From 1984 to 1999, Donna’s art practice focused on the production of serigraphs, hand-printed silkscreens, printed in limited editions. Silkscreen is an ancient stencil technique that has benefited from the invention of modern tools and materials. Donna made her stencils in a number of ways. Some were cut directly from a thin sheet of lacquer, ‘stripping out’ the areas she wished to keep open in the screen one at a time. The hard edges of the resulting shapes reflected Donna’s natural tendency toward precision and economy of design. Hard-edged stencils were also made by cutting shapes, with an X-acto, into rubylith, a type of graphic arts film. Other stencil masters were drawn onto frosted film with ink or soft pencil. These swirling textures in Chair De Lune started as a drawing on frosted mylar. These cut masters were placed onto a screen coated with a light-hardening emulsion. Once exposed to strong ultraviolet light, the coated screen was cleared with water, to open the areas to be printed. Ink was pushed through the open areas of the stencil with a rubber squeegee made for that purpose. This is hard, physical work, especially when printing large areas near the edge of the screen frame. The print is built up this way: laying down one color at a time, usually working from light to dark. Click here to see an animation of how Donna’s Off With Their Heads was printed. Although in theory the prints in an edition of serigraphs could be identical, minor variations in ink density and blending are inevitable. Donna was always strict in her determination of which prints made it into an edition, allowing only a few artist’s proofs to be retained. The remaining prints were destroyed. With the exception of color ‘blends’ (gradients), each color in a serigraph is printed separately. So the amount of work that goes into an edition increases with each color printed. One of Donna’s larger prints required twenty screens. Her serigraphs were printed on fine-art watercolor or printmaking papers, all of which are cotton and archival. The inks are highly colorfast although, like all artwork, serigraphs should be displayed out of direct sun.