Gary Houston Keeps Screenprinting’s Handmade Spirit Alive

GARY HOUSTON

I’VE BEEN SCREENPRINTING 45 years, and in that time I’ve watched the industry change from a handcraft to a commercialized, industrialized, automated and digitized process, where I can safely say – looking around at the 2025 Printing United trade show – we are firmly in the modern ages. The days of hand-cut stencils, rubylith positives … even film positives … even screenprinting itself, if you believe the DTFers and the DTGers: It’s all behind us. Digitally driven processing, at least in pre-press, has relegated the old ways to the trash bin out back. And replacement print technologies and the companies who build those machines will tell you screenprinting is dead. Right. Let’s move on …

In this month’s column, we’re going to examine the curious case of my friend and fellow screenprinter Gary Houston. He’s an ancient relic, a whole two weeks older than me. He runs his little operation (www.voodoocatbox.com) down in Portland, OR, where he pumps out event posters and creates cover art for albums using techniques that are the antithesis of digital processing.

A Knife Instead of a Mouse

While the rest of this latest issue of Screen Printing Magazine is devoted to the most modern technologies, machines and methods, we’re going to give you a peek behind the scenes at a master craftsman who wields a knife instead of a mouse, an airbrush instead of Photoshop, and produces works of art disguised as screenprinted posters that commemorate major events. In this case, the 40th anniversary of farmaid.org, which took place in Minnesota Sept. 20, and featured Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and a who’s who of contemporary music makers. Even Bob Dylan joined in the fun, although he didn’t make it on the poster.

Backstory

Last year, our pal Rick Roth from Mirror Image in Rhode Island (as well as the Ink Kitchen and Shop Talk and one of this year’s inductees into the Academy of Screen and Digital Print Technology)  and also the Merch Producer for Farm Aid for years … finally got the approval from the brass to produce a limited edition print to commemorate the event and go along with the typical mix of shirts, hats, and offset posters. Proceeds from merch sales go toward the many programs aiding the small family farmers of the USA.

Rick asked me to help produce the poster, and I immediately knew my friend Gary would be the perfect artist. It was instructive to navigate the logistical challenges, and one of them speaks directly to the digital divide between hand-done and the modern graphics world:

The client wanted to see a full color proof before approving the final print run. Easy peasy, any print shop or designer would do it in moments. Except in our case, with the process involved, you don’t see the final result until the last color goes down. We have a key line, in black and white, with type added. Check it for typos. But the colors and their layers don’t exist except as rubylith film, and in the artist’s imagination. What looks like 10 or more colors are produced by overlaying transparent inks. A bit like process color, but not.

We basically said, It’s a work of art, there’s no ‘final’ full color image until it’s done. A true ‘serigraph’ for the academic art printers out there, not a reproduction of anything. We said,  “You’ve seen Gary’s work, trust us.” Besides, we were out of time, printing had to start if we were to deliver on time.

They reluctantly agreed. Proof is in the pudding, kids. Over $30,000 was raised in around 3 hours, the prints sold out at the event. This year, they came back for more, and we brought Gary up for a working vacation on Vancouver Island for the print.

ABOVE: The sequence shows the secondary colors created by overlaying the various transparent colors on each other. The inks are mostly clear base.

Pre-Production

Gary starts his work with a rough pencil sketch….actually a couple. Rock star artist and fellow screenprinter Shepard Fairey was also doing a poster this year, and so we went with a design different from his, and were asked by the client if we could feature a special grain developed to resist drought. Let’s let Gary describe how the poster image evolved, and what it symbolizes.

“The concept for the 2025 Farm Aid poster art is about deep roots. Early in the roughing out and drawing process, I used wheat by way of Thomas Hart Benton’s approach to portraying Americana. The first image was above ground, the plant and its surroundings.”

Gary continued, “Then things changed with a directive suggesting the use of a plant called Kernza. I did some online poking around and was pleasantly surprised by the results. Turns out that the primary facility researching Kernza is located in Salina, Kansas. I spent a semester at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, about 30 miles south of Salina. The on-line pictures of Kernza show a root system that grows deep into the soil, 3-4 times the length and depth of regular annual wheat. This hearty plant is also a perennial, lending its grain to typical wheat uses, spirit/beer-making and such. The deep root system also rejuvenates the soil. “

“Much of the magic of this plant takes place below ground level and it was interesting to focus on the weavings of the roots. I feel that this plant also parallels the musicians performing at, and who are the core of the Farm Aid experience. These seasoned folks all have very deep roots and are hearty in their craft. I feel this image is a tribute to their efforts.“

The original scratchboard, all the fine detail work is done with an exacto knife. Once completed, it’s scanned, enlarged, and type is added.

Once the rough sketch was approved, Gary got busy creating the art. He does this using a knife on scratchboard. It’s a base of white, coated with black. The black is scratched away to create an image. It has a look similar to woodcut or linoblock with an interesting property — when blown up (yes, it’s scanned and enlarged on film …) it retains an internal symmetry, but on a larger scale. Impossible to do on computer, the hand of the artist is ingrained in the image.

Copy and any logos are laid out on the computer and then integrated in the key line. This was given to Farm Aid Marketing Director Anna Mulè where we caught a few corrections. Once finalized, the ruby cutting begins. For those unfamiliar with the material, Ulano, Autotype, and a few other graphic material manufacturers produced this knife cut film used to produce the positives and negatives used to make screens or plates in printing.

Hand cut rubylith and films awaiting exposure.

The sheet of ruby is placed over the key line, and the material is cut using an X-Acto knife. The red material is then peeled away from the clear backing sheet, leaving the positive of whatever color. Can this be done digitally? Sure. Spot color, right? But the difference here, and unique to Gary’s style, is his use of portions of the rubylith as a mask for airbrushing shading into some areas. Could you do this on a computer? Maybe, but the natural splatter of the airbrush, a bit random, with variable dot size, would be next to impossible to create.

There were five layers of ruby and airbrush, plus the keyline ….side note for the younguns who throw out the CYMK moniker … Cyan, Magenta, Yellow … and, uh, Black? K stands for Keyline. Look it up, learn something new.

Instead of a typical 4-color or 6-color or simulated process, the other thing that makes this print unique is the use of transparent inks. We used a custom ochre, magenta, two blues, a grey and then a final purple/black. Intensity was controlled by the amount of clear base.

Each color was carefully mixed and then tested through a 230 mesh to ensure secondary and tertiary colors appeared. All of this was a combination of experience and seat of the pants mixing. Leave the Pantone books in the drawer. Gary also used gloss and flat clears and extenders in the mix, to give each color further texture.

Artist Gary Houston with the finished poster.

We printed the job on our ATMA AT 120, through 230 mesh screens, with inks from Speedball and TW. As much as I learned from Gary about how his art works, I was happy to give him a tutorial on using water-based inks. He has been using Nazdar solvent-based poster inks, but is really interested in switching, so this was a good test.

As you can see, the end result is stunning. I think Gary says it best: “Congratulations on 40 years of Farm Aid! Contributing to this event is indeed an honor!”

And you will be happy to know, the print sold out at the concert!