In 1975 my father suggested we take a silkscreen class that was being offered by Loretta Murawski at B.O.C.E in Fairport. It was the first class I had taken with my father and I was struck by what a good student he was. He would jump on the assignments, constructing the screens from homemade hinged frames and producing beautiful prints while the rest of us were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do.
The silkscreen above is from a series of prints and I think he also used this image for a Christmas card. My sister, Amy, would remember the details. Leo liked Chesterton and Merton and I often wondered where this phrase came from. I looked it up today and found this excerpt from a 1975 NYT review of a book called, “All The Strange Hours: The Evacuation of a Life” by Loren Eiseley. My father might read the book, he had quite a library, or he may just have read the review. I wish he was still here to talk about it.
I still have the screens we constructed back then in the garage. The ink and screen wash on the market today is far less toxic. We had a few Warhol silkscreens for a while and I love the medium.
I did a silkscreen run of New Math posters but I don’t have a copy. I photographed this one on the wall at the Bop Shop. Peggi and I silkscreened a hundred Personal Effects t-shirts in our backyard. The time is right to get back into this process.
