Art show posters

Arts & Activities, Nov, 2003 by Irv Osterer

High-school art shows are an important annual event in the school calendar. Each year, one of Confederation High School's most talented senior design students is given the responsibility of creating and printing 100 copies of a dynamic art-show poster to publicize the exhibit.

The posters are silk-screened in-house, using a variety of techniques including glue stencils, hand-cut pro-film and photo-screens. To minimize odors, most of the posters are printed with water-soluble ink, but there are occasions that oil-based inks and enamels will be used.

After examining preliminary drawings and color studies, a full-scale master is prepared to facilitate production decisions. The students are cautioned about the perils of tight registration and are advised to keep the finished poster to four or five colors.

When the stencils are finished and the screens are ready to run, all classes pitch in with the placing, printing and drying of each color, as well as the tedious chore of cleaning the screens and the squeegees. After about a week of production, the prints are ready to be distributed in the community by our art students. Often the city and community newspapers will reproduce black-and-white versions of the poster to give our art show even more exposure.

Must of our students enjoy the posters that are printed using themes from popular culture. When the Star Wars films were making their resurgence, it was inevitable that Chris Rose and Annie Horricks would have the Confederation Cardinal--our school mascot--become the notorious Darth Vader. So many of our young people are interested in comic books as art and literature, that a comic-book jacket seemed another natural solution.

The most controversial image was Jason Waterfall's take on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes[R] box. An irate citizen complained that we were encouraging our students to violate copyright laws by allowing this kind of work. I tried in vain to explain that it was created in the spirit of Andy Warhol's serigraphs of Brillo[R] boxes and Campbell's[R] soup cans.

It goes without saying that each Poster has become a collector's item as well as a worthy portfolio piece.

Irv Osterer, at the time he wrote this article, taught at Confederation High School in Nepean, Ontario, Canada. Currently, he is Department Head of Fine Arts, Library and Technology at Merivale High School also in Nepean.