Look What I made

                                                            Look What I Made.

                                            Who knew I could draw??  Surely, not I.

I teach an elective called H-Art, Hands on art.  Part of the class is spent at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.  My class and I worked with artist Lori Brink and screen printing artist, Jonas to create a hand-drawn or computer generated design which were then blown up and made into a transparency (a 3 day process)  Jonas and Lori than created the screens over the weekend and when we came in they were ready to screen print.  My actual drawing is below.  Above is my finished print.

I wanted to draw a silhouette and include a quote that expressed a social, political or cultural statement. I searched Google and came up with a style I liked and then I hand drew it, trying to mimic the style.  Then I searched quotes about banned books and found this one by Minnesota author Pete Hautman.  Pete is an award winning young adult novelist and I have met him several time and have read many of his books.  His quote is perfect for my idyllic reading scene because I wanted to show that in some places in the world, women are not allowed to read or go to school.  I also wanted to express that reading is a subversive activity in some parts of the world and literary people are often arrested.  Here in the United States, people try to ban books and stop others from reading. Reading is something I can't imagine living without and I always want to share my love of books with others.

I used two colors in my screen print, dark brown and red and I think it turned out spectacularly.  I think the finished print is awesome and I plan to frame it and hang in my library.