Long ago, as a child, I can remember seeing an "aurora." Back in Weston,
Connecticut, I looked up to see curtains hanging from a cold winter sky. I
was amazed and wondered just what they were. I later learned that they were
made up of charged ions caused by something called the "solar wind." Their
color was caused by specific types of ions being "bombarded" by the sun's
"photon particals."

My colorful curtains in "Colliding Auroras" was, I must say, an overly
ambitious attempt to "capture" the northern lights in a rather imaginary way
-- which included a broad range of color possibilities not likely to ever be
seen together. Also, there was an abstract and "impossible" perspective in
their design. The "collision" was interesting to me and it was enjoyable to
immitate what one might see as these "celestial crystals" propogated.

Technically, this silkscreen (or serigraph) was a major challenge for me
since it involved 55 seperate silkscreens, each having a seperate stencil
(for each color to be printed). At this writing, I do not recall just how
long the printing process took. It was certainly more than three weeks.
Stencils for each color were created and then adheared to the stretched
silk-like fabric. Ink was then "squeegied" through the stencils onto white
glossy print paper. Each "screen" was then cleaned with chemicals and a new
stencil was then adheared to the same fabric. Positioning of each was
critical to the registration process.

I sometimes admit to people what happened when the last color (black) was
printed. It involved the purchase of a very large squeegie so that ink would
be evenly spread over the entire screen on just one pass. Unfortunately, the
rubber edge of the new squeegie was extremely sharp and stiff. As a result,
it "tore" through the lacquer stencil material on the silksceen itself. This
damage caused a massive amount of black ink to flow onto the previous 54
colors already printed. I was completely beside myself as I looked down at
the destroyed print. In all, the editon would eventually yield 29 good
looking prints. The memory of this printing mishap stayed with me for a long
time however, because I attempted FOUR times to fix the stencil before
actually accepting the fact that it could not be saved. Four images were lost
in a pool of black ink. It was not until my literally walking away from the
job to take a long night-time walk, when I was then able to settle down. The
following day, I started the process over and all went smoothly. My patience
was certaily being tested earlier. At times I thought my mood was on a
collision course itself.