Goblin - Pontiac IL, 2013

Aside from middle school sketches of the Grim Reaper & buxom blondes engaged in various sexual acts, Shawn Knight's first foray into the graphic arts came a couple years later in the form of high school band flyers. This was before he had access to a scanner, so imagine the excitement when he discovered the ability to print text onto transparency at Kinko's and then lay it on top of a background photo or illustration to make copies from. It looked so pro! At Detroit's esteemed College for Creative Studies (CCS), Shawn learned his sense of craft & forward thinking from his instructors and his sense of community & competition from his colleagues. Suddenly the idea of making something "look cool" became insignificant compared to the challenge of making something "make sense." It's at this point that he developed his collage aesthetic; a way in which he attempts to minimize deception and maximize integrity in his work. He continues to strive for these ideals now, though sometimes he accidentally just makes stuff look cool and feels bad about it later. Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas. Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, seriography, and serigraph.