Hannah Carvell: Setting up a Home Print Studio

Hannah Carvell is a Fine Art Painting Graduate, but with strong passion for screen printing, a few years ago she decided it was this that she wanted to pursue; “I couldn’t shake the feeling: the blocks of colour, the layering up and the building of an image. I admire so many other printers’ work, and it was the art I liked to buy and the art I wanted to make. I needed to make it happen“. Having partaken in workshops at Print Club London to get reacquainted with the basics that she’d previously touched on whilst studying, Hannah plotted how she could make her dream happen from her home in Bedford, where she lives with her husband and two young children.

Unable to travel to and from London on a regular basis with children to pick up from school, becoming a member at a print studio was out of the question. Instead, Hannah decided to set up a home studio. She stole the family dining room, “a room that had become designated room of crap“, and stalked eBay and Gumtree obsessively for months searching for the perfect equipment for her new studio. “Of course, I made some mistakes… The first screen printing kit I bought on eBay was a little homemade set-up someone had cleverly created for T-shirt printing, with a small built-in exposure unit, but as soon as I took delivery I knew I had rushed into buying something that wasn’t going to work” describes the printmaker. Not wanting to print t-shirts (much to her husband’s disappointment), she put the kit back up on eBay in order to fulfil her wish to make big, poster-size, art prints.

Still looking for the right set-up, Hannah contacted auction houses, messaged schools and colleges, and followed up on every lead on Gumtree. After missing out on a few on eBay, she eventually scored with a proper Vacuum Flat Bed printing press from a school in London for a bargain £260; “I felt like I’d won the lottery“. Hannah also got her hands on an A3 UV light box second-hand from eBay, as well an old washout booth, and a bunch of second-hand screens and a squeegee from Gumtree. She signed herself up to the local college for some valuable evening classes in basic Photoshop, and was excited to bring her dream to reality.

“Hours and hours, and a year and a half later of printing, making many mistakes, I slowly learnt more and got a bit better after every mistake I made” explains the artist. As she begun to dip her toe into selling her prints, Hannah upgraded her UV light box for a bigger model, got more organised, and acquired a set of architects drawers to keep her paper and prints in. She continues to create her signature bright and colourful screen prints from her home studio, and is always keen to keep on developing her practice and set-up.

www.hannahcarvell.com
@hannah_carvell

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