NYPIRG was participating in Ecofest. Ecofest is an event at CityTech to celebrate Earth Day. That week, I was given a task to make flyers and social media post for the movie screening “Gasland”. I made posters that included the directions and a graphic vector for screen printing. I was familiar with all the other mediums except screen printing. I did some research on screen printing and found out it deals with a lot of shapes. I took my time and learned a lot about this medium I knew almost nothing about.

For Ecofest, I had to pick an environmental issue and make a graphic for it. I chose climate change and public health. My main issue was I knew nothing about these topics. I knew I had to work hard and study, just like I did with screen printing. I decided to do the screen printing on plastic bottles. I found out that it takes 250 milliliters of oil to make a single plastic bottle. I thought it was a good fact to share and I could make a good graphic from it. For my graphic vector, I combined an oil truck and a water bottle together to make the water bottle look like a tank.

On the day of the event I met with Nora, a librarian at CityTech, and who also did screen printing. She was very impressed with my graphic and that made me very happy. She also showed me a technique to create a design by placing the paper in the middle of a gray screen-printing unit, poured paint on top of the frame, and used a metal hinge to spread the paint. My design was going on a tote bag, but she told me she had to practice on paper first. At first, the prints came out muddy, but we did it several times until it came out clear. When it came out clear, we moved onto the bags. Everyone loved the design! It made me happy that people loved something I created. They were supposed to spin the wheel, choose between prizes like a bamboo straw, a shirt, and a tote bag. Their minds were already made up before spinning the wheel.

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This is Nora who did the screen printing.