Not really, but I like the way the title sounds. My final project of last year was to epoxy coat a couple pieces of wood at Douglas and Sturgess at one of their night time classes. It reminded me so much of the tacky clocks and table tops that were so common in the South that I dwelled on the point and mockingly made a few pieces of wood with dollar bills in them for xmas presents for my kids. Needless to say they liked it better than any of the pieces I made using my much more complex photo fresco techniques and as coasters they have been more useful than the hundreds of abstract, have broken bricks, ornaments and art objects that I have made over the past year. I still like some of the work that I did, but unless I want to waste another year without making anything that I can sell to make money to pay for supplies, then I need to rethink the projects. The one set of items that did sell was images of the screen paintings and frescos on mousepads, so by making all of this work I can scan the images and then make mousepads or other such pratical items and still justify the effort through the sales of this merchandise.
I've been picking up the weathered pieces and broken pieces of frescos around the yard, basement and warehouse to see what attracts me the most. My first goal is to archive and file the old work while trying to finish and show the new work that hasn't been completed.
One idea I have is to show my old work in warehouse style, storage unit variety, galleries. This I can accomplish because I have storage units in various parts of Nevada and California. First in Fernley Nevada I have a small unit that can easily be converted to a gallery and I have taken much of my old stuff there. I also have a cheap space in North Las Vegas that is crying out to be used as a Gallery. I don't ever expect any visitors, but as a background project it should help me keep a perspective on my old work and give me the satisfaction of having shown my work as the Truck Gallery has done in Sausalito. The Wyatt Galleries of 2011 are going to be open later in the year at Y-Que in Los Angeles, currently open, The Truck Gallery in Sausalito, The Unit in Fernley Nevada and The Units in North Las Vegas. Contact me via email to visit by appointment only at the last two galleries.
A funny concept that I finished last year with was making bricks. Part for fun and partly to test the structural integrity of the materials I've been working with, namely Forton MG and FGR 95. I created a silicon mold then coated the first layer with gel coat of the Forton MG and fiberglass. Later I filled the mold with FGR 95 and appeared to have a brick that would have a value of $0.25 retail. With the next generation I inserted cold casted shapes and used different oclors for the brick part of the gel coat. In the end I have brick-like objects with emblems inside the face of the brick. interesting, but no cigar. Later I added connectors on the back and it appears that these bricks could be hung, if no other solid surface is available to hold such an item. Hanging bricks on the wall is no replacement for regular printed materials or framed art, but there is something absurd about the concept that I liked, although these items still looked pretty much like bricks and it wasn't too impressive to others.
Moving on with the brick idea, my daughter has been playing with grafitti and we printed out some brick backgrounds for her to draw on. This worked great on paper and we even purchased a few opaque markers so that she could color in the outlines and as a palette the brick wall conept is great. Today I scanned a brick I purchased at the store and composed a wall of bricks in photoshop. I printed these out with a laser printer on a variety of paper and am testing the transfer techniques of getting the brick image onto durable products to make fake bricks that may be lighter, cheaper, safer and more consistent than my hi-tech bricks mentioned earlier. I have a feeling that using the Photoshop brick wall as a background is a good idea for some of the other experiments like the stencils and fresco images that I have already developed. Next fake moustaches.
