I feel like I've entered a new dimension with the latest "products" for lack of a better word. Vinyl has become my membrane of choice, a material that I have rejected for use in prints in the past, as a flexible thin durable layer for sandwiching between layers of goop. Getting materials that will bond with vinyl isn't easy. Making vinyl lay flat also isn't that easy. Sealing vinyl from UV also isn't easy, but there is something about this non-organic feeling stuff that works for me. I am even coming up with ways to remove the vinyl as the final step and thereby leave the print as something of an impression that was made on the vinyl as the "product". I keep thinking there may be a reason for keeping or leaving the material itself, but there isn't otherthan for weight. Structurally the strength of the piece may be increased by leaving the vinyl, even if the vinyl itself is hidden inside, but removing the original print from the final piece is fascinating as is the case when a mold is removed from the piece that is casted inside it.
The fact is that now I seem to be complicating matters beyond what is required and I simply need to get back to making pieces, production, not experimentation. The experimentation can go on forever from what I can tell. I have no shortage of fascinating ideas on how to apply these materials, but time is not on my side and my business requires more time than I have been able to afford it. The weather is also a bitch as some of the materials I am using, or want to use, require warmer temperatures than I can create in my working environment. To keep a space at 70 degrees F would end up costing me a fortune, so I keep going back to materials that will simply work in my not-so-controlled environment.
The entire reason I stay reminded of my goal is that most of the ruined pieces are laying around in my yard weathering as trash because of these environmental conditions. The reminder of constant failure is my motivation. I have work thrown in the mud that my kids walk on as bricks. Other finished pieces that I use as drip catchers for the new work that I am making. A large outside fireplace that is filled with broken plaster pieces. It is as if I am purposely breaking some of the work so that it won't have any value. EVERY piece I have made has a flaw and I can't really focus on trying to fix these flaws since everything seems just like a test run anyway. Why try to make something perfect if it is just going to distract me further from my goal of reaching a plateau and doing some production? There is no reason from my perspective, but I try to limit the obvious flaws.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The weight of art - by the pound
I am now defining the quality of my work by the weight of the pieces themselves. The lighter the work the better. That is without sacraficing durability and strength. Less is Less is my mantra and if I can put everything I want into a piece that is as light as a feather then that is better than a block of concrete that cannot be displayed on a wall, safely. I am working between 2-4 lbs and 2.5 lbs seems to be an optimal weight for my final product.
The struggle with this work is the plane of reference, the printed/painted surface that holds the design. I have gone very thin and applied various layers of fiber and gypsum to thicken and strengthen the image area while simultaneously reducing the depth that is required as a substrate to carry the image. Then I have been mounted the image, thicker than paper, but thinner than glass, to a molded frame from a variety of materials including Forton MG, hydrocal FGR 95, surfboard resin and mixed versions of the above as a gel coat with atomized metal formed into the top layer to build up resistance to the elements. While I can cast the image or add the image into the mold of the frame I have worked away from this lately because I have been using a frame and bonding the image and outer frame to the inner frame by adding more gypsum plasters which simply make the pieces too heavy and unmanagable. So my latest incarnations of work have been to make the frame and add it to the piece separately, outside the mold, and therefore I have removed the need for thick heavy support pieces.
Ideally the light weight will allow more flexibility in display. As with any engineering project the structure often has as much to do with holding up the materials as with the actual purposeful parts of the structure, which preverts the engineering in many cases. This is the case with my artwork and the liberation I feel by working with heavy materials and including the effects of resistence to the elements, but by making them light I feel I have achieved a goal. Coating and sealing is still problematic, as well as, the content, but now I must settle on just how I want my production to begin. What should the final defining characteristics of these items be?
I can do photo-fresco, screen painting or stencil painting. Photo fresco seems like more of a duplicative process, just making more permanent copies of other works. However, I like the process and need to get better at it. Screen painting and stencil painting is the most satisfying of the styles, but stretching the frames to start more work is a debillitating task that I find hard to accomplish. I can't afford to buy the frames that I need to stay busy with hard cash and recycling the old frames that I have is very attractive, but it takes time and energy. Each time I finish cleaning screens I feel too tired to do any work. Restretching mesh instead of cleaning out mesh is the way to go, but I don't have a consistent regiment for accomplishing this. Tomorrow.
The struggle with this work is the plane of reference, the printed/painted surface that holds the design. I have gone very thin and applied various layers of fiber and gypsum to thicken and strengthen the image area while simultaneously reducing the depth that is required as a substrate to carry the image. Then I have been mounted the image, thicker than paper, but thinner than glass, to a molded frame from a variety of materials including Forton MG, hydrocal FGR 95, surfboard resin and mixed versions of the above as a gel coat with atomized metal formed into the top layer to build up resistance to the elements. While I can cast the image or add the image into the mold of the frame I have worked away from this lately because I have been using a frame and bonding the image and outer frame to the inner frame by adding more gypsum plasters which simply make the pieces too heavy and unmanagable. So my latest incarnations of work have been to make the frame and add it to the piece separately, outside the mold, and therefore I have removed the need for thick heavy support pieces.
