Late nights in the print shop

Saturday August 2nd...

One of my students stayed on another week to take a fashion illustration class and he would come into the print shop at night with his friend who had been in my friend’s stop animation class. I know that one of the best ways to further commit a process to your memory is by teaching it to others, and this made me so happy to see.  I was in there making prints with Lily, and they would come in on their class break, or at the end of the day and show me the beautiful prints they had made the evening before.

One evening I had promised Aimée we would have a printmaking lesson, and finally, with her busy schedule, one night it happened. But word had spread, and along with her a class full of students trickled in. I’m pretty sure the entire summer class that didn’t sign up for my class ended up in the print shop that night. At that point in my trip I didn’t have paper to give them and it was chaos.  With students using my brushes that had never painted before, printing on un archival dry paper, some prints turning out and some not…everything opposite of print shop etiquette, but oh so much fun.

The last night in the print shop was the night before I left and Aimee and Carmen came in. We did watercolor monotypes, playing with gum arabic and cheese cloth, experimenting with the amount of soap in the water.  Leaving Aimee to print her dry plate the next day, I walked over to the cantina for my last fish and guava dinner with the professors.