Spins & Needles is back this month on Friday May 25! Fresh off our recent trip to Japan, we’re bringing you a party inspired by robots, electronics, video games, and underground subway rides.

DJs Jason Pelletier, Meterman, + special guest Memetic (Timekode, Grounded Cafe) hit the decks throughout the night spinning house, hip hop, tech, and other assorted beats.

Starts 8pm
Cover $8 | $6 students (with ID)
DIY projects (all materials + instructions provided) + funky beats
More info here

One of our past participants, Marion, sent us these  photos of what goes on during the Spins & Needles Silkscreening 101 Workshop. The photos capture the different steps in the silkscreening process – from making the screen to coating and washing the screen out to burning your image to printing and the end results.

Marion took the workshop last February to actualize a project she had been thinking about for a long time – printing choufleurs (cauliflower in French) on fabric – to create scarves, t-shirts, underwear (!) for friends and family.

To see more photos to get you inspired, check out more photos on our Flickr page or the Spins & Needles Silkscreening 101 Workshop page.

Thanks Marion!

Building the screen

Applying photo emulsion

Burning the image onto the screen

Washing the screen out

Letting the screen dry

Flooding or coating the screen

Printing on the medium (t-shirt)

Printing on the medium (paper)

Marion’s choufleur screen

Choufleur on t-shirt

Choufleur on underwear

Spins & Needles is taking a wee break this April (we’re on vacation!) but we will be back to regular scheduled programming with a party on May 25.

In the meantime, we thought we’d put together our guide to finding out about local events and places when travelling to different cities.

We’ve found that more and more some of the best tips, be it local events, restaurants or shops, are in pop-up format or one-offs or from a resident’s point of view that can’t be found in a guidebook (although we still carry the guidebook in print and smartphone format for the basics (e.g. tourist sites, metro map, neighbourhoods).

Head on over to Mobile & Making (the travel + design + DIY blog of Spins & Needles creative director Melanie Yugo) to check out the full guide!

Last Tuesday we joined other creative types to chit chatter about our initiatives at the relaunch of Pecha Kucha #4 in Ottawa. The theme for the night was “creative city-making” and the idea that instead of a top-down approach, a city can be made from the ground-level, in an organic and self-organized way.

We were honoured to be presenting beside an inspiring lineup of 7 other people who have helped to define and increase the creative potential of  “the town that fun forgot”.

Our presentation was titled “DIYing Creative Cities” and we spoke to how Spins & Needles was started in response to looking for something different in Ottawa’s arts and cultural scene, the events we’ve thrown in other cities in Canada and internationally, our challenges as an indie event, and our plans for the future.

We also spoke briefly about what we’ve learned producing this event. We didn’t state this directly in our presentation, but the three takeaways in it were:

• Take risks, be open, look for opportunities, be nimble and flexible – you never know what creative idea might work out for you;
• Collaborate and partner up with like-minded organizations – you can achieve more than individually and as an indie event that travels, it makes touring easier; and
• Tap into your networks – most people are willing to share resources, contacts.

Other presenters talked about the launch of their new national magazine (Guerilla Magazine, Tony Martins); the development of one of Ottawa’s most comprehensive and loved indie blogs on arts and cultural events in the city (Apt613, Francois Levesque); the call out to creative people in Ottawa to consider a $1,000 microgrant to help them with their project (Awesome Ottawa, Greg Jack); a challenge put to the audience and Ottawa-ns to select a font that best describes the city (Ottawa Creative Collective, Steve St-Pierre); the ideas behind the curator for Ottawa’s first Nuit Blanche (Nuit Blanche Ottawa, Stefan St-Laurent); the ideas behind the current curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery (Ottawa Art Gallery, Ola Wlusek), and designing a rail map for the city (Adam Bentley and Evan Thornton).

If you missed the event, head over to Twitter and seach the hashtag #pknott for tweets from Pecha Kucha Ottawa, attendees, and speakers. Also the organizers plan to host PK Ottawa more regularly over the coming year. If you’ve got an idea for a presentation get in touch with them or send them a tweet.

Thanks to the Pecha Kucha Ottawa team (Remco Volmer and Luc Lalande) for organizing the event!

