Jonathan Ash sets a transparent sheet with a bunny rabbit design onto an enormous mechanism. The rotating blue and silver device has seven arms with a sheet of material wrenched onto each one. This is what he uses to print T-shirts.
The unshaven 42-year-old wears a hip screen-printed T underneath his tattered overalls. He shows a wry sense of humor when he talks about buying his six-color press in installments from a man who liked to drink: "I would go into the bar and pay off his tab every week."
Ash recently helped start a printmaking collective based out of an old airplane hangar called the Citizens Annex. The collective made its public debut on March 14 during the Open Studio tour.
On this day, Ash is using one of his designs to teach his son, Eliot AshLind, 17, how to print a shirt.
Screen printing by hand is a curious business that offers plenty of ways to be creative — and to goof up.
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You need to master a range of procedures, which start with spreading photosensitive emulsion onto a silk-screen. The process should take first-timers a couple of hours, Ash says.
"It's not a terribly hard thing to do, once you learn all of the basics of it. The idea is to bend all the rules, as far as I'm concerned."
But the new printing collective isn't just for T-shirts. The group also has an etching press that does monoprints and intaglio.
Dinnerware art gallery's David Aguirre acquired the T-shirt press when Ash moved to Oregon last month to teach arts, sustainable living, gardening and herbal medicine at a healing center. Aguirre also hopes to acquire a larger press from the University of Arizona.
Ash's move highlights the transience of many of these Tucson collectives. Just as things get going, the people behind them often get going as well.
Maxed Art, another Downtown collective that organized the Sound of Paint at Dinnerware, is struggling to move forward after its founder and two other key members left to pursue artistic careers in other cities.
To learn more about the printmaking collective and to find out how to join, call Dinnerware at 792-4503. The gallery will be setting up printing workshops in the near future for newcomers who want to learn.
