Beyond the Monstera

New Window × Aliki van der Kruijs

In a time where the majority rather chooses for the easy and cheap digital way of working, silk screen workshops are struggling to stay afloat. The One Window #1 project is meant to show the richness and diversity of the silk screen technique by giving three completely different artists a free hand in exploring this beautiful trade. By giving them one restriction – the use of only one silk screen – the participants are challenged to develop a new outlook on this traditional technique, resulting in new possibilities for its application.

Three artists will separately develop new works, all starting with the same tool; one screen printing frame, measuring 140×100cm.

Participants: Aliki van der Kruijs, Rogier Arents and Sacha van den Haak & Felix van Dam

Sponsored by Hurtz and Publivenor.

Colour vs Form

By Aliki
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While making the final print I saw a friction between colour and form. After making tests to see how they work together, I decided to empty the screen and start all over again.

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Testing colour

By Aliki
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I found a way to work with colour that arises during the process!

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Testing form

By Aliki
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Now the big silkscreen is ready, I did some test prints to get a feeling of working with the 48T mesh.

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Monster Monstera

By Aliki
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The idea is to print one big leaf. But how to scale up the shape of the leaf to make the Monstera monstrous? In this post you can read about a free interpretation of the grading technique used in fashion to resize a pattern.

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Sunflecks

By Aliki
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Parallel to reading the scientific paper about why the Monstera deliciosa is full of holes, I did a second light test to see what working with sunflecks does.

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Why is the Monstera deliciosa plant full of holes?

By Aliki
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To get the answer to this question I contacted the scientist Christopher D. Muir (USA) who wrote an article on this. By contacting him I hope to get an insight in the plant’s construction. Valuable information for my approach for the final prints.

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Light test

By Aliki
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After I’ve made cut outs of leaves, I wanted to test how the transparency of the leaves works when you expose them directly to UV light, on a screen with sensitive emulsion.

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Split leaf

By Aliki
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After visiting the ‘The Oasis of Matisse’ exhibition I looked deeper into ways of constructing patterns with real leaves. I started to play with the organic shapes of a leaf and the geometric character of a grid.

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Essence of form

By Aliki
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Where to ‘harvest’ forms?
Using real leaves is something I would like to integrate in my One Window project. To work in a direct way, 1:1. At the moment I am finding out what kind of plant I will use, where it comes from and how to approach the imprint with it.

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Living fossils

By Aliki
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In my research to find a way to make a flora imprint by physical movement I looked back at the Katazome workshop I did last summer in Japan, where I made an imprint of Ginkgo leaves from the garden of master Mr. Noguchi.

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Starting point

By Aliki
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Where to start when there is one rule; use a screen of 140x100 cm that can only be exposed one time. And what to expose then? One condition is set: the surface I will print upon will be textile. Therefor the window is already spanned with mesh type 48T.
A few months ago I pinned this image on my studio wall that I will use as a guide for this project to create a flora imprint by physical movement.

The second participant of One Window #1

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Photo by Lonneke van der Palen © Interview series PROOFFLab Magazine curated by Studio Makkink&Bey

Through her work Aliki van der Kruijs explores the relationship (context) between colour, culture and environment with a specialization in textile. Nature is material and subject at the same time. During the master Applied Art at the Sandberg Institute (2012) Aliki juxtaposed her graphic- and fashiondesign background into a practice where textile as information carrier plays a fundamental role.