Ideally the light weight will allow more flexibility in display. As with any engineering project the structure often has as much to do with holding up the materials as with the actual purposeful parts of the structure, which preverts the engineering in many cases. This is the case with my artwork and the liberation I feel by working with heavy materials and including the effects of resistence to the elements, but by making them light I feel I have achieved a goal. Coating and sealing is still problematic, as well as, the content, but now I must settle on just how I want my production to begin. What should the final defining characteristics of these items be?
I can do photo-fresco, screen painting or stencil painting. Photo fresco seems like more of a duplicative process, just making more permanent copies of other works. However, I like the process and need to get better at it. Screen painting and stencil painting is the most satisfying of the styles, but stretching the frames to start more work is a debillitating task that I find hard to accomplish. I can't afford to buy the frames that I need to stay busy with hard cash and recycling the old frames that I have is very attractive, but it takes time and energy. Each time I finish cleaning screens I feel too tired to do any work. Restretching mesh instead of cleaning out mesh is the way to go, but I don't have a consistent regiment for accomplishing this. Tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
It's beyond my control...
I know not what I do, but I do it. The world of fresco and making things has merged into a world of simply manufacturing, but in a good way. I keep pouring chemicals into molds and making things I sort of like because I don't really know what I am making any more. It's like the machine is in control and I am just the worker. The joy of being the worker is that I get to see the pieces before they are moved into new stages, the stages that allow them to be marketed as things. When I pull an item from the mold it is new and this is only once. No matter what I will continue to work on these items until they are presentable in some form and therefore their beauty is reduced to objects.
Because there is no home for this work I keep compiling batches of "frescos" and "screen paintings" here and there. Lately my favorite invention is when I salvage some piece from weathering, being left out in my backyard, and I clean it off, seal it and put it in a frame/mold. I like the effects of natural weathering on the pieces I have made, but there is no consistency with the items that I am making. I find myself lost in a puddle of poop-like things, dirty and ambiguous, but then when I look at them as something to work with they come back to life. I am hopeful that one of these pieces will be the essential way that I want to make new pieces, but that hasn't happened yet as everything appears to be so different to me. Any time I try to repeat a process it fails and ends up seeming like a waste of time.
I know it is delusional to look upon one's own work and see more than what it is, but I can't say I have seen anything that looks like this before. This is what it must feel like to be original, something that I have admired, but have spent my entire life printing other people's crap while avoiding doing anything original myself. This is why this feeling is strange, because I rarely get to enjoy this feeling since I have been a hack most of my life. My only regret is that I have not been able to see this clearly until now, later in life, when I don't have enough time left to do all the images that I think need to be done. Sure, one million different items may be just as good as one super item, but I don't think so. I need to settle on the form of the simplest version of my work and deal with it in the simplest of ways. I need to fight the complexity that tells me how to make it fit with every other piece of work that represents all of my skills and just go with the effects and simplicity of the item itself. I need to stop putting myself in my work and just let the inspiration be the work, but how?
The techniques are nothing without the context and the context is the skills as much as the inspiration. I like to think about the world of art as a cave wall brought into cities for the elite to admire the instincts of life, but I am interested in the wall as the art and I cannot pull my mind out of the wall long enough to focus on the art.
Because there is no home for this work I keep compiling batches of "frescos" and "screen paintings" here and there. Lately my favorite invention is when I salvage some piece from weathering, being left out in my backyard, and I clean it off, seal it and put it in a frame/mold. I like the effects of natural weathering on the pieces I have made, but there is no consistency with the items that I am making. I find myself lost in a puddle of poop-like things, dirty and ambiguous, but then when I look at them as something to work with they come back to life. I am hopeful that one of these pieces will be the essential way that I want to make new pieces, but that hasn't happened yet as everything appears to be so different to me. Any time I try to repeat a process it fails and ends up seeming like a waste of time.
I know it is delusional to look upon one's own work and see more than what it is, but I can't say I have seen anything that looks like this before. This is what it must feel like to be original, something that I have admired, but have spent my entire life printing other people's crap while avoiding doing anything original myself. This is why this feeling is strange, because I rarely get to enjoy this feeling since I have been a hack most of my life. My only regret is that I have not been able to see this clearly until now, later in life, when I don't have enough time left to do all the images that I think need to be done. Sure, one million different items may be just as good as one super item, but I don't think so. I need to settle on the form of the simplest version of my work and deal with it in the simplest of ways. I need to fight the complexity that tells me how to make it fit with every other piece of work that represents all of my skills and just go with the effects and simplicity of the item itself. I need to stop putting myself in my work and just let the inspiration be the work, but how?
The techniques are nothing without the context and the context is the skills as much as the inspiration. I like to think about the world of art as a cave wall brought into cities for the elite to admire the instincts of life, but I am interested in the wall as the art and I cannot pull my mind out of the wall long enough to focus on the art.
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