High School? Art? Screen Printing? No Problem!

April 30, 2008

Matt Pearl, a high school senior in Palos Heights, Ill., used what he learned in a screen printing class offered by Columbia College, Chicago, to start his own screen printing company.

The big plans for many high school seniors revolve around prom and graduation. Not so for Matt Pearl, a senior at Shepard High School in Palos Heights, Ill. Already an accomplished artist, Pearl recently started his own screen printing company.

Pearl took a class in screen printing for high school students at Columbia College in nearby Chicago. The program is part of Columbia's Anchor Graphics, a not-for-profit fine art print shop that offers print-making classes for all ages. The class introduced Pearl and the other students to the art of screen printing and various techniques, and they learned to print on a variety of substrates.

After completing the class, Pearl set up shop in his home to take on some screen printing projects for his high school and other local groups. So far, he's done T-shirts for Orange Crush (the Shepard High School basketball fans), sweats for the baseball team and T-shirts for fans of a district hockey team.

While screen printing is a fairly new endeavor for Pearl, he has created art for many years. "I do a lot of marker renderings," he says. In fact, some of his work was recently on display at Chicago's Avram Eisen Gallery in an exhibit entitled "So Young, So Wicked." His collection of pieces from his high school years numbers in the hundreds.

Although a prolific artist, Pearl maintains that his favorite artistic medium is screen printing. "It's fun, and something different to do besides fine art," he says. "Also, if you mess up, you can just keep going." Pearl plans to keep going right to Columbia College after high school. "They have a good printing section in the college, so I plan to go there," he says. And it looks like that will be a very good move for him. — Liz Aull

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