Welcome to a special episode of IN THE STUDIO.
My name is Marlene Weisman, we’re here in my Brooklyn studio.
This is a special takeover edition of IN THE STUDIO in conjunction with Club 57.
Club 57 was a club that was located on Saint Mark's Place, downtown in New York City.
It was more than just a downtown club that showcased bands, it was really a hotbed of
creativity and art.
In that era, I was a graphic designer for a lot of the downtown clubs.
I did a lot of work for the Peppermint Lounge, Danceteria, Tramps, and The Bottom Line.
I'd do the newspaper ads, and street posters and fliers.
Doing graphics then was a very tactile and physical thing.
We would have to make an actual, physical, mechanical, and we use Xeroxes all through
doing graphics.
I have a little notebook here.
This is what I looked like going to the clubs.
But talking back about the black and white Xerox aesthetic, I have some samples of band
fliers because I kept a few of these, too.
And bands really wanted to have that Xerox-y anti-art quality to them.
It was a mixture of things.
It was a DIY, do-it-yourself aesthetic.
People didn't want to be perceived as sell-outs or too fancy.
They just wanted really barebones fliers, and as you can see in this flier, there are
a lot of little elements that were pasted in and a lot of hand lettering.
So while I was doing that kind of graphic design
I got the idea that maybe the Xerox machine would be a great source of doing art.
I happened to see a flier for a show at Club 57
that Keith Haring put together.
And I saw this and got really excited because that's exactly what I was doing.
I brought three pieces down and he looked at them, and he said, "These are great.
Put them up."
And thus began my association with Club 57.
A lot of memories from that time, a lot of not memories, but it was great to be part
of New York City in that era.
So what is Xerox art?
Well, you can simply Xerox something, cut it up, paste it into a collage, and then say
you're finished, but what I'm going to do is take it a step further and show the technique
of taking a reproduced piece out of a Xerox machine, placing it on a piece of paper, and
transferring the ink off to make a whole new piece of art on a different piece of paper.
And the possibilities are endless.
I have a narrative piece that's I call a memoir type piece.
I have a collage piece that I've coupled the Xerox transfers with pieces of painting that
I've done.
I also did a Warhol-ian piece, so a piece in the style of what Andy would have done
with repeated images.
So with this technique, you can choose cold-pressed and hot-pressed paper.
There are benefits to each one when doing Xerox transfers.
Hot-pressed sometimes will work over better with the transfer because there's less tooth
to it.
It's so smooth, the surface, to receive the toner.
So let's talk about the solvent part of a Xerox transfer.
In the '80s, I used acetone which is not the safest chemical to use.
You have to be a little careful.
There are now things that you can use as well, a golden gel or matte mediums work, gesso works.
You can even use packing tape that are a lot less toxic.
You can always get a more familiar product which is nail polish remover.
This will work as well.
Again, safe handling is really important.
I would only use a little bit at a time, pouring it into a metal cup or a glass cup.
So another element of Xerox transfer art, of course, is the Xeroxes themselves.
I have a big folder of images that I organized.
When I make the images, I do them in a few different sizes because there's nothing worse
than getting back to your studio and saying, "Oh, I wish I had that 50% smaller!"
You have to, of course, make sure that you're using a Xerox machine that is toner-based,
not laser, toner-based because that's the chemical that will...I think it's a powder
that will come off and onto your substrate, onto your paper.
So final supplies that are good to have on hand for doing Xerox transfer art is tape,
a good artist tape, so gentle on the paper.
You'll need a burnisher.
I have the burnisher I actually used back in the Club 57 days.
Maybe it's my lucky burnisher, but readily available.
But more readily available is something called a bone folder and this can be bought at any
art supply store.
You'll need a kitchen sponge, a plain kitchen sponge which I'll show in a demonstration.
We're going to cut into strips.
So having some scissors handy is really good.
And the other thing I would recommend are to have pencils and other media to draw and
paint into the compositions when you're done with them.
So, enough talking here, let's make an art piece.
Here we go.
I'm going to take a piece of Xerox here.
I think I will cut out the piece I'm going to transfer.
I'm doing that because I think it will avoid getting unwanted Xerox transfer onto there
because I don't want this piece, but I want this piece, and I'm leaving a lot of white
space around what I'm cutting because we need some room to tape around the sides.
So here's one element.
I think I'm going to place that down for now.
Okay, so, I think I have a nice amount of images.
Now we have our elements and I'm going to move them around a little bit.
And again, remember, when you're transferring, everything is the opposite direction.
So what I'm doing is now looking through the back of the paper, and now I have a little
bit of an idea of what I want to do.
I think I'm going to start with the bottom image.
So I'm going to put these aside.
And I'm going to make a little flap with the tape and securely tape it down.
This way, if I want to go over an area of the transfer, I can do that.
The next thing you're going to do is take your acetone.
I'll use the polish remover in this case.
You don't need that much, just a little bit.
And I'm also going to cut a piece of sponge.
Dab a little bit on the sponge, get it wet a little bit and then go over your area.
And you can see the image through the back
And then really quickly, really quickly start burnishing.
