Okay, so I’m working on my 10th piece (called "Outta Space") for the indoor Street Art series and I know what needs to be done, I have to, as any self-respecting Marxist would spout, "control the means of production". I’m not happy with what ImageKind.com offer, besides the piddling profit I make, barely 5%, which isn’t my main concern by the way (as much as their prices for larger prints), I have no control over the printing process.

i want to create screen prints, not digital prints, I want to sign and number my prints, I want to print them myself. Seems simple enough, but wait, this is where reality sets in, kicks you in the teeth and leaves you mumbling incoherently to yourself in the gutter. The fact is there are a lot of aspects to life by the sea, in a small town, where hardly anything happens, is a good thing. I’ve lived in London, I’ve lived in Brighton, I’ve lived in Bristol, and when I was a younger lad it was fun, I didn’t know what the hell to do with my life, but at least I had fun working it out. As the years passed I realised I’d done everything I wanted to (to excess) and wanted to "hole up" and knuckle down, focus on my work, and gradually that work transformed from mere graphic commissions to graffiti art.

However, now I’m at watershed, a precipice of change, and practicalities be they financial and/or technical are decidely blocking my path to future success. I’m getting invites from shows and galleries in London and Paris, certain sites want to know how much commission they can take to sell my works, and here I am with my enormous Wacom graphics tablet and Apple Macbook trawling the net, desperately searching for local resources to help me out.

I’ve scoured the Net for local screenprinters, even if I wanted to limit the size of my works to A0 (which I will most likely have to do anyway) the costs of using a 3rd party printers are phenomenal. Say I wanted to print 100 limited edition prints with a maximum 6 colours for each work, well the cheapest printers I’ve found so far will want £64 per print, that means I’d need £64,000 to print the series??? Exactly, I could buy a screen printing company for that price. I was thinking a few grand tops, but no I’m living in a retroactive dreamworld as far as the economy goes. So here’s my latest plan, find a local screenprinter, pay them a few hundred quid for a crash course in all things screen printed, get a breakdown of exactly what I need, much of which I know already, and then set myself up.

I’d still be spending thousands of pounds just putting the studio together, luckily I have a basement going spare, there’s running water, electricity, space, in fact everything I’d need, bar of course all the equipment! So I start hunting down any artist in the local area I think might be able to help, and this is what I’ve learned about living in St. Leonards on Sea.

1) Most people in St. Leonards on Sea and Hastings don’t get around to answering emails.

2) Most people are friendly on the phone but have no idea about local resources.

3) Most art institutions in the area offer very little help or no help at all. They’re for the main part out of their depth and inflexible. Here are a few examples.

• I phoned up Electro Studios, they’re just down the road from me on the lung hacking, traffic laden, Bexhill Road (or rather round the back of it). I didn’t catch the name of the guy who answered, he first of all sounded freaked out, "who was I, what did I want, what, what?". It was as if no one had ever visited their website before, who knows. Anyway even though they definitely have an artist their who screen prints, even though there must be some kind of facilities for doing it, he denied all knowledge of it, and said they had nothing that could help. Advce, equipment, space, time, none. I even offered to work at nights to get around the capacity problem, but no dice, what he did say was try Hastings College.
• I didn’t manage to catch Ian Brown, the head screen printing guy there, however a few of the people I talked to essentially tried to put me off. "It will cost a fortune, the students take precedence, I’m not sure Ian has the time". And so on and so on. Still I’m awaiting a call back and see what he says.
• The Arts Forum. Essentially all I got was a sales call, they want £20 off me, their server had a virus, they can send a message to their mailing list, I will receive updates on all their shows. I promised I would shell out the dosh and then it hit mit, look through their list, track down any artist that even mentions printing and ask them. I did get hold of Colin Bailey, though he only does etchings.
• Colin Bailey of RyePress is a real friendly guy, it’s such a shame that he doesn’t do screen printing anymore, he’s not touched it in 20 years, which is a coincidence because that’s about how long it’s been since I have. If fate was on my side Colin or someone he knew would be able to help out.
• Digital Media Print contacted me, they emailed me within minutes, they were prompt, but I think you can tell the clue was in the name, they don’t screen print. I knew that, I’d found them in the listings at the Arts Forum, explained I needed a crash course and advice, they didn’t seem to understand what I meant and passed me on to another commercial screen printers, who I will never be able to afford.

So, there’s my adventure for the day, the first of many chapters in what I will describe as my Screenprinting Hell, I haven’t even started printing and I can see how difficult this is all going to be. It’s mad, Hastings and St. Leonards on Sea is jampacked with artists, musicians, crafts people, mad people, drunks, everyone under the sun, it’s a real slice of life by the sea. Yet no one seems to know anything about screen printing, which is rather disastrous for me, because that is most definitely what I need to know.

It’s a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the story of my life. If you live between Hastings and Brighton on the Sussex coast and I can reach you by train, if you are a screen printer, I don’t mean a big commercial operation, just a guy/girl printing in another basement somewhere, I could really do with your help.

I’d pay you for your time and the materials used. Essentially I need to practice, take notes, work out exactly what I need to print A0 and larger prints up to 6 colours. What equipment, what voltage halogen lamp, what mesh weave, general prices for equipment, etc. With a little help I can begin to build my studio. If you’d like we can print the works at your studio for now, and whatever I sell I will split the profits after costs, it won’t be a fortune but it would be extremely good karma on your part!

I have galleries and dealers interested, they want work to exhibit and sell, I need a printer or learn fast, what ya say?

Tags: Brighton, Hastings, screen print, screen printing, screenprint, silk screen printing, St. Leonards on Sea, Sussex

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We’re pleased to let you know that the second book in our “Books We Love” series is Ji Lee’s Talk Back: The Bubble Project which came out from Mark Batty publisher in 2006.

Back in 2005, when we first saw Ji Lee’s white speech bubbles plastered on advertisements all over Manhattan, we thought that they were, from a graphic perspective, quite interesting. But what we didn’t know then, was that Ji was not only putting the bubbles up, but that he was returning to them days and weeks later to meticulously photograph the messages and drawings that people had filled in. Ji’s extensive documentation became the basis of the “Talk Back” book.

Ji’s project, which he calls “bubbling” is about reclaiming our public spaces, neutralizing the negative effect advertising has on our daily lives and “instantly transforming the corporate monologue into a true public dialogue.” Back in 2006 we did a short interview with Ji for Theme Magazine.

Ji explains the project:

What we like about the book is that it’s at times funny; at times extremely provocative, and always incredibly insightful. Over the years we’ve bought countless copies for our friends and relatives. We’re confident that you’ll love the book, but if you don’t, all you have to do is return it to us and we’ll refund your money.

Talk Back: The Bubble Project
by Ji Lee
Price: $14.00
128 Pages
Size: 7 x 9 inches
Format: Paperback

If you are unfamiliar with our “Books We Love” series, here’s why we’re doing it:

Over the years, one of the things we love to do when we travel is to discover amazing self published books at stores like Magma in London or Zakka in New York. But unfortunately most of these types of small bookstores have either gone out of business or are now completely filled with mass market titles that you can easily find much cheaper on Amazon.

Most of the books in this series will be small editions, often self published, and ones that we feel have not received the attention they deserve. We’re keeping the cost of the books as low as we can, always under $20.00 except for rare occasions, so that as many people as possible can buy them and include in their library.

Previous “Books We Love”:

Public Phenomena by Temporary Services

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all city animation project, video 2, Napoli

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Photos courtesy of Jeremy Gibbs

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