Screen Printing - August/September 2016 - 13

The entire lobby of Brown University's Granoff Center served as a 5000-square-foot canvas for one of Weingrod's recent installations. "but the painting and reproducing the painting, cutting it out, changing it, repouring over that, photographing that again, putting that in the computer, printing - it can almost go on forever, sort of like the universe." One of Weingrod's more recent, larger undertakings, "Infinite Space," was a takeover of Brown University's Granoff Center. He started out with his usual, multi-faceted process: Drawings evolved into prints via Brown's Epson Stylus Pro 9900 printer; pouring water onto those prints led to more organic forms. The scan-and-print cycle would continue until the image was ready to be vectorized. Then, he'd project it into the lobby and discern where it would fit in the space - and then redraw it. But the painstaking work had barely begun; Weingrod hired 12 assistants to help with fundraising - "artists should get paid for their work," he insists - promotion, and executing the 5000-square-foot installation. The team covered the entire space in black Orafol adhesive vinyl and white protective masking film, traced the projected images, and cut and peeled away the negative areas by hand. This part of the meticulous process alone took roughly eight weeks. And an artist's work is never done. The vinyl hung at Granoff Center from October 2015 until June 2016; along the way, Weingrod created digital prints featuring photographs of the installation. The prints ranged from signed posters to catalogs promised to those who donated to fundraising efforts. Weingrod also found a way to bring intrigue to the project's destruction with a community "peeling party": "Our collective removal of the work will essentially follow the theoretical model of a wormhole, disappearing from one place only to reappear in another form and place in space and time," he said in an email blast. What's next for the limitless imagination of his mind? Many of the artist's future plans center on using technology to create further depth, and conversely, simplicity, in his work. After using a Roland vinyl cutter to create a preview of the Granoff Center installation, he began imagining other uses for the machine, such as cut-out stars much like the ones he screen printed in Miami. He cites plans to experiment with an inkjet printer to see whether it can print with paint. And, always drawn to chemistry, Weingrod says he's had "very interesting results" mixing screen-printing base with pure pigments. Looking back on the years before he called himself an artist, Weingrod says he never thought one could make a career out of art. But his role model, Frank Stella, a successful artist and well-known printmaker changed that; now, Weingrod says "we're all kind of artists. Whether you're working in a factory putting together cars or ... whether you're building houses, people just make. Part of the human condition is that we want to make tools; we want to make things; we want to use our hands." august/september 2016 13

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