Drop by Arts Court the evening of Tuesday March 27 for the relaunch of Pecha Kucha Ottawa! Spins & Needles will be there chit chattering about our event and DIY-ing creative cities, alongside some of Ottawa’s creative types.

At this edition, we’ll be discussing a manifesto for creative city-making in Ottawa. We need to drag out the old thinking about “city-building” from a land-use urban engineering (top-down, centrally-planned) perspective to one of creative “city-making” distinguished as ground-level, organic, and surprisingly self-organized.

The long-awaited return of PKN Ottawa happens in style with a slate of inspiring presenters. Tickets available at the door only – no online purchase available for this event.

Presenters:

Pecha Kucha Ottawa: Volume 4
March 27, 2012 7:00 pm – 11:00 pm : Ottawa #4 at Arts Court Theatre and Studio
$5 at the door
2 Daly Avenue Ottawa, ON K1N 6E2, Canada
(613) 569-4822

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/ottawa/4

About Pecha Kucha: PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

Our last Prints & Inks profile is not on an artist but the Montreal-based creative print shop and studio Station 16. The shop + studio offers limited edition prints from some of the best street and graffiti artists in North America and Europe (including Prints & Inks exhibiting artists Antoine Tavaglione, whatisadam, En Masse, Martine Frossard, Labrona and Niko). Originally just a family textile screenprinting business, owner Carlo De Luca decided 18 months ago to offer free screenprinting space to artists in the city to create and print their works, uniquely partnering his family business with his love of art.

Here’s Carlo’s story on setting up a screenprinting studio, having silkscreening in his blood, and being inspired by the artists who work at and collaborate with Station16.

1. Telll us a bit about Station16. What was your motivation to start this print shop/studio? How did you get started?

Station16 was/is primarily a textile screen print business. I’ve been doing this for twenty years (the last 10 on my own). About 18 months ago I wanted to diversify my business and since I love art, the natural progression was to start up a fine art studio within my shop. I reached out to artists in the city and offered them the opportunity of free space within my shop to see how we can take their art and combine it with my medium. This is when I met whatisadam. He was screen printing these amazing and awesome edition prints at home using a light bulb and one screen that he kept reclaiming. I was so impressed with his skill and passion that I immediately knew that we would produce a wonderful product together. His passion for art with my resources and equipment produced his first successful solo art exhibit in Montreal, April 2011. Later in the year, I realized that I could offer this to other artists and give them an opportunity as well. This is when www.station16shop.com was created.

2. How did you become interested in silkscreening?

My family has always been in the textile (needle trade) Growing up, my summer jobs were in the print shop. At the age of 21, I decided to work full time and I started managing a print shop. By age 31, I started up my own business. I guess you can say it’s in my blood.

3. How are you influenced by other artists, specifically, other silkscreeners/printers?

My influence whether printing on paper, fabric or wood has always quality. I look at master printers and compare my work to theirs. I am constantly looking to improve, invent and explore. I often ask myself, if Andy Warhol would walk into my shop and view my quality of work…would he choose Station16 as his print house ? He’d better!

4. How many artists are involved with Station16? How do you go about selecting whose work you will feature?

Presently we have 9 artists onboard. I love street , graffiti, pop , modern and contemporary art. I love wheat paste artist and muralists as well. Artists selected would definitely fall into these categories.

5. Is there a collaborative aspect to your studio and your enterprise? Do you see silkscreening as being particularly suited to collaboration?

Station16 fine art department is based on collaborations between printer and artist. Station16 absorbs all the development costs and remits a fair percentage to the artist based on the sells of their works. We provide them an online shop platform and take care of all the shipping.

Working with different artists and collectively showcasing their works on one online screen print shop enables the magic of strength in numbers to work. Emerging and established artists directing their fans to our shop, enables people to view their works and introduces them to the works of other artists they were unfamiliar with.

Recently we collaborated with Montreal art collective En Masse, and produced for them their first ever serigraph print . En Masse is a collective of artists that produce these large scale handpainted murals with black/white imagery. This original drawing was a collaborative of six different artists. The edition is signed and numbered by all six artists involved. En Masse is gaining much deserved recognition for their works. Recently they were part of the Bing Bang exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

6. What are some of the challenges of running your own print shop/studio? What are the opportunities?

The textile screen print challenges are competition with overseas production.

