Embracing the imperfections: My experience taking part in Sonsoles print exchange 2024

Living in London for most of my adult life has meant that having the space and money to own my own home studio, complete with screen printing facilities has been something of a pipe dream. So, About a year ago I decided to become a member of an open-access print studio in Peckham called Sonsoles, so that I could continue making prints and hopefully meet some fellow printmakers and artists along the way. 

I received an email not that long ago from Sonsoles asking if I’d like to take part in a print exchange, and decided even though it was going to be a struggle to fit in around my work, that I would give it a go anyway.

We were all given a prompt of ‘Eye Candy’ to work from, and apart from the fact it had to be printed on A4 stock, the rest of the brief was open to our interpretation. There were 35 artists taking part, so we each had to print 35 editions, plus a few extras if we wanted to sell some and keep some for ourselves. 

For some reason, the first thing that popped into my head was a boy, sitting cross legged with an old CRT television for a head. (I like to avoid drawing faces if I can, as I feel I can’t commit to a method of drawing them that I feel fits my style and approach). It took me back to being a kid and watching cartoons on a Saturday morning – feeling excited for what the weekend had to bring, and probably a bit hyper from the sugary breakfast cereals. I wanted to encapsulate this feeling through the colours and the graphics on the TV screen. 

I found the print process quite challenging as it was the largest edition that I had ever printed, and also the most amount of colours in a single print that I had ever done. This meant it was much more time consuming and every minute of precious printing time I had booked had to be utilised.

A colour study alongside the digital illustration.

I also had some problems with the separate layers of colour not completely aligning, and to be honest I got very close to scrapping the print edition and admitting defeat altogether. This would mean an end to participating in the print exchange too. Luckily, print studio owner Soni was nearby and could sense my frustration with it all. She managed to somehow convince me that my print so far was actually on the contrary looking good, and that I only had to make a few small tweaks to my printing method to fix the issues i was encountering. I won’t go into the technical details, but basically I have Soni to thank for these prints actually existing. I think without her much needed pep talk and expertise they could well have ended in the recycling bin. All drama aside, I ended up being really happy with how they turned out, and learnt to embrace the imperfections. After all that’s what makes them unique right?

The finished print titled ‘Square Eyes’, framed and hanging in the gallery.

The end of the exchange culminated with a small exhibition show at a local gallery in Peckham, close to the print studio, where our prints were all curated and hung together for the public to view, and buy. It was so interesting to finally view the other artists work and see how they each  interpreted the brief so differently. Each artist had their own unique style and colour palette that they used and no two prints were similar, yet they all worked cohesively under the umbrella ‘Eye Candy’.

We also each got given a special edition, printed box, each containing the whole set of 35 prints from every artist – a truly special souvenir to remember this experience by. 

You can check out some images from the exhibition below.

Photographs of Exhibition taken by Fiona Grady.