With a week and a half to go before Farm Aid 2024, we are officially on the #Road2FarmAid! We want to bring you a taste of some of the things that make the annual Farm Aid festival unique. We are very excited about a new limited edition item we’ll be selling at Farm Aid 2024. You can only get it at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY on Saturday, September 21. Here’s the story:
Please introduce yourself
I’m Andy MacDougall from Wachiay Studio in Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada.
How are you connected to Farm Aid?
This is our first time working with Farm Aid and we’re excited because here at Wachiay Studio we are big fans and supporters of local farms, good food and awesome music!
What are you working on now to prep for Farm Aid 2024?
We are hand printing the limited edition Farm Aid 2024 poster created by artist Gary Houston of Portland, Oregon. He works using scratchboard and then ruby cutting and airbrushing to create the colours used to build the original print. It’s a very original style; he’s also an ace printer, but we like to work together from time to time. His website is www.voodoocatbox.com. [As of this writing, the link doesn’t work, but you can learn more about Gary Houston here.]
My team at Wachiay Studio did the screenprinting. We are located on Vancouver Island. Our studio is a social enterprise, part of Wachiay Friendship Centre, which offers services and programs to Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
The screenprinting for this poster is very time-intensive. It’s a labor of love! Check out the photos below to see just some of the process.
What are you most looking forward to on 9/21?
We are honoured to print this work to celebrate farmers, and hope people enjoy it.
Learn more about the screenprinting process:
The film separations are done by hand, cutting rubylith, and shading with an airbrush.
The artist gives us colour samples to mix to. This is different than most prints, because the colours are custom, and transparent, in order to give secondary colours with overprinting.
Printing the Farm Aid 2024 poster
1st colour down. Ochre
2nd colour is magenta/pink. You can see how the overprint works, to create a 3rd colour.
3rd colour is blue, but it creates a total of 7 different colours when combined with the first 2.
4th colour is a transparent grey/purple – most noticeable on the cows, but also shading different areas, creating more colours.
5th colour is a black/purple blend. This is the keyline, originally created using scratchboard, then enlarged, and type added. The 4 other colours are then created by overlaying and cutting the rubylith seps.
The final poster
