Printing Our Amie Cunat "Rug" Edition
Last year we had the joy of working with New York-based artist Amie Cunat on a collaborative edition that drew from her ongoing interest in Shaker philosophy and design. We shared a previous post from Amie’s visit to the Shaker Museum in Mount Lebanon that is worth looking through as it offers a glimpse into the rich history of object and surface design that the Shaker Museum has meticulously preserved.
Amie’s practice moves fluidly between painting, installation, sculpture and even performance, making her an exciting collaborator for an invited artist edition. For this project, Amie created a small braided rug, produced in the traditional Shaker style but with the addition of sections that are painted using gouache and Flashe in her typically exuberant palette.
The braided rug was photographed and from that digital file, we could create our black and white silkscreen separations, keeping the imagery at a 1:1 scale with the original rug piece. To mimic the texture of the braids we created halftone separations and once each layer was digitally printed the sections would all fit back together like a puzzle.
From Amie’s specifications, we created a palette that our printing inks were mixed carefully in order to match. From there we could begin printing and building up the image one color at a time. We selected Coventry Rag for this project as it’s a lovely smooth paper that isn’t susceptible to an enormous amount of stretch, making it ideal for keeping the layers as tightly registered as possible. The inks are all Golden Heavy Body acrylics that have been mixed with the Golden Silkscreen Medium. We particularly love using the Golden Titanium White acrylic when we’re creating lighter ink colors that need a great deal of opacity to sit on top of other, darker layers.
