Brick Photo Fresco Screen Prints - Although I think I am

I often think that I am finished, at the last incarnation of my work, able to complete the development phase and move into the production phase, however, this is just a fallacy. I have possibly always been at the finished stage and the constant modifications and developments are the work itself. There may never be a finished stage and I may keep spending my time thinking that the next twist and turn is what is the most important aspect of my work. Without this catch in my logic I would fall into a rut.

Recently I appraised the amount of work that was left, not sold or broken, and loaded it into my van for storage. Somehow I felt this to be an accomplishment in that I still have my work to play with, assuming I can move it to a safe location. I even loaded the broken pieces of several items into a suitcase to take to my backyard where I am going to dig a hole and bury my chipped, rusted and scarred pieces into an underground pit where they can decompose as they should. I like showing my work, but I am not a big fan of selling it.

We sold one piece in the store to the guy actor from Harold and Maude. He always buys my experimental work and then for some reason or another has to return it. In this case it broke when it was being hung on the wall because the item is self-supporting and the stress between the hooks caused it to collapse on itself. I think I have solved this problem now by making things in a single casting, but I learned from that exchange. A former employee of Y-Que commented that anyone that buys anything from us at the store should know it is experimental, or as she said it, "BUYER BEWARE".

My final batch of work does feel more complete than all the batches before in that I am photographing it and then using the photos to make other items like coasters and mousepads, which may sell without damage or risk to life and limb. I put a new display up in the front window of the store in Los Angeles, but can't bring myself to call it a "show" as it is only 4 pieces that survived, 3 broke in transit. I could make these pieces less fragile by added a back layer of polyester resin and/or epoxy to strengthen the shell. Or I could mount the fresco in a frame of wood that creates a bumper for the piece, but these both add complications, take time and cost money. Frome an artistic standpoint I have to commit to the concept and think of the work as if the generations that are a result of a piece are the piece itself and it does not really matter if a few things break along the way. More to bury.

Advancements in our 3-dimensional world

2-dimensional work has always been my prison. I've worked with photography and the literal interpretation of the world through photo chemistry and bits of silver has always captured my imagination, but by rendering photographic prints in rectangular flat 2-dimensional surfaces never seemed to release anything more than a portion of it's being. Sort of how we only use a portion of our brains for thinking, there is a pent up energy inside photos that is screaming out at us, but we cannot see it except on certain occasions when our mind is somehow fully engaged in a piece of work. Screenprinting has been my craft over the last 25 years that has taken up most of my professional time and as a result I have learned a fair amount using the oversized films and basic colors to put ink onto shirts in a photographic way. Over the last 2-5 years, off and on, I've been merging my printing skills with plaster and castings to come up with a new form of wall art which I call Photo-Fresco.

Over the last few weeks I have broken out of my prison and am on the verge of having fully realizing the potential of this new craft to create 3-dimensional pieces using resins, epoxies, gypsum based plasters with acrylic polymers, spray paint and vinyl to pull out imgages and turn them into objects. The question I have now is if wall art is the right thing to make or if I should reduce this pieces down to simple magnets and charms to make them more digestible to the consuming public. I like the ideas behind displaying prints and pieces on walls, or even selling them in my store, but it is a tall challenge to sell prints without a reputation. Whereas magnets are marketable at $5-10 and they can still be displayed in homes to keep the ball rolling while I work out the details on larger pieces. Larger pieces are more fun to make, but I can only do so many at a time and working smaller, like with pendants and charms moves my production capacity up ten to twenty fold.

The simplest way to make the analysis is to say if I sell one piece for $100, which may takes months, could I sell twenty pieces for $5/ea over the same period of time and not have to worry as much about breakage, storage and the problems with display? I have been testing some adhesives around town using a combination of double sided sticker paper and some pressure sensitive adhesive on the back and to my surprise the items I have placed around town have survived for several weeks in the weather, hot and cold. This is a positive for the flexibility of small things to be displayed in many different environments as stickers versus magnets. At least my mistakes can be gotten rid of if they are small by random postings, as compared to the larger pieces that have to be carried to a storage unit and hidden forever, or until I stop paying the rent. So it seems a combination of stickers, magnets and charms is the way to go, for now.