Serigraphy or Silkscreen printing by hand is an arcane, time intensive process. When done correctly with the utmost care and consideration it may yield beautiful results that far surpass that of the modern offset press workhorse. Silkscreen printing, a throw back to simpler times, is also the means by which I have produced my last two books of art. The second volume of which was funded in part by the Xeric Foundation.

I first became familiar with the Xeric Foundation through the work of Tom Hart in the mid nineties. Then an instructor and friend Steve Peters won the grant to publish his “Awakening Comics” in 1996 after releasing for years his “Rabbit Hell” photocopied minicomix. Years passed and while finishing my senior year at college and interning at The Philadelphia Independent I ended up working with the art director of the newspaper: Jacob Weinstein, who published “Dirty Boxes” with help from Xeric in 2001.

Finishing a close to complete draft of my second book just in time for the January deadline for applications I figured I would take my chances and apply. Without high hopes for receiving funding due to my drastic stylistic departure from what I perceived as the types of books Xeric was helping I planned to (somehow) fund the project myself doing a smaller edition size.

A month or two went by and I received a postcard that stated that my proposal and application had been accepted for review. However, when I received notice that I in fact had been awarded my grant request I could not believe it. I was excited.

So began the work.

With squee-gee in hand, I began pulling the ink for the first color of the first page of the 30 page book during the third week in April. I was slightly behind my proposed timeline schedule; due to contract printing jobs, I was finishing up for clients earlier that month. Three long months later and well over 10,000 pulls of ink under my belt, I finally completed the edition of 200 copies.

The better part of each of those 12 weeks I spent standing in front of the print tables at Space 1026. Space 1026 is an art collective housing artist run gallery space, studios of over 30 painters, screen printers, and graphic designers. There is a communal computer lab and print shop all in the top two floors of an old building in the Chinatown district of Philadelphia. Each day when I would get to the Space my goal was to print two colors, or one page of the book. Each color took approximately 3-4 hours (at least) of preparation, registration, print labor, and clean up. My days that summer would start between 10am-12noon and go well into the evening, sometimes until midnight or 1am trying to finish up the print run goal for the day.

I would be still for hours in front of the print station, filling up dry racks with the soon to be pages of my new book. Other artists would pass by all day and I would always be in the same spot pulling ink. Pulling more ink. Crystal Kovacs (who has a studio near the print shop area) commented one day when she arrived something to the extent of “You are in the same place you were last time I was here a few days ago. Have you moved at all?” Thom Lessner, another Space 1026 artist/studio dweller, would continually bust on me for winning a grant...asking playfully, “Hey Mark, you win any grants today?” and commenting “Ever since you won a grant you’ve changed, you’re not the same.” When talking with Max Lawrence, a founding member of the collective, about the upcoming book he warned me, “Don’t tell too many people about that grant, there are tons of haters here in Philly.”

Well into the printing of the book, things were going smoothly though not exactly sticking to the scheduled time line that I had laid out for myself. Mostly delays were due to other commercial print jobs coming up that I would break for and work on the printing of for a week or two to earn a few extra bucks. Then I would return to the printing of the book. The small sizes of the pages and the fact that each page was no more than two colors to register made the technical side a breeze. It was more the effect of printing 220+ copies of each page front and back that really slowed things down and proceeded to drag the project on for the better part of the summer.

In late July, the last few pages and cover were printed with much help from Space 1026 intern Jason Kachadourian. I collated the 200 copies on a foldout table in Space 1026’s gallery in ninety plus degree weather with help from my sister Hilary Price. On July 24th Hilary and I proceeded to drag the 200 plus copies down to the post office to send them on their way to the binder I used for my last book in North Carolina: MSR Binding.

A week later I got word from Mr. Douglass at MSR Binding that the spot varnish or transparent overprint varnish that I had used on the covers of the books because of the heat, humidity, and mere weight had stuck themselves together into one giant brick of paper. He was only able to salvage maybe 50 covers. With this bad news, I was back to the printing table to reprint the front cover without the varnish. Three days later... another stack of covers were Fed-Ex’ed down to him so that he could begin the process of glue binding and trimming down the edition of books.

A few days later, the finished books arrived at Space1026. I signed for them. Then dragged the heavy boxes back upstairs to rip them open and witnessed the result, the culmination of days upon weeks upon months of printing.