At Uprise

Carla Weeks x Du-Good Press

Three, framed hand-pulled screenprints by artist Carla Weeks in various colors: blue, beige, and yellow.

Du-Good Press (est. 2017) is a fine art screen printing studio based in Brooklyn, NY. Founded by Leslie Diuguid, Du-Good Press is the first Black female-owned fine art screen printing business in New York. Since founding the Press, Leslie has collaboratively printed editions for artists, designers, and institutions, and is dedicated to supporting artists and increasing access to art collecting.

In her collaboration with Carla Weeks, Leslie took special care to translate Carla's "Vocab Color Study" series into multi-layer hand-pulled silkscreens that capture the original spirit of her monochrome paintings. The final prints are chromatic meditations that use a shape vocabulary focused on abstract figurations of pairs or doubles that balance each other with slight asymmetries. The shapes are contained and defined. They are distinct, yet very much together.

Blue, hand-pulled screenprint based on artist Carla Weeks' 'Vocab Color Study' paintings.

Close-up of signature on blue, hand-pulled screenprint by artist Carla Weeks and Du-Good Press.

Carla's monochromatic palettes challenge the viewer's ability to discern subtle variations within a limited spectrum of color. The proportional relationships between adjacent fields often exhibit minimal contrast. As a series, it is gratifying to observe these attributes across three iterations. The navy blue hue, with its relative darkness and saturation in contrast to the neutrality of the other colors, evokes a striking visual effect. Additionally, the challenge of matching extremely neutral and ill-defined colors adds another layer of complexity to the work.
Leslie Diuguid

Leslie Diuguid working with swatches of yellow in her fine art screenprinting studio.

Leslie Diugood of Du-Good Press working on a yellow screenprint.

In-progress yellow, hand-pulled screenprint by artist Carla Weeks.

Observing these artworks up close immerses you in the environment and trains your eye to focus within constraints. With this in mind, I deliberately followed the subtle greening, pinkening, or darker shades required to create harmony. My favorite addition is the final transparent veil that envelops the lower half, encompassing two squares. I perceived it as a protective shield and printed it using a more durable ink that imparts a slightly different finish from the rest of the artwork.
Leslie Diuguid