Reduction Method Screen Printing, or “old-school,” means using methods from the early 1900s, before photographic stencils were invented, when every part of the process was done by hand. Many of these earlier processes have been sadly forgotten and lost to time. It’s the same methods once used to mass-produce colorful show cards, large travel posters and world war propaganda campaigns. Determined to revive a lost art and learn what it had to teach me has led to the discovery of a plethora of wonderful creative options that simply do not exist using modern methods. Printmaking, especially screen-printing as an art form appeals to me because it is very much a combination of engineering and art. The process requires machinery, calibration, precise measurements, chemistry and ingenuity while leaving room at each stage for trial-and-error and experimentation. Reduction Method Screen Printing definitely leads to more “happy accidents.” Effects, only revealed when I take a left-turn somewhere in the process. I try to reproduce these effects in subsequent art pieces. Each piece, building on the techniques and lessons learned from the piece before. Screen printing via the lost art route, teaches me patience, perseverance and more often than I’d like to admit, humility.