Dr. William Allen Jones was the first dentist licensed in BC. He was born in 1831 in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA and died in Barkerville in 1897. I have not yet succeeded in finding his grave in the Barkerville cemetery. Many tourists peer into his dental clinic on the main street of Barkerville Historic Town near Wells.

Using a photo kindly supplied by the Barkerville archives, I designed a silk screen portrait in 8 colours (above).

These variations in the background blend show the process of achieving a variety of results:

A short clip of printing the background and another clip as seen from above.

Next step: printing the shirt:

Printing a gradient base for the jacket:

Next: the underprint for the head and face:

The first posterization of the photo:

Second posterization printed:

Third posterization printed:

Fourth posterization printed:

A printed gold frame (clear ink mixed with “gold” powder) “traps” the perimeter of the print and any minor misregistrations:

I had a minor problem printing some of the text: a brand new container of black ink was unusually runny and bled a tiny bit on three prints. To solve this, I made a new photostencil with “stroked” text (enlarged) so I could overprint the flaws with white ink. Then I printed the text again with some older, thicker black ink that did not bleed. Problem solved!

In the end, I used a total of 11 colours. Here are three samples of the final prints with variations among them:

 

This is a fundraiser for the Wells Historical Society, Friends of Barkerville, and the BC Black History Awareness Society. An order form for this special edition is here.

Thanks to Mandy Kilsby, Caroline Zinz, Silvia Mangue, Claire Kujundzic, Andy MacDougall, Sophia Isajiw, Annerose Georgeson and Richard Tetrault for their assistance and support.