Stephen Harmston Bonnie Harmston

Our inspiration is found literally all around us, through our travels, the skies, the roads and everything in between. The medium we use to create these images is an art form that is centuries old. While new technologies have come along to replace it, we continue to retain the original process of handmade fine art printmaking for over 30 years.. We make original fine art silk screen prints. Silkscreen printing creates a unique type of art with a smooth, satin like surface quality that’s almost impossible to create with any other technique. We use the old traditional screen printing process of hand cutting stencils from masking film. Each color has its own stencil which is cut out using an Exacto blade. The screen that is used is a rectangular frame over which a mesh fabric is tightly stretched. The screen is coated with a light sensitive emulsion and allowed to dry in a dark room. The stencils are then taped to the screen and exposed to ultra violet light (or the sun can be used as well). When the screen is washed off the stencil leaves a pattern in the screen. Each color is printed by pulling ink across the screen with a squeegee and pushing the ink through the mesh openings onto the paper. This process is repeated over and over, sometimes requiring over 40 stencils until the image is complete. Often it takes between one to two months to complete each edition, which we choose to limit to 30 or less, and they are never reprinted again. We use a technique called reduction printing, meaning we cut away from the original stencil to create another. Each piece is a hand cut and hand pulled original. Due to the nature of the hand printing process, slight variances occur with each pass so no two are exactly alike. This artwork is not to be confused with giclees, or other mass produced, commercial reproductions or computer graphics. Each print is truly an original, handmade work of art. To see our process in action: http://youtu.be/erbn7Y5t-ig