Though the actual printing on this project was completed eons ago, I thought I would share it with visitors in order to give a peak at what screen printed yardage looks like.

While visiting with Sarah Welch in Chicago, I had the opportunity to visit and work in the Fibers Department’s printing studio, which features several lengthy yardage tables designed for printing on fabric. When printing on fabric, it’s important to work with stretched fabric that’s firmly pinned to the printing table. Registration also differs slightly, in that you must use a combination of registering your design pre-press by shooting it in a specified area of the screen in order to use an angle-iron with small joints attached in regular intervals to the table. In doing so, you simply align your finished screen to these joints and print your pattern in segments across the length of the fabric. Here’s a good video of a high velocity, manual shop doing very much the same thing:

Despite being a fairly complicated design with little trapping, I was amazed at the final product and hope to print more on fabric in the future! Check out some of the pictures in the gallery below!

For those who know me, one of the first venues I worked with in Austin was Co-Lab. There are a number of things which make Co-Lab a unique project space for Austin artists, but one of my favorites is its pseudo lawlessness. Every time I visit, I can be sure to see something different, and if the show isn’t that great, there’s still a good time to be had with free drinks and excellent company. But every so often, there comes a show that gets me pumped beyond belief.

Texas Crude would be one of those shows.

A lot of the credit goes to Matthew Winters for putting this magical show together. Even Vrooooom artist and collaborator Sarah Welch got into the mix with some drawings that took the crude to a whole nutha level. So with all of this general awesomeness occurring on our doorstep, you know we had to get involved. What follows is a collection of images from the opening, but be advised; some may be too crude for your tastes and definitely not safe for work. Be warned.

The Gaping Maw of Co-Lab

Dirty Flats by James Beard

And there’s even more! Have a look through the gallery below to check out the show in its entirety. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this show possible.

I hope to visit Sonnenzimmer’s studio space next time I visit Chicago, because the pair’s work occupies an interesting place in the gigposter world, as many of their pieces are inspired by minimalism, abstraction, and conceptual modes of thought. They’re sort of the art print terrorists of poster printing. Screenprinted posters can sometimes get old as there’s a trend for designers to use maximalist tendencies when designing for the medium. Sometimes it can feel like one is stuck in the 90s because there’s a lack of development in style; just how many times can you bear to see a soviet realist/hand-drawn animal/record collage poster before it becomes worn? But this pair does a good job in my humble opinion of fusing together the art world and the poster world. Food for thought.

I’m really fascinated by the 2010 Winter Olympics uniform for the American snowboarding team. Sure, it’s old news by now, but what I wouldn’t give to get a little access to a studio that could pull off this kind of work. Think of the possibilities! You can learn a little more by checking out the NPR story on the pants.

If you’re not in the know, the above “denim” is actually a sublimation print on Gore-Tex fabric. The firm which made them took a series of photographs of an actual pair of weathered jeans and translated those photographs into a pattern that was then printed on the raw material.

It looks like you too can wear a print, now that the pants are available for $250 a pair! But if the print looks as real as the real thing, what’s the point? Printmaking is no stranger to bringing up questions of authenticity (“Is it truly original? Or is it a copy?”), so I guess there’s a little further study needed…

It’s a CMYK world; we just live in it.

After almost a year (!) of dragging our feet, we finally settled down and called up the electricians.

The friendly guys over at Duhon Electric here in Austin swept in and wired up our studio space with 220 volts of pure, printing power. Just listen to those puppies wheeze!

The tricky thing with moving a pair of industrial presses like the Kluges into a shop is that many of the original motor system run on 3-phase power and lack traditional plugs. The majority have to be wired directly into a breaker, which can entail a lot of additional work for the home printer. Some devices can help you get the power you need, such as a rotary power converter, which uses capacitors to “step up” household current to a higher voltage. Don’t let a piece of valuable equipment go to the scrapyard just because you’re unfamiliar with the wiring!

The huffing and puffing is the sound of the Kluge’s vacuum pump, which powers the automatic feeder. The generated vacuum allows the operator to run a job without risking a limb in the maw of the beast, as paper is delivered to the platen for impression by grippers. The resulting print is then safely removed from the press by a second gripper to make room for the next sheet. The whole thing is very Rube Goldberg.

Our first project on the Kluges should be coming up soon!

If you’re not already familiar with the event, Flatstock is an ongoing series which celebrates the art of the rock/gig poster. Vendors assemble from around the world to peddle a selection of printed posters, the majority of which are screen printed. Presented by the American Poster Institute, Flatstock 24 was a stellar showcase of prints which easily stood toe to toe with a fully fledged gallery show.

In fact, it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Flatstock IS the world’s premier showcase of screenprints. Over the average Flatstock, viewers have a chance to view upwards of a thousand screenprints in a single sitting, and all for free. I can’t think of another venue which actively displays a similar collection of original prints, past or present.

Of course, the sugar on top of all of this is that the majority of works on display at the show are available for $20. Amazing.

Without further adieu, I’d like to share some pictures from our booth at Flatstock 24…

After the madness that was Flatstock, Vrooooom Press is interested in printing more original posters for art and music events. We’re talking about building a portfolio of work to showcase our studio’s talents, all while helping to promote worthwhile events. We even have a few pro bono spots available!

We’ve spread out our tendrils and hopefully will have some new work to present here soon as we form more connections with other like-minded organizations.

Think your organization would be a good match for us? Drop us a line to discuss the details!

Although Andy is an accomplished printer in his own right, I think his best work is done sharing his philosophy towards printing, and specifically print education, with students. All too often, first experiences in printing are dealt out in under-equipped, antiquated university shops, which seem to have a lock on screenprinting education in the states. It’s ridiculous to expect a painting department to deny students modern brushes and paints, but the equivalent practice happens every day in printmaking departments with hand-stretched screens, block-out fluid stencils, and punch tab registration. No wonder everyone I meet tells me that they tried screenprinting and thought it was “too hard.”

At our workshop however, it seems like everyone had a good handle on the process. I think this just proves that printing doesn’t have to be a difficult concept, but it does require attention to details.

Sorry for the sudden change, but we had rapidly outgrown our previous site and needed to find a better solution. For us, that solution has involved switching to a WordPress installation.

WordPress is a really cool tool for artists and other creatives in that it gives you enough support to be dangerous without having to reinvent the wheel to customize your site. This is fantastic, considering that generally, creative types need all of their waking hours to devote to new projects! Plus, open source projects seem to somehow relate to our work here in the studio…

Also, additional thanks to Graph Paper Press for making some of the coolest professional themes that I’ve ever laid eyes on. You can even test out some of their installations for free, but there’s a lot of crucial support that you’ll miss out on if you don’t spring for a subscription. Again, more time in my pocket to wear down squeegees and lubricate the presses.

We’ll be adding the print descriptions and some new odds and ends that never made it up on the original site over the next week, so stay tuned & pardon our dust!