"Material Distribution - Hamilton", Panya's third chapter of an ongoing investigation and re-imagination of the material possibilities of bricks, took place here at Smokestack, Hamilton throughout the course of 2023.

This collaborative printmaking project involved the support of Laine Groeneweg in our Analog studio and became the natural extension of first two iterations of the project which were created at Open Studio, Toronto. The collaborative sprit between artist, printer, and studio was a wonderful nod to what can happen when people and places work together!

For this particular project, bricks were sourced from a number of places here in Hamilton, including the now closed Century Brickworks. Remnants of a thriving production facility are reminders of a different time where cities were literally built brick by brick by brick. These discarded leftovers were collected and would become a source of raw materials for the project as well as a point of inspiration.

Similarly, crumbling bricks from buildings and the visual diversity inherent in those materials would be harvested to be come part of this project.

Once collected, the bricks were individually sorted into various colours, types, and properties. They were milled down by mortar and pestle and sifted to make a beautiful array of pigments

Using the raw pigment, inks were bound with dry magnesium carbonate and turned into a slurry which would then be married with an acrylic base ink.

The results were a variety of inks that we could use in the screen printing process! In total we made a pallet of 24 different colours of ink using the bricks collected.

Before getting started with any image making it was imperative to see how the inks performed. Also to see what they actually looked like when distributed on the surface of paper.

As expected we got some exciting results! In making a dedicated colour chart, we realized that there were different qualities between "newer" and "older" bricks as determined by the location of the brick sources and some of the characteristics in the pigments themselves. Newer bricks tended to be more engineered and offered a wider array with colours but often had a lack of richness whereas Older bricks were characterized by rich earth tones and softer clay-based structure.

Once we established the various possibilities with the inks, image making began! Using the technique of screen printing, ink was pulled through a fine nylon mesh using a rubber squeegee. This method makes use of a stencil so that ink can be constrained to a particular image form. In this case a single block-shaped line that was repeated in a number of different positions to created a weave pattern.

A natural rhythm developed within our teamwork through the production of these prints. Flow was critical to maintain continuity, speed, and organization over literally hundreds of passes of ink. While Laine pulled ink, Panya orchestrated the simultaneous drying and cuing of the next prints.

Inks were dried immediately between passes so that we could successively and gradually build up the density of tone and colour. Once dried, the print would return to the printing table where ink where another layer of ink would be passed over the print in the the same spot as the previous. This order of operations would continue throughout the run before the screen was moved into a new position for another series of passes with the image. More passes would drive deeper and richer results!

After multiple days of work and a tremendous build-up of layers of ink, the results were truly something to marvel at!

Before long, Panya was experimenting with all sorts of image creation using the inks and screen stencils. The brick form itself became the root for developing more complex compositions. This was a continuation of some earlier legs of the project that made use of the iconic shape.

Through experimentation and the process of printing, wonderful discoveries were made in the ways our handmade inks could mingle and produce richly complicated pallets.

Further exploration had us develop a circular rig that allowed for rotational compositions to evolve. This presented both a unique challenge but also some wonderful creative possibilities for image making!

Once again, Panya was doing double duty by ensuring that multiple prints stayed synchronized in terms of printing order while ensuring they were perfectly dry from layer to layer. This truly was a feat considering the speed at which we needed to run with these inks. Because of their nature and unpredictable qualities keeping a pace that was fast and rhythmical was a key part of finding the sweet resolve! A beautiful flow state would occur with each colour run where timing and synchronization played out like a well choreographed dance.

In the final days of Panya's Material Redistribution project here at Smokestack, there was an interest in working with the inks in less constrained ways. This ultimately lead us to create a series of open and gradient halftone screens from which we could print larger colour fields with. While these pieces made use of the screen printing technique, they broke conventions of staying locked to a defined edition and leaned more towards becoming mono prints. Through careful documentation of which inks were printed and in which order Panya was able to recall these details and present the final works along side their brick material sources. Together, these would become the pieces in the series "As Above, So Below" featured in her solo exhibition at the Smokestack Gallery

The colour fields continued and through that we experimented with possibilities of combining different combinations of ink to produce a colour range that went beyond what was derived as pure brick sources. By utilizing the initial colour tests and the gradients we created material that would become the basis for modular editions.

The material was sent to our good friend David Trautrimas over at Smokelake, where it was precisely lasercut into reconfigurable shapes. The different colours were associated with specific shapes and were included as part of a set that made up a single Hamilton Brick.

Like tangram puzzles, these simple pieces could be used as simple building blocks to be reimagined into all kinds of different creative possibilities. A fitting end to an incredible re-imagination and redistribution of Hamilton brick!