. For simpler jobs, it wouldn't be difficult to do this myself, it's usually just a matter of making sure two plates for two different colours match up exactly with relevant registration marks.

This was my plate in the end: (the design looks blue just because where the design is etched out is always blue no matter what colour you want to print with)

I looked through a few different colours (oil based inks), and chose a warm-ish Cyan.

I then chose my paper, which was 690 x 750, 300gsm, coated, and printed several copies onto scrap paper just to test out where the central line would fall on the paper bed on our machine. It was then a matter of printing onto both sides of the paper and shifting the registration lines a couple of millimetres to make sure back and front would match. In the below image is Pat helping me use the sun to see if our registration was working properly.

I then printed all 50 copies, let them dry, and then printed the backs, all the time fighting to keep a balance of water vs. ink on the plate as it was a very humid day and the plate was drying up quickly.

 At one point I had to clean the press blanket and start again because some flecks of paper began getting stuck to the blanket, and obscuring part of my design. This is the blanket below, it works as kind of a huge "stamp" taking ink from the plate to the paper.

And then became a tedious process of trimming the fliers, but they ended up coming out pretty well (at least I think so).

Pat, Diego and I are attending the Trampoline event on Sunday to give talk about the Big Fag Press - it works out nicely actually, because we do think it's pretty amazing!

*All images are mine.

My Internship

Okay, so I've been meaning to write a post on my internship.

[Image sourced from the Big Fag Press website]

I'll start with a little about the press itself. The artist collective named it the Big Fag Press because the actual machine is called a FAG 104 Offset Proof Press, and well, it's pretty big. These machines used to be used to check the quality of a print before the design went to mass printing, obviously with new technology in printing, these machines are pretty much obsolete for the commercial printing world, but if you take a look at the quality of a print properly made on one of these machines, trust me that no current system can take its place.

Anyway, so this machine was made in Switzerland and headed for the scrap metal yard in Australia when Lucas Ihlein, Mickie Quick, Diego Bonetto and Pat Armstrong bid on the machine a total of $50 and then spent several thousand transporting it! Being commerically "unviable", we use it for limited edition runs of artists' printing work (though we have done the odd packaging printing and a few other random things). The beauty lies in that the paper doesn't need to be put through rollers of any kind like contemporary printers, so you can print on virtually anything (even perspex) up to a B1 size format. We use things like fine watercolour Fabriano, Mohawk paper a lot, and have printed on recycled envirocare, gloss paper, matte, anything - it all depends on the project.

The Press basically works on the chemical reaction where water and oil separate. It's difficult to explain but basically we print one colour at a time off a metal plate which has been pre-prepared at Imagination Graphics. The plate is dampened, and the oil based ink is deposited on the image by ink rollers and then picked up by the rubber blanket and eventually rolled over paper-bed. Each colour is done separately, so most designs need pre-press colour separation work, as well as careful registration on the printing day.

[Photograph is mine]

During the Green Bans project, which was part of Sydney Design's Old is New theme, we even did some experimentation with Fiona McDonald on using old lithographic techniques and chemicals to prepare our own plates. It didn't work out for that project in the end, but I think it's definitely a future goal for the press.

[Photograph is mine]

The most current thing I've worked on at the Press is Lucas Ihlein and Ian Milliss' Yeomans Project (all photographs are mine):

Possibly the thing I've helped out with most is Lucas' Environment Audit - with some of the actual research in the MCA exhibition, as well as pre-press work and printing.

And, a few other things the Press has done in the past:

[All images are my photographs of artists' work at the Big Fag Press]

 
And here's a little piece I wrote on my experiences as an "intern":

An Unlikely “Internship”

Now, it’s not many people who can say they know how to and have helped change the blanket on a 4 tonne printing machine (that’s the weight of 8 cars). Actually, a year ago, I thought a blanket was just the rug I use on my bed. But now I know, large offset printing machines use rubber blankets to transport ink from rollers to paper. How did I come by this information? It’s an interesting story.

A while ago in my Fashion Design degree I decided I wanted to take a more artistic route and major in the visual communication/ printwork side of things, and I was told I needed to do an internship. The desire to be part of the artworld always having been somewhere there in my subconscious I seized the opportunity when Lucas Ihlein by chance gave a lecture in a class I was taking, told him I was inspired by his presentation and would he mind if a wannabe artist hung around him for a while. At this point I had no idea he was part of a collective at the Big Fag Press, and that suddenly my degree and my artist dreams would veer down the same path.

Being an “intern” (yes I still do the “_” hand movements when I say this outloud) with a group of artists is very different to what I’ve experienced in the world of fashion where I remember steaming dresses all day long. I could have been the coffee kart chick at a larger magazine company that couldn’t afford to let an amateur like me do any actual work, instead I’ve been welcomed into a small business almost at the point where it’s just got off the ground, making artist contact one after the other and being allowed and thanked to be an integral part of every process from admin, to running the machine, to event organisation and documentation and digital design work. I even got to use my patternmaking and sewing skills to make a cover to fit the press!

 
I’ve met and worked with artists Michael Stevenson, Jason Wing, Kate Sweetapple, Keg de Souza, Ian Milliss, Fiona McDonald, and many more, not to mention collaborating with Artspace, the MCA, Fremantle Arts Centre, The CrossArt Projects, Firstdraft Gallery and Performance Space, The Paper Mill and of course Mickie Quick, Diego Bonetto and Pat Armstrong. Lucas even paid for a workshop I attended at the Rizzeria. Our big project last year Green Bans Art Walks saw me designing the project logo and T-shirt, and one of my photographs of the event ended up by chance in the City News newspaper which subsequently got me a few freelance photography jobs.

I’m on the brink of being able to run the Big Fag Press by myself (apart from perhaps the weight of some of the parts!), and I’ve learnt so much, as well as being able to consolidate skills I already had in photography and digital design. The opportunities I’ve encountered, not to mention the mentoring, inspiration and (dare I say) friendships I’ve made have been invaluable to me. I’m currently simultaneously doing a few of my own prints on the press, and beginning my final year and major work for my degree, altogether happy to have ended up at this point, in a place I feel I’ve helped, and has helped me.

[Photograph taken by Lucas Ihlein on my camera]