Adams Art Fundraiser

These 2 stars were done for an auction to raise money for art supplies for the art program at Adams Grade School. Both of my kids went to Adams. A long time & close friend, Donna Jepsen-Minyard, teaches art there. She invited friends within the local art community to create an art piece from plywood stars that she handed out. A fabulous party culminated at Iovino's Ristorante where lots of the bidding took place.

Donna used to work the craft fairs in the western states selling her fine art serigraphs. Since we both screen print, we would often loan equipment and bail each other out with supplies at the last minute. She is also a fabulous calligrapher. We took 2 years of brush calligraphy classes together. I had her do the pointed brush lettering for Grass Roots Bookstore. New Morning Bakery is also her hand brush work.

I took on 2 of these stars and based each theme on love. This one is called 'the 9 Elements of Love'.
From the Bible: love is patient, is kind, does not envy, not boast, not proud, not rude, not self seeking, not easily angered, keeps no records of wrong.

This one: 'All You Need Is Love', has the lyrics to John Lennon's song wrapped around the perimeter.

I took a square on (perpendicular) photo of each star, imported, vectorized and scaled to size on the computer. This gave me a near perfect perimeter path of each star to design with. The designs for these were just pure fun play for me. Each side is a negative of sort of the other. There are 2 screen printed layers on each side, done with gloss enamel ink. Under these prints is a beautiful orange translucent water-based aniline dye on the birch ply, sealed with a couple coats of oil based clear.

There was a sheen difference between the ink and the background clear, so I gave it a top coat of clear for a unified gloss. I kind of rushed this step and should have waited an extra day. The ink started to wrinkle. Oops. Game over. In the can is a cheap brush and old used thinner that I brushed on the surface to soak the coatings for removal. Now the whole layer of clear under the ink has wrinkled.

Yummy; pull out the rubber gloves. It was actually a painless and efficient cleanup. All the goo slipped right off. I backtracked and started over with the base coat of clear, and with a bit more patience. finished with success the next time around.