So, when I was a Cub Scout (when is that? when you're 8 or 9 years old?) we had to do a craft project. We were given a little block of gleaming white stryrofoam to take home and carve... make into WHATEVER we wanted. I painstakingly carved out (what else) a coffin, just big enough to fit a G.I Joe into. I carved a little lid that fit onto it and was pretty excited about the action figure funeral possibilities (when I think of it now, I shudder to imagine the team of psychiatrists that would have been assigned to me had this fateful chunk of morbidity ever made it to the Troop meeting). The lid fit flawlesly and the edges were bevelled perfectly, but a snow white coffin just didn't make the grade in my book. The final step was to paint this thing black, then it would be PERFECT. I rushed out to the garage, put my masterpiece on an unfolded newspaper and took a can of black spraypaint from my Dad's workbench. I spraypainted it thoroughly and completely BLACK and rushed upstairs. There I donned my Cub Scout kerchief and ate macaroni & cheese and would soon be rushing off to the Troop meeting where I was certain I would be given a Medal of Honor for my amazing contribution to the field of macabre styrofoam sculpture. When I returned to the garage I found a smelly sticky molten pile of black goo where my prized coffin had been. I was crushed, but probably spared a lifetime of state-mandated psychiatric observation.
FAST-FORWARD to 2001. No longer a Cub Scout, I am now a Printmaking Instructor. Like any interesting Printmaking Instructor I am always trying to find new things to print from, new things to print on. I like stuff that gets quick results. Jennifer Hilton, friend colleague and fellow interesting Printmaking Instructor, has some styrofoam meat trays kicking around the studio where we teach at Montserrat College of Art. She uses them in her Relief Printmaking class; if you draw into them with a ball point pen it makes an impression in the soft foam. Then you can roll the surface up with ink and in the print the ball-point line shows up white. Jenn likes quick results too. Anyway, I've got a paper stencil lying around that I had been using as a demo in a screenprinting class. I usually save my stencils and get more mileage out of them by taking them to my studio where I then use them as spray-paint stencils. Anyway, one thing leads to another, I remember the corrosive property of spraypaint on foam and I try the spraypaint through the stencil on the styrofoam. Well, I'll be dipped! Where I spraypainted, the styrofoam melted away leaving the untouched surface (covered by the stencil) still raised-up and perfect for relief printing.
After a few tests I found that blue house insulation (available in 2 x 8 foot sheets) makes for great relief blocks. The Mummy print (above) was a result of my first test of the new StyroGraphic medium. It is a 3-color reductive block print. That is, all three colors (yellow first, then green, then black) are printed from the same block, but it is altered (reduced) between each printing. So, first I created a stencil that would cover all of the block that I wanted to print yellow, then I spraypainted the block through that stencil in order to melt away those areas that I didn't want to print. Then I printed as many yellow prints as I was going to make in total (in this case, 8). Next, I cut away more of the stencil, sprayed the block again, and then printed the green. Finally, I cut the stencil so that it would conceal only those areas that I wanted to print black, sprayed the block and printed the black. Reductive printmaking-- a truly MENTAL undertaking.
photos by Jennifer Hilton
Before I knew it I was doing a demo in Jenn's Relief class (above) of the whole StyroGraphic Experience. The demo resulted in the print you see below. 
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE DEPARTMENT: I came home raving to my darling wife about this: "I've discovered a new kinda printmaking! Printing off styrofoam... it's it's FoamaGraphic!! Isn't this GREAT?! And isn't that a wonderfully cheesy name for it?" She shook her head (as she often does) and said "That's so cheesy it's dumb. Now, StyroGraphic-- THAT sounds cool." I tried it out... and had to agree. Credit to Jessica Demarjian for the name.
Good post, I like to leave comments because it allows bloggers to become more engaged and for the opportunity to perhaps learn from each other.
Posted by: treatment of hemorrhoids | April 15, 2011 at 03:27 AM