On Sunday

I spent Sunday learning about solarplate printing at Joe Peller's studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I studied painting with Joe for several years and he taught me most of what I know about it. I miss the painting classes, but his show schedule has heated up so he doesn't have tons of time for private classes anymore. He still teaches at the Art Student's League, but it isn't for me.

ANYWAY. I used 2 photographs to create my solarplates that frequent readers...are there any of those out there??... have seen, but the look of the output is SO different when you are inking a plate and running it through a press.

These are made .. Reader's Digest Condensed Version.. by exposing a transparency created from an image to a solarplate under UV light. You could do this with the sun, but Joe has an exposure box that let us do it inside on a cloudy day. It is a vacuum box so it assures that there is good contact between the negative and the plate.


Then you wash the plate, harden it and use it like you would an etching plate to create a print on the press. Sounds a lot more complex than it actually is, and a lot of fun. I am going again next week, and maybe by then I will have something aside from straight photos to do, though I love the look of these. I also have a ghost print of each one so I can attack it with pastels.

The plates are sturdy, and you can run upwards of 50 or more prints from each plate as long as you have access to a press.


More later on when I color the ghosts!