Virginia A. Spiegel

I walked right by this at a church garage sale this month. But my sister, eagle eyes, said, “Wait, look at this” Any guesses?

Yes, that’s right. A mint-condition vintage Olivetti-Underwood typewriter made in Barcelona, Spain. I can’t believe my sister let me have it. Of course, it didn’t look quite so pretty when I brought it home. But a little vacuuming, a little scrubbing and what a beauty!

Now, why would this be such a hot item? Aside from the fact that I just like looking at it, it will be the source of ongoing art experiments. Let’s see - type something and run it through the Thermofax. Screenprinting bonanza.

That sounded so good that I had to go give it a spin. Not enough carbon and too small to make a direct screen. Scan it, blow it up, print it out.

Original typing and screen made from manipulated type. My thought on any kind of typography is that what it says isn’t as important as the graphic element of the type itself. So I typed as I write on artwork - stream of consciousness, let the errors stand.

Two small trial runs of the screen. Trial runs are a pain as the paint is never quite right - the bottom one, the paint was too heavy; the top one a little too light. The way to really achieve good screenprinting is to lay out plastic, a whole bunch of painted fabric, and just go from one piece to another screenprinting parts of screens using a foam brush.

Having said that, I will use both of these pieces of fabric. I’ve just added one more layer of interest.

I’m also thinking about typing on a couple of layers of tissue paper and then gluing the typed top layer on a collage with a little gel medium. The tissue paper will drop right out. I’m off to do more typing right now.

If you enjoy reading my blog, treat yourself to my ongoing eBook, Art, Nature, Creativity, Life.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 5:42 am and is filed under From the Studio, Technique Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.