Surround yourself with good people. Get the employees involved with the process. Make them understand that whether they are printing a t-shirt or fine art print, the impression once on the medium is there forever. Be proud of what you put out there!

My textile screen print business has given me the opportunity to explore other interests and to feed my soul with the fine art program I have developed.

7. What’s next for Station16 in terms of creative projects?

We recently completed a collaboration with CEASE for ArtTV at Montreal Nuit Blanche.

We were also at Armory Week in New York City from March 9-11. We also had a booth at Fountain Fair, where we showcased prints produced at Station16.

8. Anything else we should know about?

Station 16 is named after my MHM screen print machine that has 16 stations…small editions made at station16 are sometimes developed in editions of 16.

Surround yourself with things that make you happy ! Hang up some art !

Thanks Carlo! To see some of the work from artists at Station16, and to find out more about the print studio/shop, check out Station 16′s website. You can also visit the studio in Montreal at 111 Avenue de Louvaine West.

Next up as part of the Prints & Inks artist profile is Toronto-based designer and screenprinter Sandi Falconer (aka Deadweight). Her prints reflect slightly askew hand drawn text, tired eyes, scrappy patterns, witches, objects of perceived luck or fortune, triangles, textured paper, wish bones, and the moon. She’s done work for the likes of The Walrus, Wavelength, The Images Festival, City Of Craft, The Hype Machine, and more. She plays music in The Guest Bedroom and collaborates on a line of screen printed leather goods called Falconwright.  Did we mention she’s also a full time office worker and loves avocados?

Here’s what she had to say:

My imagery is inspired by all kinds of things, but over the years it’s become a bit more focused on the themes I tend to enjoy. All my work is now illustrated/hand lettered by myself and screen printed in my home, though I have recently been experimenting with some digital printing (for shame!).

4.     How are you influenced by other artists, specifically, other silkscreeners/printers? Who are you inspired by and how is this translated into your own work.

Whenever I see a screen print that blows me away, I love trying to solve it like a math problem. That kind of wonder/interest is a really appealing feeling! I love seeing a colour combo blow my socks off. And I love being inspired by others to become a better printer, a better illustrator, just plain better.

5.     Is there a collaborative aspect to your work? Do you work with other artists/collectives? If so, what is the place of collaboration in your practice? Do you see silk screening as being particularly suited to collaboration?

Most of my screen printing work is done solo, though I am collaborating with a friend on a line of leather goods called Falconwright.  I design and screen print the patterns and my friend Danielle does the product development and sewing. I think screen printing is great for a skills sharing kind of collab. Certainly!  I’ve never collabed with another printer on a print before, but it is something that is definitely appealing to me. Maybe this is the year!

6. What’s next for you in terms of creative projects?

More Falconwright stuff, putting together my bands latest release, and working on some larger format screen prints.  Plus making more time for drawing in general!

7. Anything else we should know about?

I love avocados, but I used to think they looked disgusting. Things change and that’s good!

Thanks Sandi! For more of her prints and products check out her website.

Next up in our Prints & Inks artist profile series is London, Ontario-based artist Jamie Q, who works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, zine-making, printmaking, and sculpture. They have shown their art in exhibitions across Canada, including their first major solo show, Make-Believe, at Toronto’s Art Metropole in 2010. Internationally, their sculptures were included in Family Shirt, a 2011 exhibition of contemporary Canadian art in Malmö, Sweden; and in Dirtstar 2011: Take Root, as part of the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco. They have also distributed their solo and collaborative art zines across Canada, and internationally in the United States and Turkey.

Jamie Q has a BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design (2002) and an MFA from The University of Western Ontario (2010). Their MFA research focused on the politics and aesthetics of the do-it-yourself ethic, as well as the social potential of art objects and DIY distribution strategies. They live and work in London, Ontario.

Tell me a little bit about the specific project you submitted to Prints & Inks, What Luck? What is the story behind it?