I don't know if this is working, but we'll find out.
I have a good feeling that it is transferring.
So I'll do a little…another section at a time, and I will...I'm holding down the paper
really tightly.
So there's very little gapping between the Xerox and the paper.
Now, this may be a little too much, we'll see, acetone, because the sponge kind of fell
in there which you should leave it out of the little cup.
But a good sign is when you start seeing the transfer getting light on the back, you know,
that maybe something is going on that you are getting the effect you want.
So I'm going to take a little peek.
It looks good, okay, but I'm not going to lift it up yet, so I'm going to keep going
courageously.
Very quickly because I don't want the acetone to just spread and blur the image.
All right, so let's see what we get, the big reveal, in a minute.
So now I see a little part I missed.
So I didn't lift it up fully yet.
So I'm going to do that again.
Sometimes missing part of an image makes it more interesting.
So again, in all great art, accidents are a really fun part.
So let's see.
Well, pretty good.
So that is how you do a transfer.
And again, it really transformed the image which was a Xerox of a Dover book
of an old engraving, but it really put a lot of depth into the image.
I want to fill out this other area with this other mysterious piece of machinery.
I think this is a printing press.
I'm not really sure what this is.
It's some kind of piston engine.
I'm going to fill in the space here and in this case I'm off the edge, so that's okay.
You should have proper ventilation.
I have a fan going usually because these fumes get a little overwhelming after
a while, but it's no worse than taking off your nail polish.
And as you can see, the back emerging, it really gives you a good guide.
It doesn't matter what direction you're burnishing.
It could be any direction, really.
Okay, let’s see if I…oh, there, so there we go.
Now I have my unusual machine which I can draw and paint into.
I can choose to connect these.
Let's see what happens.
Okay, did we get a transfer?
Carefully take off the tape because you don't want to rip the paper.
And not bad.
We lost a little over here, but that's an easy draw into.
And we have a scissor-wielding angel for everyone to enjoy.
Okay.
Well, let's see.
And we got a nice transfer.
And because I cut that away, it kind of, you know, works with the composition.
I like to have the images be different sizes because then you get a kind of a feeling of
a flow, which is fun.
So I generally know where I'm going to put these and it also brings your eye
down into the machine.
You know, I think maybe it will be interesting to make one of these clocks kind of coming
off from the edge of the page.
Wow, okay, looking good.
I'm just going to tape this little guy down here.
And there we go.
Okay, I think that what I'd like to do is see if I could connect these two elements
to make them a full whimsical, mysterious machine.
How I like to do that is to use Prismacolor pencils and also waterproof felt tip pens
that the cartoonists use or illustrators use.
So pretty much I'm just extending the lines to kind of connect these two.
Maybe I'll go back in with this pencil now and again, another thing you can work on for
hours and you could just keep going.
So I think I finished playing with this a little bit.
I can go in more, but for demonstration's sakes, maybe we'll go on to some color.
I have my Dr. Martin's inks.
I haven't used these in a long time.
And you'll see how dense these are.
You could just take a teeny and that's already so dense.
That was just a teeny, little dab but I’ll lighten it.
Sometimes I even use a little piece of board to mix my color.
A little yellow, let's see what we get.
But as you can see I'm using very small quantities of these.
They go a long way.
So I added a nice little gradient effect.
It gives a little interest.
The beauty of using these watercolors is that the tones show through.
And you can keep building.
If you thought you went too light and you wanted more color, you can just go over it.
And it's just great how the transfers hold up to water media.
And this hot-pressed mixed media paper is holding up pretty well too.
It’s not buckling at all.
So the machine is looking good.
I like the color in there and I think that to complete the piece, I think it would make
sense to bring some color up so the obvious place is to add some color to the clocks,
to the stopwatches.
If you want to tone down a color, I’ve done this in many of my pieces.
I can just go over it again with a Prismacolor pencil.
Just checking if it’s dry.
Okay so we finished the gears and we finished the watches and added our color.
And I think there's one more spot that color could be put in to complete the piece.
Okay so I think this is an interesting place to stop.
I think if I kept going, I would maybe define the wing a little more, work with my pencils
again like I had shown on connecting the machine.
I think that maybe I regret the color.
I think maybe this worked—had more punch as a black and white piece.
But I think that it was good for demonstration purposes to show how you can add color and
how the translucent vibrancy of the color kind of plays with the toner.
You can take this in any direction.
There are a lot of things you can do.
What I like to do is be a little less illustrative and maybe go a little more painterly.
I have an example up there of something I've worked on that I was inspired by Corey's video
on the de Kooning paintings and I started playing with firm brush strokes.
And maybe if I worked on this a little more, I would start putting elements like that and
take this to a whole different area a little more edgy which I would like to do.
But for our purposes, I think we did well.
I hope you enjoyed learning about Xerox transfer techniques and a little bit about Club 57
and what it was like downtown in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.
I hope you get a chance to come to see the Club 57 exhibition.
If you have any questions about what you've seen, leave them in the comments section.
I had a blast guest hosting.
Be sure to hit the subscribe button to see more videos from the Museum of Modern Art
and thanks for watching.