Digging into Digital Printing with Wen Redmond

Saturday FIVE went to NH for a workshop with Wen Redmond.   It was a private workshop that Beth negotiated with Wen and was held in her studio at an old mill.  You enter in the green door.

 And then you go up the winding staircase to the third floor.  Her studio has a primo space because it is right by the bathroom and the windows look out over the river.  Beauty and Practicality all wrapped up in one location.

The workshop itself was experimental.  That means we got to play with lots of different types of paper, fabric, and precoats for digital printing.  We came home with lots of samples of what we had learned.  I am only going to show you the fabric ones because that is what I am the most interested in.

 We were told to bring pictures on a flash drive already pre-sized to 4x6 inches or 5x7 inches.  I chose several but as you can see, I printed mostly the picture I took of an Osage Orange grove in Columbus OH. The first two are both fabric collages.  The one of the left is linen/silk organza/linen fabrics with an orange something in the middle of the organza.  The one of the right is a collage of all see through fabrics coated with different types of Inkaid.  Because of the fagility of the fabric, we collaged the fabric onto a sheet of plastic before we coated it with the Inkaid.  After the Inkaid dried, we ran them through the printer to print the picture.  Nothing special was done to the printer in order to print. I really like the picture and really like it printed on the fabric.  I want to do a third one with more orange in the middle and make them a threesome.

 These two pictures are 5x7.  The one on the left is a picture I took at Popham Beach.  It is printed on black fabric that was coated with a white Inkaid.  I could have covered the fabric more completely for a less abstract picture but I like this effect.  The picture on the right (recognize the trees?) is a piece of white fabric that I pre-painted, let dry, coated with Inkaid and then printed.  When the painting is done with an idea of what is to be printed I think the effect would be very powerful.

This last picture is printed on a canvas fabric that comes already prepared for printing.  The white diagonal lines are from a white crayon scribbled on the fabric for a resist.  Again, when used with intent, I think the technique has possibilities.  I did not  bring the photo printed on a piece of fabric treated with molding paste to give it some texture, coated with Inkaid and then printed but, as you can imagine, it has texture.  Cool.

A workshop well worth going to.  I expect to experiment more with the techniques and to incorporate some of them in future projects.  However, if you go to Wen's studio, don't make the mistake I made.  I looked at some of her work.  This piece came home with me.  I am going to float it on a piece of black mat board, frame it, and hang it in my studio for inspiration.