One day I became curious about what the pattern of winning Lotto 6/49 numbers would look like on the selection slip in comparison to the ones I had picked, so I coloured them in next to my losing numbers. There was just something interesting to me about these two random patterns representing such different outcomes: one worth a huge life-changing amount of money, and the other being a failed attempt made out of a kind of financial desperation.

I’ve made a number of silkscreened books, and originally I thought this would be a good theme for a book project, with the winning and losing patterns on facing pages. But as I started working on the idea, I decided to make it a print series instead, so that I could make the scale much larger. At the time, I was also thinking about how to make large art projects composed of many parts, which could be shown as a group in a gallery setting, but could also be separated and exist individually in domestic space.

The idea to sell tickets to win a print for $2 developed later on in the project. It adds an element of interactivity where people coming to the show can participate in a similar game of chance.

What is your reasoning behind choosing the medium of silkscreen? Tell me more about the associations you make between the medium and other broader issues, such as ease of reproducibility, street art, politics, or aesthetics.

My process with making art usually starts with choosing the medium I want to work with. I had decided that I wanted to make some prints before I decided what kind of prints I would make. So, I would say that enjoying the aesthetic qualities and process of silkscreening are central to this project. Of course, the ability to make many of the same image also made sense for a project that would document my losing numbers again and again over a period of time.

While the political aspect of printmaking may not be obvious in this project, I do tend to read politics into everything; I can’t really separate the political from the social. For example, the challenge of how to make a living as an artist is something I associate with these prints. I live below the poverty line, and I play the lotto sometimes. I also spend a lot of time thinking about the value of art, and I feel really conflicted about sometimes making art that only wealthy people can afford. Making multiples makes art more affordable. Not that I want to equate mass production with democracy, but I do think that having art in homes makes lives better, and it shouldn’t be something that only some people can have as a luxury.

When I think of silkscreening, I think of two very broad categories: the aesthetic/design side, related more to fashion and the creation of saleable objects, and then that which is rooted more traditionally in the political spectrum, here I’m thinking of protest posters and the like. Would you situate your work on either side? How so?

I actually wrote my MFA thesis around the supposed divide between aesthetic/stylized art and political/socially-engaged art. What I found was that the closer I looked at this, the more those distinctions dissolved. So I really wouldn’t situate my work on either side, because I don’t really believe there are two sides. It’s much more complex than that. For example, an aesthetic print might be political in the way that it is produced and distributed (for example, through a mail-art and delivery system that collects artwork from all over the world and distributes it freely by bicycle to people in the streets), while a political print might still operate as a saleable object within a capitalist economy.

At first glance, my lotto prints would seem to fall on the aesthetic side of things, but then you have economic themes running through it, and the possibility of winning some original art for $2 rather than buying it for hundreds of dollars through a prestigious dealer or something like that.

How are you influenced by other artists, specifically, other silkscreeners/printers? Who are you inspired by and how is this translated into your own work?

Well, I lived in Montreal from 2002-08, where there is a huge culture of silkscreened posters. So artists like Seripop and Leyla Majeri have made impressions on me. I’ve also been to a lot of small press and comics fairs. I am a big fan of Shawn Cheng‘s hand-bound screenprinted books. I have this amazing book by Anya Davidson called Consciousness 3. The pages are all loose 21″ x 17.5″ prints in a big portfolio. My silkscreened book projects are more reflective of these influences than the lotto project, which is much more minimal than my other work. The lotto project might be more influenced subconsciously by Claus Oldenburg or something, with its shift in scale..

Is there a collaborative aspect to your work? Do you see silkscreening as being particularly suited to collaboration?

Yeah, some of my screenprinted books are collaborations with James Kirkpatrick. We work together under the name Dusty Peas. I wouldn’t say that print is any more suited to collaborating than other media.. we do paintings, drawings, sculptures, zines and stuff too. But it’s nice to have help in the print shop, for sure, ha! Collaborating is sometimes a challenge, because each person might have different ways of doing things, but this is also what makes it interesting–you end up with something neither of you expected, which, if you’re compatible as collaborators, is usually an exciting and inspiring surprise that gives you new ideas to take back to your solo work.

Thanks Jamie! To see more of Jamie Q’s work, visit their website.

