By Joe Proudman
Ray Cross is just setting up as I walk into the Loom. He quickly slips his blue ink-stained apron over his head. He’s wearing a black shirt with a blue design he printed years ago. He is a tall young guy and thin, with brown hair that is covered by a green army cap leaning slightly to the right.
Hanging on the walls around him are designs of bikes, a zombie George Washington and a massive ship among patterns of various shapes and lines. Screens lean in a pile against the wall below the first president.
Cross is set up near the bathrooms in the Loom, a local shopping center on Flushing Avenue that houses several storefronts including a general store, handmade clothing, jeweler and moped repair shop. The shop is named the Loom because it was once a textile factory. Every first Friday the stores stay open late, offering discounts, deals and artists such as Cross. There was even a tattoo artist at Friday’s event.
Before you notice that he is done setting up, Cross is already printing onto already printed shirts, overlaying a large design over older ones of bikes and patterns. Cross is the type of person who likes to stay busy. He says the shirts he is covering up are close to being rags, but he is giving them a second life. They feature several patterns and soon are taped onto the Loom’s decorative silver wall.
As he pours black ink onto the pink screen he talks about his studio, which is a couple blocks off the Jefferson Street L train. He runs Bushwick Print Lab and has been around the area for the better part of the decade.
He checks to make sure he’s on a level spot on the table and continues to talk as he prepares to print, never really stopping, but slowing down right before he spreads the ink along the screen and onto the shirt. A crowd begins to form around his table. For five bucks they can spice up an old hoodie or shirt.
A young women says, “I came to get screen printed.”
An older women responds, “Oh, did you read about it online too?”
The young women nods in agreement while holding her black sweater, waiting for Cross.
He changes screens. He does so with such familiarity that he does not miss a beat scrubbing the screen when his wife calls.
Cross says the process is fairly easy. “You’re pretty much pushing ink through a hole,” he says. The fun part of the night is the people he chats with as he prints.
The first guest has her tan sweater printed with bicycles. Cross offers to use hypercolor ink, which changes colors with heat. He shows his business card that uses the same ink and runs a blow dryer across it, causing part of it to disappear. She is impressed. Cross says it’s the same ink Coors Light uses on their cold-activated cans. The woman is sold.
She can’t just stop at one though and purchases a printed blouse off the wall.
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