I melted Lou Reed's face

Art III/IV, second period:

Halfway through a screen printing project with the advanced students. It is the hand-cut, green-film, stencil kind of screen printing, not the photo-emulsion, Andy Warhol-style, so it's fairly labor intensive. All of the kids are really into this project because they are eager to see the final product, but they're struggling with the fine attention to detail it requires. "Damn, this project requires patience, yo!" says one student about every 30 minutes.

I made my own stencil, based on one Warhol's screen tests of Lou Reed. Fantastic image, and quite nicely rendered, I must say.

Using my stencil as the sample, I gave a demonstration on how to adhere the film to the screen using the requisite noxious chemicals. First pass, didn't stick. Not even close. When I went to peel off the clear plastic backing, the whole stencil came right with it, as if to say "What, I'm supposed to stick to the screen or something?" Second pass with chemicals, no dice. Peeled up again. The kids got restless and wandered away - "Let us know when it's ready, Mr. W". Third pass I really let that sucker have it. Soaked it to the bone, with mind-erasing fumes wafting up, making the classroom air wavy.

Peeled the backing, and realized I had completely melted the film. No hope of saving it. It was vapor. Left a slightly green-tinted empty screen behind.

The kids laughed, but feared for their own project. "I hope that doesn't happen to mine, because that s**t takes a long time to do, brah" (By the way, I don't know the correct spelling of this colloquialism, obviously an evolution of "bro"; I have chosen "brah" but I imagine "bruh" or "bra" would be acceptable as well). I concurred, and said that I wish it hadn't happened to mine, either.

Once kids were ready to do theirs, I tried to think of what was different about this time (failure) with last weeks experiment (success), and the only variable was the rag that I used - I used paper towels last week. So I worked closely with the first students, and had them use paper towels to apply the chemicals. Thankfully, we had total success. I was, of course, very worried that none of the screens would adhere, rendering a week's work worthless, and throwing a 3-day hole in my lesson plan. Fortunately, the ghost of Andy Warhol smiled upon me today.