Next up we’re profiling Prints & Inks contributor and Ottawa-based artist Guillermo Trejo. Originally from Mexico, Guillermo studied at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Etching in Mexico City, and is currently completing his MFA at the University of Ottawa.

Much of Guillermo’s work borrows directly from news media, pairing disparate political events that reveal a borderless world where humans ubiquitously fight against poverty and violence. This kind of democratization of popular or regional stories allows us to ponder not on our differences, but on the incredible likeness of many of our world’s important episodes.

Here’s what he had to say about his work:

Tell me a little bit about the specific project you have on display at Prints & Inks? What is the (his)tory behind it?
I am presenting 2 projects, one is call Blue Series; in this case the idea is to do formal investigation, by printing different images that do not have a relation between each other, by using the same color. Creating a linear narrative that is possible only by the color.

The second project is calling Free Association: in this project I print two images in one paper. The idea is to create a free association, free of interpretation, but that have a linear narration.

2. What is your reasoning behind choosing the medium of silkscreen?
I [actually] work with lino cuts and woodcuts printed on a letterpress machine, the great grandfather technique of silkscreen.

I work with relief prints, because I found in the intrinsic limitation of the technique a great quality that cannot be achieved with other methods. This limitation pushes the image to be as much direct as possible. I believe that this urgent capacity of communicate in a print is fundamental and only can be acquired by the reproducibility of the same.

Printing is not about the original, but is  about the reproduction.

The relation of politic and printed matter can be track to the origins of society, basically because the technique has been designed to communicate and not to have an aesthetic function.

Statement by the Atelier Populaire:

“The posters produced by the Atelier Populaire are weapons in the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centers of conflict, that is to say, in the streets and on the walls of the factories. To use them for decorative purposes, to display them in bourgeois places of culture or to consider them as objects of aesthetic interest is to impair both their function and their effect. This is why the Atelier Populaire has always refused to put them on sale. Even to keep them as historical evidence of a certain stage in the struggle is a betrayal, for the struggle itself is of such primary importance that the position of an “outside” observer is a fiction which inevitably plays into the hands of the ruling class. That is why these works should not be taken as the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action, both on the cultural and the political plane.”

3. What is your artistic process? Where do you derive your imagery from?

My artistic process is quite simple, I found an image and then I “distill” the image to fit the technique, by distillation I mean, the reduction of non-necessary details, things that do not have a communicative reason, could be the background, or small details in the image. By doing this process the image became an “icon” for example, a soldier, a car, etc. The images are not a specific soldier but rather all the soldiers.

4. When I think of silkscreening, I think of two very broad categories – the aesthetic/design side, related more to fashion and the creation of saleable objects and then that which is rooted more traditionally in the political spectrum – here I’m thinking of protest posters and the like. Would you situate your work on either side? How so?

I situate my work in the second category, unfortunately we are living in the pinnacle of capitalism, at the extreme that capitalism has consume and commodified all aspects of political stand or contra culture. OBEY is an example of this, without judging the accomplishments and talent of Shepherd Fairey in his work we can see the bizarre chimera of politics and capitalism.

5. How are you influenced by other artists, specifically, other silkscreeners/printers? Who are you inspired by and how is this translated into your own work.

My biggest inspirations for me at this point are.

Taller de Grafica Popular (Workshop of the Peoples’ Graphics) in Mexico City. This collective works between the 30s and the 70s, creating some of the most incredible politic posters.

Atelier Populaire: This group of artist create some of the most memorable print from all times in the middle of the 1968 protest in Paris France.

Leopoldo Mendes: One of the most versatile printers in the history of printmaking.

6. Is there a collaborative aspect to your work? Do you print with other artists/collectives? If so, what is the place of collaboration in your practice? Do you see silkscreening as being particularly suited to collaboration?

Sadly in my work there is no more collaborative aspect, and it is not because I don’t want it is because, the printmaking community in Ottawa is not too big. Hopefully events like Prints & Inks will create a bigger community.

All print methods stand in the idea of collaboration!

Thanks Guillermo! To see more of Guillermo’s work, visit his website.

Photos from the Superheroes March 2012 party are up on Spins & Needles’ Flickr page.

Thanks to everyone who came out, including those who posed for our (extremely) makeshift Lichtenstein-esque photobooth.