Stephen Harmston & Bonnie Harmston

I have been creating hand-printed serigraphs or screen prints for nearly 30 years now. My imagery is a way of sharing the experiences from our travels throughout the West. Most of my work begins as pencil sketches; some are from the field while others are from photos I have brought back from our trips. From these sketches I hand-cut stencils from amberlith film for each color, which sometimes requires 20-40 different stencils and screen set-ups. Serigraphy is a fine art stencil making process, which creates a unique type of art with a smooth satin-like surface qualitthat’s almost impossible to create with any other technique. The art form which began in China as early as 1200 BC gained popularity in the 1960’s as a widely accepted fine art form. I love the stencil cutting…it’s my paintbrush, and pulling the ink across the screen onto the paper. It’s still exciting to lift the screen and watch each piece come to life as the colors build up on each other. The editions are very short & limited, usually less than 40 complete images, and are never reprinted again. Each stencil is further cut away for the next color, sometimes 4 or 5 times and soon there is no stencil left. This artwork is not to be confused with giclees, or other mass produced commercial reproductions, or computer graphics. Each piece is a hand cut and hand-printed original. Due to nature of the printing process slight variances occur with each pass so no two are exactly alike, each print is truly an original, handmade work of art.