Click one of the links above to see information about the various print types.
Serigraphs
In this series of videos, Malaquías Montoya, Lynne Feldman, and others demonstrate the color-separated silk-screening process of serigraphy; this labor-intensive printmaking process yields vivid colors but necessitates limited print runs.
Lithography works on the principle that grease and water repel each other. There is no carving involved. The artist draws on a stone with a greasy crayon and then covers the stone with a thin film of water. the oily ink will stick to the greasy image but not to the water-covered areas. -Minneapolis Institute of Arts
We do not use this traditional method to make lithographs, but it is interesting to know where the process came from.
Giclées
Coined by Jack Duganne in 1991 to avoid the negative connotations of computer-generated printing, a giclée (French for sprayed) is a high-quality inkjet print, using large museum-quality paper and light-safe inks in about 6-12 colors to produce smoother transitions and a larger apparent gamut than the typical CMYK system; an additional advantage over the four-color offset process of lithography is that while lithographs must be produced in large print runs to be economical, giclées can be produced as needed.
Unlike our other serigraphs, these were all hand-pulled; the video below demonstrates the process by which silkscreens are made today, although making the stencils was a bit more difficult in Charley’s time.
In the early 1950s, Charley Harper was asked by Arthur Lougee, Art Director of Ford Times (a lifestyle publication from Ford Motor Company), to paint some of our feathered friends. It was then that Charley took his first close look at birds as subject matter and the creation of the legendary Ford Times Bird Series was born. Charley recalled, Art Lougee asked me to paint a feeding station for birds. I told him that I didn't know what he was talking about—back on the farm, birds had seemed perfectly capable of feeding themselves. So the art director sent Charley a sample feeding station to examine, and the rest was history.
Popular demand for the images resulted in Charley creating hand-pulled silkscreen (serigraph) prints in his basement and selling them to the public out of his studio and by mail order. The earliest of these bird prints (1954) were available through the magazine, for as little as $4.50 each, plus shipping; Charley continued to produce the series until 1960. Most of the images were sold out long ago, with very limited stock of a few images still available today. Charley made no more than 100 to 250 of any individual image, making these mid-century marvels some of his most limited and most sought-after by collectors. To better explain the simplistic form of his subject matter, Charley has been quoted as saying, And so I have never counted the feathers in the wings, for that is not what my pictures are about. I just count the wings.