How a London Trade Show and Late-Night Drinks Launched a Screen-Printing Education Powerhouse

THERE’S SOMETHING about this industry that sucks you in. It’s as if once you get ink in your blood, there’s no turning back. And the best part of being in the creative, exciting entrepreneurial business? The lifelong, loyal friends you meet from around the world and the good times you continue to share.

Scott Fresener

Scott Fresener, who founded of the U.S. School of Screen Printing along with his wife, Pat, and I met in an interesting way and place. We both were asked to speak at the Imprinted Sportswear Show (ISS) in London in 1980, which we were happy to do. I think this was the second one held in London when no one else held shows overseas at that time.

The show wasn’t very memorable, but that didn’t really matter — it was London. Besides, Scott and Pat Fresener, and Richard Labov, owner of Union Ink, were at the show to exhibit because the British company I was doing the designing for was purchasing large quantities of Union Ink. Richard wanted to meet the people responsible for the printing, Mark Yates and Trevor Gulliver. Mark ran production and Trevor oversaw the factory, including the financial areas and later worked with the rock groups.

It was a three-day show that ended on a Sunday. After the show, we all wanted to go out for food and drinks. At that time in London, pubs closed at 6:00 p.m., which forced those in the pubs to go home and spend time with their families. We asked Mark and Trevor if there was any place we could go to get food and drinks. Since both Mark and Trevor have been known to have a few, they knew exactly where to take us. This is when I met Scott and Pat Fresener.

There was a group of about eight or 10 of us and we had to walk quite a few blocks to get to the restaurant. But no one complained. Once there, the waiters offered us red tea or white tea. You can imagine what was in the tea pots and it wasn’t tea. We had heard that there was a nightclub in the basement, so Pat and I decided to check it out. It was a blast.

Gotta love a promotional product, even back in the day. We looked alike.

The Beginning of an Era

During that evening, Scott asked me if I would be interested in conducting an Advanced Hands-On Workshop for him at the U.S. School of Screen Printing in Arizona, which he owned and was a very successful and well-known hands-on educational facility. It seemed interesting to me, so I accepted.

Teaching at U.S. School of Screen Printing was a great learning experience for me. And hopefully, it was a good learning experience for the attendees as well. My goal was to teach the techniques and procedures my team and I at Great American had developed. In those days, it included working with a graphics arts’ camera, which many in the industry today don’t know anything about. But it was the way we made our film positives. We would use PMT film, shoot a paper negative, attach a sheet of film and send it through a film processor, wait a little while and peel, something like the old Polaroids. And voila! Out came the film positive.

Teaching a Master?!

The workshops always were well attended and everyone stayed very focused on learning. But the one student that not only stood out but took a front row seat was Spider. He already was very well known in the industry for his designing and illustrating abilities, but not for designing and separating black shirts. We spent a lot of time talking about and going over what I taught.

One of Spiders’ first black shirt designs depicted an eagle landing with a squeegee in its talons. It was so stunning that it was used for the cover of the U.S. School of Screen Printing’s catalog and Scott’s book, “How to Print T-Shirts for Fun & Profit.” It was a great piece of art. Spider went on to be world renowned for his work and contributions to the art-end of screen printing. I can’t believe that he attended my class!

Watching the Tapes Back

When I conducted the workshops at the Scott and Pat’s School, Scott videotaped my sessions so he could conduct the workshops in the future on his own. I’m not sure how many he himself conducted, but he did hire several others from the industry to facilitate them for him as well. We both worked hard to help other printers learn our industry’s craft and the skill required to be to just good, but a great printer. We both eventually became members and past Chairmen of the Academy of Screen & Digital Technologies (ASPT). An honor for us both to this day.

Scott and I remain friends to this day and occasionally smoke a stogie and have a drink or two together. Once I took the job as plant manager for the Fashion Design Group in Denver, I did not conduct any more workshops for Scott although I did shoot a series of videos for him many years later. It was that experience of working with Scott and conducting workshops there that allowed me to continue to conduct workshops at trade shows, open houses, and other educational events for industry manufacturers and suppliers for many years. I continue to do so.