Bushwick Pride, K. Sarrantonio, MFA 2018, Printmaking

We had a busy week at the Queens office of Make the Road last week as we prepared for two big printing days, one the following week with the Youth Power Project and one on the Weekend with the graduating students of the Adult Leadership School and community members and members of the public at Bushwick Pride.

I began the week by preparing the drawings from the youth and adults, 10 in total, in Photoshop, this meant turning grey pencil marks into bold black lines. When they were finished I had them printed on acetate at a nearby copy store. Next I stretched ten silkscreens, starting with the wooden frames I cut pieces of mesh to fit each one and pulled it taught as I stapled it to the frames. Next I coated the screens with photoemulsion and placed them in a dark area of the basement to dry. Once the screens were dry, Perla, one of the YPP leaders, and I placed the images one by one on the light table I built last summer each with a screen on top and exposed the image to the screen for 6 minutes. The screens were then gently washed with a hand pump sprayer into a large rubber washtub that we later bailed out to the office toilets upstairs.

The homemade exposure unit in the crowded basement

freshly washed screen in the basement

I spent the next day preparing patches and posters to print on. Before the weekend we moved the screens, inks, rags, spray bottles, masking tape, paint cups, paint stirrers, squeegees, hinge clamps, blank posters and patches etc from the Queens office to the Bushwick office. On Saturday I arrived at 11am for the Bushwick pride march for Queer liberation and anti-gentrification. After the march was the block party where from 2pm-5pm we printed for free with the public. We made hundreds of prints on shirts, posters and patches.

Clean up was a mess but everyone went home happy and covered in ink.